Download or read book Studies in Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving written by Anna Muthesius and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers together and updates Anna Muthesius' articles, published over a 20 year period, on Byzantine and related silks. The articles examine all aspects of silk production, distribution and use, including the political, economic, social and religious significance of silks, and illustrates the impact of silk weaving on the Eastern Mediterranean before 1200 AD. The figures have also been updated.
Download or read book Studies in Byzantine Islamic and Near Eastern Silk Weaving written by Anna Muthesius and published by Pindar Press. This book was released on 2006-12-31 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume complements Anna Muthesius' two earlier ground-breaking volumes in the field of silk as material culture: Studies in Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving and Studies in Silk in Byzantium. The publication highlights the fact that similar patterns of selection were at work in the acquisition of silks by secular and ecclesiastical bodies. These patterns of selection were governed not only by fashions of the time, but by access to international trade routes leading to the Great Silk Road linking the Near East to the Mediterranean. The surviving silks prove that Mediterranean/Near Eastern silk trade flourished continuously and for centuries prior to the thirteenth century, contrary to what has previously widely been assumed. It also highlights the crucial role of the Caucasian silk routes in accessing the Great Silk Road in the early period, and the contribution of Georgian (and Armenian) silk weaving after the thirteenth century. Above all, the book demonstrates how important it is to assess the impact of Near Eastern silk manufacture and distribution in relation to Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean silk production and trade.
Download or read book Studies in Byzantine Islamic and Near Eastern Silk Weaving written by Anna Muthesius and published by Pindar Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume complements Anna Muthesius' two earlier ground-breaking volumes in the field of silk as material culture: Studies in Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving and Studies in Silk in Byzantium. The publication highlights the fact that similar patterns of selection were at work in the acquisition of silks by secular and ecclesiastical bodies. These patterns of selection were governed not only by fashions of the time, but by access to international trade routes leading to the Great Silk Road linking the Near East to the Mediterranean. The surviving silks prove that Mediterranean/Near Eastern silk trade flourished continuously and for centuries prior to the thirteenth century, contrary to what has previously widely been assumed. It also highlights the crucial role of the Caucasian silk routes in accessing the Great Silk Road in the early period, and the contribution of Georgian (and Armenian) silk weaving after the thirteenth century. Above all, the book demonstrates how important it is to assess the impact of Near Eastern silk manufacture and distribution in relation to Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean silk production and trade.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies written by Elizabeth Jeffreys and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 1053 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies presents discussions by leading experts on all significant aspects of this diverse and fast-growing field. Byzantine Studies deals with the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire, the eastern half of the Late Roman Empire, from the fourth to the fourteenth century. Its centre was the city formerly known as Byzantium, refounded as Constantinople in 324 CE, the present-day Istanbul. Under its emperors, patriarchs, and all-pervasive bureaucracy Byzantium developed a distinctive society: Greek in language, Roman in legal system, and Christian in religion. Byzantium's impact in the European Middle Ages is hard to over-estimate, as a bulwark against invaders, as a meeting-point for trade from Asia and the Mediterranean, as a guardian of the classical literary and artistic heritage, and as a creator of its own magnificent artistic style.
Download or read book The Emperor and the World written by Alicia Walker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new perspective on Byzantine imperial imagery, demonstrating the role foreign styles and iconography played in the visual articulation of imperial power.
Download or read book Wonderful Things Byzantium through its Art written by Liz James and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected in this book were delivered at the XLII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in London in 2009 to accompany the exhibition Byzantium 330-1453, at the Royal Academy. The exhibition was one of the most ambitious and complex exhibitions ever mounted at the Royal Academy, as well as one of the most popular, and the overall aim of the book is to reflect on the exhibition of Byzantine art, both as an academic and popular exercise, and through the choice and discussion of individual objects. Exhibitions present a very different picture of Byzantium and its culture from works of history. The choices of object for display, their arrangement, and the underlying aims of exhibition curators and designers mean that every exhibition presents a different picture of Byzantium. Particular emphases can be placed, whether on everyday life or high court culture; Constantinople or the provinces; or claims of continuity or change over the Byzantine millennium. The essays explore aspects of the image of Byzantium that results from these choices. Given the enormous popularity of exhibitions of Byzantine objects (continued after the completion of this volume by exhibitions in Paris, Bonn and Istanbul), art has become one of the most popular and accessible means of popularizing Byzantium to a wide public audience. Hitherto there has been no general consideration of either the historiography of Byzantine exhibitions or the ways in which they have been set up to present different aspects of Byzantine culture to an academic and general public. The essays are divided into 3 sections: Exhibiting Byzantium sets the 2009 exhibition into the context of other exhibitions of Byzantine art and considers the issues involved in curating and viewing such major collections of medieval art; Object Lessons offers a set of studies of individual objects that were in the exhibition; Byzantium through its Art moves to consider Byzantine art more widely, thinking about the different ways in which objects can be used to study Byzantine culture and society. These are preceded by an introduction by the editors which sets the volume in context.
