Decorative arts

New Directions in Print Culture Studies features new methods and approaches to cultural and literary history that draw on periodicals, print culture, and material culture, thus revising and rewriting what we think we know about the aesthetic, cultural, and social history of transnational America.

'The transformation of the US into an autocracy has advanced.

Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman Jr.

The red maple leaf is the quintessential symbol of Canada and the flag that popularized it throughout the world was designed in the 1960s as a result of government legislation aimed at creating a vital, new Canadian national identity through objects, events, and building projects.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age covers the period 1900 to today, a time marked by massive global changes in production, transportation, and information-sharing in a post-colonial world.

Despite a growing literature on identity theory in the last two decades, much of its current use in archaeology is still driven toward locating and dating static categories such as ‘Phoenician’, ‘Christian’ or ‘native’.

Fashion History: A Global View proposes a new perspective on fashion history.

What do Persian robes of honour, 20th-century still-life painting, fur garments, and 18th-century porcelain all have in common?

Contested Spaces, Counter-narratives, and Culture from Below in Canada and Quebec explores strategies for reading space and conflict in Canadian and Quebecois literature and cultural performances, positing questions such as: how do these texts and performances produce and contest spatial practices?

Erst seit Kurzem sind Stephane Mallarmes Gedichte zu Anlassen und Gelegenheiten aller Art erstmals vollstandig ins Deutsche ubersetzt.

Donkeys carried Christ into Jerusalem while in Greek myth they transported Hephaistos up to Mount Olympos and Dionysos into battle against the Giants.

Join ceramic artist Emily Reinhardt to learn how to decorate pottery surfaces with glazes, gold luster, patterns and marks, inlay designs, dimensional shapes, and much more.

Because clothing, food, and shelter are basic human needs, they provide excellent entries to cultural values and individual aesthetics.

The armouries were among the most significant visual and symbolic manifestations of the nobility's elevated social position, alongside palaces, chapels, cabinet rooms, and libraries.

An exciting new title from the leading quilt author, Quilt Me!

In this practical book, learn how to make beautiful, folk mobiles - also known as 'pajaki' - to decorate your home or event space in show-stopping style.

Colour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines.

The term 'jar' refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something.

The Neolithic --a period in which the first sedentary agrarian communities were established across much of Europe--has been a key topic of archaeological research for over a century.

The first book to put the sacred and sensuous bronze statues from India's Chola dynasty in social contextFrom the ninth through the thirteenth century, the Chola dynasty of southern India produced thousands of statues of Hindu deities, whose physical perfection was meant to reflect spiritual beauty and divine transcendence.

Fashion reveals not only who we are, but whom we aspire to be.

Writing Material Culture History 2e examines the methodologies used in the historical study of material culture.

Modern Dried Flowersis acontemporary guide to the sustainable art of preserving and styling stems.

Whether you want to fill your home with a riot of different patterns, or are looking for a single motif for a feature wall, there's an amazing array to choose from, and Love Pattern and Colour is the perfect place to start.

Longlisted for the Historians of British Art (HBA) Book Prize 2023Between 1750 and 1840, the home took on unprecedented social and emotional significance.

This book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan, which emerged during the 1960s and continues to inspire designers today.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Eighteenth-century gentleman scholars collected antiquities.

Examines the practice and purposes of presenting the small-scale in literature, material culture and theories of cognition.

A HANDBOOK OF WEAVES.

If memory was simply about past events, public authorities would never put their ever-shrinking budgets at its service.

A Cultural History of Objects in Antiquity covers the period 500 BCE to 500 CE, examining ancient objects from machines and buildings to furniture and fashion.

The first book to put the sacred and sensuous bronze statues from India's Chola dynasty in social contextFrom the ninth through the thirteenth century, the Chola dynasty of southern India produced thousands of statues of Hindu deities, whose physical perfection was meant to reflect spiritual beauty and divine transcendence.

A beautifully illustrated global history of collage from the origins of paper to todayWhile the emergence of collage is frequently placed in the twentieth century when it was a favored medium of modern artists, its earliest beginnings are tied to the invention of paper in China around 200 BCE.

A concise edition of the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to the Book, this book features the 51 articles from the Companion plus 3 brand new chapters in one affordable volume.

Neither use nor ornament is a book about personal productivity, narrated from the perspective of its obstacles: clutter and procrastination.

Spanning the North Atlantic rim from Canada to Scotland, and from the Caribbean to the coast of West Africa, the British Atlantic world is deeply interconnected across its regions.

From clothing to the painted and scarified nude body, through overt, public display or esoteric symbols known only to the initiated, dress can convey information about beliefs, faith, identity, power, agency, resistance, and fashion.

From the mid-eighteenth century on, cultural life in the northern valley of the St John River blended the traditions of Acadian and French Canadian settlers with those of American immigrants.

A beautifully illustrated global history of collage from the origins of paper to todayWhile the emergence of collage is frequently placed in the twentieth century when it was a favored medium of modern artists, its earliest beginnings are tied to the invention of paper in China around 200 BCE.

WINNER Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award 2025, Society of Architectural HistoriansWINNER Historians of British Art Book Award 2025 for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period between 1800-1960Small Spaces recasts the history of the British empire by focusing on the small spaces that made the empire possible.

Craft Economies provides a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary craft production, situating practices of amateur and professional making within a wider creative economy.

Increasing numbers of women are engaging in the development and discussion of modest dressing; a movement matched by a growing media and popular demand for intelligent commentary about the topic.