Rocks Ice And Dirty Stones

Author : Marcia Pointon
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2017-03-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781780237985

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Rocks, Ice and Dirty Stones by Marcia Pointon Pdf

The king of stones, valued since antiquity for their unrivalled hardness, diamonds today are both desired and deplored. Once faceted and polished they glitter on the fingers of brides-to-be and in the ornaments of the super-rich, but their extraction from some of the world’s poorest countries remains contentious. Immensely valuable for their size, diamonds can be easily hidden and transported, making them perfect contraband. Diamonds have been widely used in industry since the nineteenth century and have long been valued for their pharmaceutical and prophylactic properties. This entertaining and richly illustrated book examines the history of the diamond trade through the centuries from India and Brazil to South Africa and Europe and investigates what happens to diamonds once they reach the cutters and polishers. Marcia Pointon takes the reader on a unique tour of the ways in which the quadrahedron diamond shape has inspired design, architecture, and painting, from the symbolism of medieval manuscripts to modern-day graffiti. She questions the etiquette of engagement rings, and she reminds us why and how lost, stolen, or cursed diamonds create suspense in so many classic novels and films. This compelling and fascinating account of the history of sparklers around the world will appeal to all who covet, as well as all who despise, the unparalleled brilliance and glitter of the diamond.

Author : Tijl Vanneste
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2021-09-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9781789144369

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Blood, Sweat and Earth by Tijl Vanneste Pdf

A sweeping history of our enduring passion for diamonds—and the exploitative industry that fuels it. Blood, Sweat and Earth is a hard-hitting historical exposé of the diamond industry, focusing on the exploitation of workers and the environment, the monopolization of uncut diamonds, and how little this has changed over time. It describes the use of forced labor and political oppression by Indian sultans, Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, and Western industrialists in many parts of Africa—as well as the hoarding of diamonds to maintain high prices, from the English East India Company to De Beers. While recent discoveries of diamond deposits in Siberia, Canada, and Australia have brought an end to monopolization, the book shows that advances in the production of synthetic diamonds have not yet been able to eradicate the exploitation caused by the world’s unquenchable thirst for sparkle.

Author : Saskia Coenen Snyder
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2022-11-18
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9780197610473

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A Brilliant Commodity by Saskia Coenen Snyder Pdf

Following diamonds from African mines to the necklines of high society women, this international history shows why Jews were central to the transatlantic gem trade and its growth into a global industry. During the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of diggers, prospectors, merchants, and dealers extracted and shipped over 50 million carats of diamonds from South Africa to London. The primary supplier to the world, South Africa's diamond fields became one of the formative sites of modern capitalist production. At each stage of the diamond's route through the British empire and beyond-from Cape Town to London, from Amsterdam to New York City-carbon gems were primarily mined, processed, appraised, and sold by Jews. In A Brilliant Commodity, historian Saskia Coenen Snyder traces how once-peripheral Jewish populations became the central architects of a new, global exchange of diamonds that connected African sites of supply, European manufacturing centers, American retailers, and western consumers. Centuries of restrictions had limited Jews to trade and finance, businesses that often heavily relied on internal networks. Jews were well-positioned to become key players in the earliest stage of the diamond trade and its growth into a global industry, a development fueled by technological advancements, a dramatic rise in the demand of luxury goods, and an abundance of rough stones. Relying on mercantile and familial ties across continents, Jews created a highly successful commodity chain that included buyers, brokers, cutters, factory owners, financiers, and retailers. Working within a diasporic ethnic community that bridged city and countryside, metropole and colony, Jews helped build a flourishing diamond industry, notably Hatton Garden in London and the Diamond District of New York City, and a place for themselves in the modern world.

Author : Michael Bycroft,Sven Dupré
Publisher : Springer
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2018-11-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9783319963792

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Gems in the Early Modern World by Michael Bycroft,Sven Dupré Pdf

This edited collection is an interdisciplinary study of gems in the early modern world. It examines the relations between the art, science, and technology of gems, and it does so against the backdrop of an expanding global trade in gems. The eleven chapters are organised into three parts. The first part sets the scene by describing how gems moved around the early modern world, how they were set in motion, and how they were pulled together in the course of their travels. The second part is about value. It asks why people valued gems, how they determined the value of a given gem, and how the value of a gem was connected to its perceived place of origin. The third part deals with the skills involved in cutting, polishing, and mounting gems, and how these skills were transmitted and articulated by artisans. The common themes of all these chapters are materials, knowledge and global trade. The contributors to this volume focus on the material properties of gems such as their weight and hardness, on the knowledge involved in exchanging them and valuing them, and on the cultural consequences of the expanding trade in gems in Eurasia and the Americas.

Author : Antje Krause-Wahl,Petra Löffler,Änne Söll
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2021-06-03
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781350192911

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Materials, Practices, and Politics of Shine in Modern Art and Popular Culture by Antje Krause-Wahl,Petra Löffler,Änne Söll Pdf

Shine allures and awakens desire. As a phenomenon of perception shiny things and materials fascinate and tantalize. They are a formative element of material culture, promising luxury, social distinction and the hope of limitless experience and excess. Since the early twentieth century the mass production, dissemination and popularization of synthetic materials that produce heretofore-unknown effects of shine have increased. At the same time, shine is subjectified as “glamor” and made into a token of performative self-empowerment. The volume illuminates genealogical as well as systematic relationships between material phenomena of shine and cultural-philosophical concepts of appearance, illusion, distraction and glare in bringing together renowned scholars from various disciplines.