Download or read book Byzantine Dress written by J. Ball and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-23 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Byzantium there were two overlapping systems of dress: a semiotic one whereby dress was a code for rank and wealth, and a fashion system where dress was based on the desire to look a certain way. This book explains secular dress from the eighth to the twelfth centuries through an examination of painted representations.
Download or read book Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe 1000 BC to 1000 AD written by Salvatore Gaspa and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume derive from the conference on textile terminology held in June 2014 at the University of Copenhagen. Around 50 experts from the fields of Ancient History, Indo-European Studies, Semitic Philology, Assyriology, Classical Archaeology, and Terminology from twelve different countries came together at the Centre for Textile Research, to discuss textile terminology, semantic fields of clothing and technology, loan words, and developments of textile terms in Antiquity. They exchanged ideas, research results, and presented various views and methods. This volume contains 35 chapters, divided into five sections: - Textile terminologies across the ancient Near East and the Southern Levant - Textile terminologies in Europe and Egypt - Textile terminologies in metaphorical language and poetry - Textile terminologies: examples from China and Japan - Technical terms of textiles and textile tools and methodologies of classifications
Download or read book Byzantine Silk Weaving written by Anna Muthesius and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Political Culture in the Latin West Byzantium and the Islamic World c 700 c 1500 written by Catherine Holmes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.
Download or read book The Wandering Throne of Solomon written by Allegra Iafrate and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Wandering Throne of Solomon: Objects and Tales of Kingship in the Medieval Mediterranean Allegra Iafrate analyzes the circulation of artifacts and literary traditions related to king Solomon, particularly among Christians, Jews and Muslims, from the 10th to the 13th century. The author shows how written sources and objects of striking visual impact interact and describes the efforts to match the literary echoes of past wonders with new mirabilia. Using the throne of Solomon as a case-study, she evokes a context where Jewish rabbis, Byzantine rulers, Muslim ambassadors, Christian sovereigns and bishops all seem to share a common imagery in art, technology and kingship.
Download or read book Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Collection of Mediterranean Antiquities Vol 4 The Coptic Textiles written by Wendy Landry and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This catalogue of the Coptic Textiles in the Collection of Mediterranean Antiquities at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts provides a detailed analysis of 64 textiles from both historical and weaving practice points of view. This approach provides a fuller understanding of the cultural situation in which such textiles were produced and circulated. Dr. Landry’s experience of over 40 years of weaving and scholarship highlights the elements of knowledge and skill held and applied by weavers in Antiquity. This perspective complements and expands on the focus on imagery usually provided by art historians regarding textiles of this period. This catalogue shows how much more cultural information can be accessed when the technical, economic, and practical character of both production and use are adequately integrated into the study of material artefacts.
Download or read book Medieval Clothing and Textiles written by Robin Netherton and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. The usual wide range of approaches to garments and fabrics appears in this tenth volume. Three chapters focus on practical matters: a description of the medieval vestments surviving at Castel Sant'Elia in Italy; a survey of the spread of silk cultivation to Europe before 1300; and a documentation of medieval colour terminology for desirable cloth. Two address social significance: the practice of seizing clothing from debtors in fourteenth-century Lucca, and the transformation of the wardrobe of Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII, upon her marriage to the king of Scotland. Two delve into artistic symbolism: a consideration of female headdresses carved at St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford, and a discussion of how Anglo-Saxon artists used soft furnishings to echo emotional aspects of narratives. Meanwhile, in an exercise in historiography, there is an examination of the life of Mrs. A.G.I. Christie, author of the landmark Medieval English Embroidery. ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress; GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Michelle L. Beer, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Valija Evalds, Christine Meek, Maureen C. Miller, Christopher J. Monk, Lisa Monnas, Rebecca Woodward Wendelken
Download or read book Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline written by Cecily J. Hilsdale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-20 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Late Byzantine period (1261–1453) is marked by a paradoxical discrepancy between economic weakness and cultural strength. The apparent enigma can be resolved by recognizing that later Byzantine diplomatic strategies, despite or because of diminishing political advantage, relied on an increasingly desirable cultural and artistic heritage. This book reassesses the role of the visual arts in this era by examining the imperial image and the gift as reconceived in the final two centuries of the Byzantine Empire. In particular it traces a series of luxury objects created specifically for diplomatic exchange with such courts as Genoa, Paris and Moscow alongside key examples of imperial imagery and ritual. By questioning how political decline refigured the visual culture of empire, Cecily J. Hilsdale offers a more nuanced and dynamic account of medieval cultural exchange that considers the temporal dimensions of power and the changing fates of empires.
