Collecting the World

Collecting the World
Author :
Publisher : Belknap Press
Total Pages : 544
Release :
ISBN-10 : 067423748X
ISBN-13 : 9780674237483
Rating : 4/5 (8X Downloads)

Book Synopsis Collecting the World by : James Delbourgo

Download or read book Collecting the World written by James Delbourgo and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2019-03-18 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Leo Gershoy Award Winner of the Louis Gottschalk Prize A Times Book of the Week When the British Museum opened its doors in 1759, it was the first free national public museum in the world. Collecting the World tells the story of the eccentric collector whose thirst for universal knowledge brought it into being. A man of insatiable curiosity and wide-ranging interests, Hans Sloane assembled a collection of antiquities, oddities, and artifacts from around the British Empire to form the most famous cabinet of curiosities of its time. With few curbs on his passion, he established a network of agents to supply him with objects from China, India, the Caribbean, and beyond. Wampum beads, rare manuscripts, a shoe made of human skin: nothing was off limits. The first biography of Sloane based on his complete writings, Collecting the World portrays one of the Enlightenment's most original luminaries. "A magnificent scholarly coup and an enthralling read... It conveys the excitement of original research as well as the thrill of tracking exotic curiosities to their source." --Sunday Times "Delbourgo's engrossing new biography situates Sloane within the welter of intellectual and political crosscurrents that marked his times." --New York Times Book Review "A superb biography--humane, judicious and as passionately curious as Sloane himself." --Times Literary Supplement "A superb book, enjoyably written, beautifully illustrated, and based on deep knowledge of the sources." --The Telegraph

Collecting China

Collecting China
Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages : 235
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781611490060
ISBN-13 : 1611490065
Rating : 4/5 (60 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Collecting China by : Vimalin Rujivacharakul

Download or read book Collecting China written by Vimalin Rujivacharakul and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting China is a unique collection of essays that brings together theories of materiality and what collecting has meant to various peoples over time. Collecting China grew out of a simple question: how does a thing become Chinese? Fifteen essays explore this question from different angles, ranging from close examination of world-renowned private collections to critical reinterpretations of historical writings.

Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World

Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 249
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781317178842
ISBN-13 : 131717884X
Rating : 4/5 (42 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World by : Sonja Mejcher-Atassi

Download or read book Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World written by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting has a long tradition in the Middle East but the museum as a public institution is relatively new. Today there are national museums for antiquities in most Arab countries. While in some cases the political and social climate has hindered the foundation of museums, with existing collections even destroyed at times, the recent museum boom in the Gulf States is again changing the outlook. This unique book is the first to explore collecting practices in archives and museums in the modern Arab world, featuring case studies of collecting practices in countries ranging from Egypt and Lebanon to Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf, and providing a theoretical and methodological basis for future research. The authors are also concerned with investigating the relationship between past and present, since collecting practices tell us a great deal not only about the past but also about the ways we approach the past and present conceptions of our identities. Collections can be textual as well, as in the stories, memories or events selected, recalled, and retold in the pages of a text. As interest in memory studies as well as popular and visual culture grows in the Arab World, so collecting practices are at the heart of any critical approach to the past and the present in that region. The book will be of great interest not only to scholars and students of the modern Arab world but also to professionals in museums and collections in the region, as well as around the world.

Little Big World

Little Big World
Author :
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Total Pages : 137
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781587299438
ISBN-13 : 1587299437
Rating : 4/5 (38 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Little Big World by : Jeffrey Hammond

Download or read book Little Big World written by Jeffrey Hammond and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Collections are more about who one is than about what is collected. In Little Big World, Jeffrey Hammond's resonant 1950Æs inner child speaks through the reflective sixty-something man about the culture and magic of a spectrum of action figure playsets through a lifetime."ùMarilynn Gelfman Karp, author, In Flagrante Collecto

Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable

Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 136
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015019407306
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (06 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable by : Ronald Searle

Download or read book Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable written by Ronald Searle and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As any, even vaguely addicted book collector will have swiftly learned, most booksellers' catalogues are written in a parallel language that can fool anyone but the 'cognoscenti' and which makes the mysteries of the Rosetta stone, or Linear B, look like something out of Enid Blython. Without a smattering of inside information, the baffled but hopelessly-bitten book buyer is drifting unarmed and unprepared into a minefield whose perilous complexities will usually only be made plain when an eagerly awaited parcel of dream volumes arrives and mangled contents are revealed in all their deceptive glory.... But all is not lost. Help is at hand! After a lifetime of avidly scanning the frequently poisonously-tinted pages of innumerable book catalogues, Ronald Searle has become expert in the art of decoding those esoteric, poetic and usually approximate, descriptions of literary come-ons. Now, licking his wounds, he publishes his hard-earned findings in this fully illustrated pioneer guide, designed to foil the devious machinations of scheming and wicked booksellers for ever more. No longer will the innocent book collector need to puzzle over the finer meaning of 'old half road', 'good working copy', blind tooled', or 'tail-edged shaved'. The unvarnished truth is here exposed at last, both in the shocking explicit drawings and in the devastatingly frank glossary whose revelations will startle even the most battle-scarred of bibliophiles. The result is one of the funniest, most entertaining books to have emerged from the brilliantly perceptive pen of the master. No book collector, and certainly no bookseller, can afford to be without it - even the wicked ones.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Cabinet of Curiosities
Author :
Publisher : Hachette+ORM
Total Pages : 481
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780761189374
ISBN-13 : 0761189378
Rating : 4/5 (74 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Cabinet of Curiosities by : Gordon Grice

Download or read book Cabinet of Curiosities written by Gordon Grice and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exactly the book for every young explorer who loves finding stuff in nature and bringing it home. Cabinet of Curiosities is a lavishly illustrated introduction to the wonders of natural history and the joys of being an amateur scientist and collector. Nature writer Gordon Grice, who started his first cabinet of curiosities at age six when he found a skunk’s skull, explains how scientists classify all living things through the Linnaeus system; how to tell real gold from fool’s gold; how to preserve butterflies, crab shells, feathers, a robin’s egg, spider specimens, and honeycombs; how to identify seashells; the difference between antlers and horns; how to read animal tracks. And then, what to do with your specimens, including how to build a cabinet of curiosities out of common household objects, like a desk organizer or a box for fishing tackle.

Collecting the World

Collecting the World
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 561
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674737334
ISBN-13 : 0674737334
Rating : 4/5 (34 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Collecting the World by : James Delbourgo

Download or read book Collecting the World written by James Delbourgo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1759 the British Museum opened its doors to the public—the first free national museum in the world. James Delbourgo recounts the story behind its creation through the life of Hans Sloane, a controversial luminary with an insatiable ambition to pit universal knowledge against superstition and few curbs on his passion for collecting the world.