English & Irish Delftware 1570-1840


Book Description

"Tin-glazed earthenware has been made in Europe since the 15th century. In Britain, floor tiles and drug pots were made in Aldgate, London in the 16th century by immigrant potters from the Low Countries. In the early 17th century, factories making dishes and other wares were set up in London close to the River Thames. Their products were initially much influenced by Chinese porcelain as well as by Italian maiolica. Manufacture spread from London to centres such as Bristol, Liverpool and Dublin. Known as 'gally ware' in the 17th century, this type of pottery has come to be known as 'delftware' from the Dutch town of Delft which was renowned for its manufacture ... The British Museum collection of delftware, which was established in the later part of the 19th century, is one of the finest in the world. It is especially notable for the number of pieces bearing dates and for those which document historical personages and events. This beautifully illustrated book will feature more than 140 items from this extensive collection and include pieces which have never before been fully described or published in colour."--Publisher's description.




An Archaeology of the English Atlantic World, 1600 – 1700


Book Description

An Archaeology of the British Atlantic World, 1600–1700 is the first book to apply the methods of modern-world archaeology to the study of the seventeenth-century English colonial world. Charles E. Orser, Jr explores a range of material evidence of daily life collected from archaeological excavations throughout the Atlantic region, including England, Ireland, western Africa, Native North America, and the eastern United States. He considers the archaeological record together with primary texts by contemporary writers. Giving particular attention to housing, fortifications, delftware, and stoneware, Orser offers new interpretations for each type of artefact. His study demonstrates how the archaeological record expands our understanding of the Atlantic world at a critical moment of its expansion, as well as to the development of the modern, Western world.




Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources


Book Description

Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources is an introduction to the rich treasury of source material available to students of early modern history. During this period, political development, economic and social change, rising literacy levels, and the success of the printing press, ensured that the State, the Church and the people generated texts and objects on an unprecedented scale. This book introduces students to the sources that survived to become indispensable primary material studied by historians. After a wide-ranging introductory essay, part I of the book, ‘Sources’, takes the reader through seven key categories of primary material, including governmental, ecclesiastical and legal records, diaries and literary works, print, and visual and material sources. Each chapter addresses how different types of material were produced, whilst also pointing readers towards the most important and accessible physical and digital source collections. Part II, ‘Histories’, takes a thematic approach. Each chapter in this section explores the sources that are used to address major early modern themes, including political and popular cultures, the economy, science, religion, gender, warfare, and global exploration. This collection of essays by leading historians in their respective fields showcases how practitioners research the early modern period, and is an invaluable resource for any student embarking on their studies of the early modern period.




5000 Years of Tiles


Book Description

A comprehensive, full-color exploration of tile art and production worldwide, from earliest times to the present day. The book is both an authoritative work of reference and a visual delight, ranging from ancient Greece, where the first fired roof tiles date from as early as the third millennium BC, to twentieth-century Mexico. Along the way we encounter stunning examples of the tiler's art: the enormous English medieval floor pavements from Byland Abbey and Clarendon Palace; figural tiles from China, intended to adorn roofs and ward off evil; the famous Iznik tiles from the Islamic world, with their richly decorative patterns; the highly stylised ceramic tiles of the Arts and Crafts movement; and the tiles created by some of the finest ceramic artists and potters of the twenty-first century. Placing the tiles firmly in their historical and cultural context, the book highlights both continuity and diversity, the dissemination of techniques and designs, and how tile art in one time and place has inspired and rejuvenated those in others. Tiles are also studied in terms of function as well as form, and the full range of architectural and practical purposes for which they have been used - from floors to roofs, stoves to bathrooms, cathedrals to metro stations - will be explored, along with the various techniques employed to create such versatile pieces. 5000 Years of Tiles is the essential, most comprehensive single volume for anyone interested in the ceramic, decorative, and architectural arts.




Ceramic, Art and Civilisation


Book Description

"Full of surprises [and] evocative." The Spectator "Passionately written." Apollo "An extraordinary accomplishment." Edmund de Waal "Monumental." Times Literary Supplement "An epic reshaping of ceramic art." Crafts "An important book." The Arts Society Magazine In his major new history, Paul Greenhalgh tells the story of ceramics as a story of human civilisation, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. As a core craft technology, pottery has underpinned domesticity, business, religion, recreation, architecture, and art for millennia. Indeed, the history of ceramics parallels the development of human society. This fascinating and very human history traces the story of ceramic art and industry from the Ancient Greeks to the Romans and the medieval world; Islamic ceramic cultures and their influence on the Italian Renaissance; Chinese and European porcelain production; modernity and Art Nouveau; the rise of the studio potter, Art Deco, International Style and Mid-Century Modern, and finally, the contemporary explosion of ceramic making and the postmodern potter. Interwoven in this journey through time and place is the story of the pots themselves, the culture of the ceramics, and their character and meaning. Ceramics have had a presence in virtually every country and historical period, and have worked as a commodity servicing every social class. They are omnipresent: a ubiquitous art. Ceramic culture is a clear, unique, definable thing, and has an internal logic that holds it together through millennia. Hence ceramics is the most peculiar and extraordinary of all the arts. At once cheap, expensive, elite, plebeian, high-tech, low-tech, exotic, eccentric, comic, tragic, spiritual, and secular, it has revealed itself to be as fluid as the mud it is made from. Ceramics are the very stuff of how civilized life was, and is, led. This then is the story of human society's most surprising core causes and effects.