Download or read book An Obscure Portrait written by Mati Meyer and published by Pindar Press. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent discussions on Byzantine art have been dominated by the question of representing realia. Among these, however, the way works of art reflect the daily life of women have not received much space or attention. The present book studies various images representing women's status and her performative tasks, and their significance from the fourth century to the fall of the Empire, through analysis of archaeological evidence and works of art. It addresses a wide range of questions, some pertaining both to pictorial traditions and to their late antique antecedents, others peculiar to changing and evolving Byzantine culture and mentality. The first chapter deals with the imagery of childbearing, starting with conception and concluding with the care given to the new born and the mother. The second chapter investigates motherhood imagery (breastfeeding, child care, and child-mother intimacy) and the portrayal of women as caretakers and managers of the household (preparing food, bringing water, carding and weaving, or working side by side with their husbands). The third chapter is dedicated to representations of women holding positions outside the house: midwives, maidservants, wet nurses, and mourners. Images of women engaged in disreputable occupations-dancers, musicians, prostitutes and courtesans - complete this chapter. The fourth chapter discusses images of women portrayed in the metaphorical margins - looking out from the gynaikon (the women's apartments), or at their private toilette; it also deals with representations of women who stray from the societal mainstream - concubines; adulteresses, women consenting to sexual acts or being coerced into them - considered symbolically as belonging to the margins of society. The book concludes with a discussion of the degree to which the visual material reliably reflects reality and changing attitudes toward women between Late Antiquity and late Byzantium; and further, to what extent it reveals embedded perceptions and conceptions of women, constructed by canonic regulations and imperial law, popular beliefs and accepted customs. The book aims to lift a veil from known and less known works of art and to present the rarely described picture of the daily life of women in Byzantine art over a very wide chronological span of time, in an effort to expand our knowledge of women in Byzantium and their realia.
Download or read book By the Emperor s Hand written by Timothy Dawson and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the sixth century of the common era the Roman Empire already had many hundreds of years of accumulated ceremonial embedded in its government, and practical science embodied in its army. The transition from Republic to Imperium and the more hierarchical structure that entailed, and the absorption of Christianity into state processes, had pushed the development of court ceremonial apace, and particularly driven its embodiment and display in ever more opulent regalia. The regalia embraced not only garments of distinctive form and decoration, but also both dress and non-dress accessories. It was crucial in displaying rank and function on an everyday basis, yet was also varied considerably for special occasions. Military dress largely reflected forms current amongst ordinary men, but with an emphasis on functionality, eschewing the excesses of fashion. Detailed literary and artistic sources, archaeology and insights derived from reconstruction and practical experience has gone into creating an incredibly lavish picture of the clothing of the longest-enduring political entity in history. Links End Links Author End Author
Download or read book The Byzantine Economy written by Angeliki E. Laiou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a concise survey of the economy of the Byzantine Empire from the fourth century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Organised chronologically, the book addresses key themes such as demography, agriculture, manufacturing and the urban economy, trade, monetary developments, and the role of the state and ideology. It provides a comprehensive overview of the economy with an emphasis on the economic actions of the state and the productive role of the city and non-economic actors, such as landlords, artisans and money-changers. The final chapter compares the Byzantine economy with the economies of western Europe and concludes that the Byzantine economy was one of the most successful examples of a mixed economy in the pre-industrial world. This is the only concise general history of the Byzantine economy and will be essential reading for students of economic history, Byzantine history and medieval history more generally.
