{"title":"From Furnace to Mine: An Ethnomineralogy of the Early Studio-Glass Movement","authors":"Erin O’Connor","doi":"10.1086/735328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/735328","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on four weeks of fieldwork in 2023 at a glassmaking facility and at mines in the southeastern Appalachian region of the United States, this article asks how batchmaking (the mixing of the raw ingredients of glass) figured into early American studio glassblow ing. In the 1960s and 1970s batchmaking materials were salvaged from both industrial glassmaking sites and mines, a practice that became increasingly obsolete as ready-made batch became available in the mid-1980s. This article draws from new materialism and critical Indigenous theory to explore a “symgeologic” account of becoming a glassblower and to critique persistent Cartesian-Newtonian tenets of studio-glass history. As an ethnomineralogy, this chapter asks: How are minerals alternatively “laid to waste” and recouped in the knowledge of glassmaking? How is the knowledge of batchmaking itself “laid to waste”? How do minerals, mines, and glassblowers co-become? What are the sym geological origins of studio glass and the stories thereof?","PeriodicalId":53917,"journal":{"name":"West 86th-A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"83-102"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147903239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":":<i>Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia: Shells, Bodies, and Materiality</i>","authors":"Marsely Kehoe","doi":"10.1086/728342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/728342","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53917,"journal":{"name":"West 86th-A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“The Uniformity of a Distinctive National Character”: Loops, Knots, and Bernardo de Gálvez’s Calligraphic Equestrian Portrait","authors":"Aaron M. Hyman","doi":"10.1086/728331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/728331","url":null,"abstract":"This essay treats an extraordinary equestrian portrait of the New Spanish viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez created from little more than a looping, calligraphic line. Unique among viceregal painting, it has eluded definitive scholarly interpretation. A previously unexplored, printed calligraphic model is proposed. At stake, however, is not just source hunting but a reappraisal of the picture’s intellectual context within a network of the period’s renowned academicians and their thinking about handwriting. Moreover, new technical findings allow a revised dating of the picture in exposing the sitter’s shifting identity. What emerges is a political reading of the portrait’s original function as an act of deference to the Spanish crown and sign of investment in the renewal of Iberian culture’s proper formation of imperial citizens—on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, the essay thus points to the art-historical potential of wrestling with the history of writing, a domain often segregated from other visual arts but one that was critical for early modern artists and their audiences.","PeriodicalId":53917,"journal":{"name":"West 86th-A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Notes on the Prehistory of Camouflage and Mimicry as Cultural Techniques","authors":"Caroline van Eck","doi":"10.1086/728330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/728330","url":null,"abstract":"The relations between human and animal camouflage have rarely been investigated. Current scholarship, focusing on the evolutionary and military aspects of camouflage, has overshadowed earlier thinking about camouflage and mimicry as shared animal and human features. Reconstructing some of the main elements of those early views, this article argues that, in humans, camouflage should be considered as a cultural technique. Three stages in the “prehistory” of camouflage, which are also three varieties of cultural contexts, are discussed: the hunt, in which camouflage behavior is shared by animals and humans; camouflage behavior among humans, analyzed in terms of simulation and conceived or figured in terms of animal behavior; and camouflage seen as the manifestation of emerging human material culture.","PeriodicalId":53917,"journal":{"name":"West 86th-A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}