The Shogun's Silver Telescope and the Cargo of the New Year's Gift


Book Description

The East India Company, founded in London in 1600, was the world's biggest trading organization until the twentieth century. It was originally a spice trading organization, and its existence was precarious in its early years. But its governors soon began to think bigger. A decade after its foundation, they started to plan voyages to more adventurous places, notably Japan. Japan had silver, was cold in winter, and had no sheep, so was a perfect market for England's main export, woollen cloth. The Company planned to add to its spice-runs, sailing back and forth to Japan, exchanging wool for silver. This could be done quickly and easily, over the top of Russia - or so the maps of the day suggested (these same maps also showed Japan twenty times too large, about the size of India). Knowing the Spanish and Portuguese had got there before them, the Company prepared a special present to impress and win over their Japanese hosts. They chose as their first gift a silver telescope. The expedition carrying the telescope departed in 1611, and the Shogun was finally presented with the telescope in the name of King James I in 1613. It was the first telescope ever to leave Europe, and the first made as a presentation item. Before this voyage had even returned, the Company had dispatched another with an equally stunning cargo: nearly a hundred oil paintings. This is the story of these two extraordinary cargoes: what they meant for the fortunes of the Company, what the choice of them says about the seventeenth century England from which they came, and what effect they had on the quizzical Asian rulers to whom they were given.




London’s Waterfront and its World, 1666–1800


Book Description

This volume, covering the period 1666–1800, considers the archaeology of the port of London on a wide scale, from the City down the Thames to Deptford. During this period, with the waterfront at its centre, London became the hub of the new British empire, contributing to the exploitation of people from other lands known as slavery.




The Shogun's Silver Telescope and the Cargo of the New Year's Gift


Book Description

The East India Company, founded in London in 1600, was originally a spice trading organisation. But its governors soon began to think bigger. After a decade, they started to plan voyages to more fabulous places, notably India and Japan. Rich in silver, Japan was a desirable trading partner; crucially, it was also cold in winter. England's main export was woollen cloth, which would not sell in hot places, so the Company envisaged adding to its spice runs by sailing back and forth to Japan, exchanging wool for silver. Maps suggested that this could be done quickly, above Russian. But these maps also made Japan twenty times too large, the size of India in fact. Knowing the Spanish and Portuguese had preceded them, the Company prepared a special present for its first extended sailing to India and Japan. In the end, the Company missed India, but got to Japan in 1613. The Shogun, the military dictator of Japan, was presented with a silver telescope in the name of King James. It was the first telescope ever to leave Europe and the first made as a presentation item. Before this initial ship had even returned, the Company dispatched another, named the New Year's Gift, with an equally stunning cargo: almost 100 oil paintings. These would be given and sold to the Indian and Japanese courts. This book looks at the formation and history of the Company, but mostly examines the meaning of these two extraordinary cargoes. What were they supposed to mean, and what effect did they have on quizzical Asian rulers?




The Global Lives of Things


Book Description

The Global Lives of Things considers the ways in which ‘things’, ranging from commodities to works of art and precious materials, participated in the shaping of global connections in the period 1400-1800. By focusing on the material exchange between Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia, this volume traces the movements of objects through human networks of commerce, colonialism and consumption. It argues that material objects mediated between the forces of global economic exchange and the constantly changing identities of individuals, as they were drawn into global circuits. It proposes a reconceptualization of early modern global history in the light of its material culture by asking the question: what can we learn about the early modern world by studying its objects? This exciting new collection draws together the latest scholarship in the study of material culture and offers students a critique and explanation of the notion of commodity and a reinterpretation of the meaning of exchange. It engages with the concepts of ‘proto-globalization’, ‘the first global age’ and ‘commodities/consumption’. Divided into three parts, the volume considers in Part One, Objects of Global Knowledge, in Part Two, Objects of Global Connections, and finally, in Part Three, Objects of Global Consumption. The collection concludes with afterwords from three of the leading historians in the field, Maxine Berg, Suraiya Faroqhi and Paula Findlen, who offer their critical view of the methodologies and themes considered in the book and place its arguments within the wider field of scholarship. Extensively illustrated, and with chapters examining case studies from Northern Europe to China and Australia, this book will be essential reading for students of global history.




English Pottery 1620-1840


Book Description

"Based around the matchless collections of British ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which curators began to assemble as early as the 1840s, this book charts the story of their development from the simple slipware drinking-vessel of the seventeenth century to the sophisticated enamelled and transfer-printed tableware of the early 1800s. The narrative takes us through successive changes of taste and manners, as British potters assimilated and adapted new, and often disparate, influences from Europe and the Far East. Ceramics, ubiquitous, disposable and quintessentially domestic, tended to reflect social changes quicker than other branches of the applied arts; for example, new fashions in dining and the taking of tea were responsible for major aspects of design and decoration, while the rapid rise of the Staffordshire figure enabled it to become a vehicle for satire, religion, or the commemoration of wildly popular but ephemeral events such as boxing matches and visits from touring menageries." "Keeping carefully chosen pieces, illustrated, at the forefront of his discussion, Robin Hildyard treats the subject variously by material, form, decoration or by broader theme, sometimes cutting across traditional boundaries in order to look behind established myths and the often misleading evidence of what has survived. The methods and history of manufacture are fully explored, from the workshop of the independent village potter to the industrialized nineteenth-century factory struggling with the stormy beginnings of trade unionism. The complex trade in ceramics both at home and abroad, and the transition from utilitarian household object to cherished item in collector's cabinet is also examined, along with the symbiotic relationship between collector and museum. This volume, filling the gap in current ceramic literature between narrower scholarly studies and the opulent catalogues of private collections, presents an expert and yet highly accessible view of a particularly rich seam of British material culture, guiding us from familiar ground into wider and sometimes uncharted territory."--BOOK JACKET.