Author : Jill Rappoport
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2023-03-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780192692863

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Imagining Women's Property in Victorian Fiction by Jill Rappoport Pdf

Imagining Women's Property in Victorian Fiction reframes how we think about Victorian women's changing economic rights and their representation in nineteenth-century novels. The reform of married women's property law between 1856 and 1882 constituted one of the largest economic transformations England had ever seen, as well as one of its most significant challenges to family traditions. By the end of this period, women who had once lost their common-law property rights to their husbands reclaimed their own assets, regained economic agency, and forever altered the legal and theoretical nature of wedlock by doing so. Yet in literary accounts, reforms were neither as decisive as the law implied nor limited to marriage. Legal rights frequently clashed with other family claims, and the reallocation of wealth affected far more than spouses or the marital state. Competition between wives and children is just one of many ways in which Victorian fiction suggests the perceived benefits and threats of property reform. In nineteenth-century fiction, portrayals of women's claims to ownership provide insight into the social networks forged through property transactions and also offer a lens to examine a wide range of other social matters, including testamentary practices, wills, and copyright law; economic and evolutionary models of mutuality; the twin dangers of greed and generosity; inheritance and custody rights; the economic ramifications of loyalty and family obligation; and the legacy of nineteenth-century economic practices for women today. Understanding the reform of married women's property as both an ideologically and materially substantial redistribution of the nation's wealth as well as one complicated by competing cultural traditions, this book explores the widespread ways in which women's financial agency was imagined by fiction that engages with but also diverges from the law in accounts of economic choices and transactions. Repeatedly, narratives by Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, Trollope, Eliot, and Oliphant suggest both that the law is inadequate to account for the way that property enables and disrupts relationships, and that the form of the Victorian novel - in its ability to track intimate and intricate exchanges across generations - is better suited to such tasks.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 902 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 1894
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
ISBN : NYPL:33433082033592

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The Encyclopaedia Britannica by Anonim Pdf

Author : Ronald Turnbull
Publisher : Vertebrate Publishing
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2014-02-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781906148973

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The Riddle of Sphinx Rock by Ronald Turnbull Pdf

Grand to look at, grand to look from, and grand to climb' - so Great Gable was described over a hundred years ago. Probably the Lake District's best loved hill, it receives twenty thousand ascents each year and has seen the birth of two separate sorts of hill sport. In The Riddle of Sphinx Rock, award-winning outdoor writer Ronald Turnbull asks why we find Great Gable so irresistibly attractive. His answer suggests that the greatness of Gable is far more than just a matter of getting to the top. As he walks, scrambles and climbs, he explores the subtleties of its terrain and its geology, history and myths. You'll meet characters and locations that are an integral part of its story: Wordsworth and his Wheel of Fells, Fanny Mercer and her bad alpenstock technique, the Wadd Holes and Pillar Rock, Moses Rigg and Geoffrey Winthrop Young. By turns intriguing and funny, erudite and provocative, The Riddle of Sphinx Rock was chosen by Trail magazine as one of six top titles in its How To Be Mountain Literate section: 'A boutique history of one the UK's most fascinating mountains, filled with memorable characters, classic routes and derring-do. Puts you in the historic thick of one of our most atmospheric and iconic mountains.'

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 898 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1891
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
ISBN : IND:30000095331892

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Encyclopaedia Britannica by Anonim Pdf

Author : W. Shane Wilson
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2010-03-31
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780557235728

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War for Ice by W. Shane Wilson Pdf

Book two in the elemental kids saga;Holly is nearly killed , Bells beleives her dead and goes on a rampage of revenge. Darts his friend must stop him or kill him to save ICE.Dc shows amazing new powers and teaches the big people about love and sacrafice. Lee and Darts fall farther in love, and so do Josh and Kenya. We learn more about the mysterious Wolf and where he came from...

Author : Alexander Henry Green,Charles Le Neve Foster,J. R. Dakyns
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 1869
Category : Geology
ISBN : OSU:32435077310936

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The Geology of the Carboniferous Limestone, Yoredale Rocks, and Millstone Grit of North Derbyshire and the Adjoining Parts of Yorkshire by Alexander Henry Green,Charles Le Neve Foster,J. R. Dakyns Pdf

Author : Natasha Eaton
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2020-12-14
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781000262551

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Travel, Art and Collecting in South Asia by Natasha Eaton Pdf

Travel, Art and Collecting in South Asia questions what are ideas of vertiginous collecting, art-making and museums as expanded fields, including wonder houses and missionary museums (or museobuses) in Britain and South Asia. If the historiography of British India has privileged photography and the 'Imperial Picturesque', the emphasis here is on the formation of a creole modernity, one that considers the relationship between art and labour, including pearlescence and pearl fishing in Sri Lanka, and the iconoclastic/fetish debates and forms of collecting amongst missionaries. Eaton explores these themes alongside the genealogies and modernities of white(ness) in contemporary curating and amateur female practice, and how the museobus or museum as a unique object has informed the work of contemporary artist group Raqs Media Collective. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, Asian history, and imperial and colonial history.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 500 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 1892
Category : Electronic
ISBN : NYPL:33433082422738

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Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes by Anonim Pdf

Author : Clinton Thomas Dent
Publisher : London : Longmans, Green
Page : 586 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1892
Category : Mountaineering
ISBN : UOM:39015005447845

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Mountaineering by Clinton Thomas Dent Pdf

Author : Thomas Spencer Baynes
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 886 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1879
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
ISBN : HARVARD:HN52J6

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The Encyclopedia Britannica by Thomas Spencer Baynes Pdf