Modern Material Culture Research Articles

The place of mirrors in the domestic culture of sixteenth-century Bruges

ABSTRACT The sixteenth century saw an exponential increase in the number and the diversity of objects people surrounded themselves with. Some objects have already been widely discussed, while others, like mirrors, remain hidden from scholarly view. The mirror was widely popular in the more wealthy households of cities like Bruges, but it was also frequently discussed and used in moralistic writings and paintings as a metaphor for a wide range of very different symbolic meanings. According to literature, however, a transition took place during this period from the mirror being a tool for contemplation and private devotion, to the mirror being used as a luxury item. Moreover, the literature argues, this transition also reflected a large-scale social and cultural change towards secularisation, humanism and emerging subjectivity. In this article, however, I argue that, especially in the Bruges context, reality - as is often the case – was much more layered than that. Indeed, their increasing popularity in the sixteenth century should be explained both by a changing consumer culture, and by the mirror's continued connection with spirituality and private devotion. The resulting new insights are of great importance for our understanding of early modern daily life and material culture.

Этнокультурная история и современное измерение Ордена знак почета института истории, языка и литературы УФИЦ РАН: от башкирского академцентра к федеральному институту

The Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a federal academic institution with a humanitarian profile, the key research area of which is comprehensive Bashkir studies. The Institute, which celebrated its centenary in 2022, has gone a long way from the Society for the Study of Bashkiria at the Academic Center of the People’s Commissariat of Education of Bashkiria, which united ascetic researchers, to the authoritative scientific center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The institution has made and continues to make an invaluable contribution to the study of the archaeology, ancient and modern history, and material and spiritual culture of the multinational region. The Bashkir people, one of the many ethnic groups in the Russian Federation, are the focus of this work. The team’s contributions, which have been recognized in the scientific community of Russia and beyond, not only have a scientific value but also have applied and practical significance. These contributions demonstrate the researchers’ ability to solve problems that face modern humanitarian science, in a qualitative manner. His century-old scientific biography and ethnocultural history include significant archaeological discoveries, fundamental monographic and collective research, scientific collections, multi-volume collections of the Bashkir folk art, anthologies of the Bashkir literature, numerous linguistic and encyclopedic dictionaries that incorporated creative ideas, thoughts, achievements of several generations of scientists (M.A. Burangulov, T.H. Akhmadiev, N.V. Bikbulatov, I.M. Gvozdikova, R.G. Kuzeev, H.F. Usmanov, M.V. Murzabulatov, S.N. Shitova, N.A. Mazhitov, A.H. Pshenichnyuk, N.H. Maksyutova, S.F. Mirzhanova, Z.G. Uraksin, F.G. Khisamitdinova, A.I. Kharisov, G.B. Khusainov, N.T. Zaripov, A.M. Suleymanov, F.A. Nadrshina, etc.). From the study of archaeology in the Southern Urals region and its ancient history and culture, to understanding modern socio-cultural processes and modern history in Bashkiria, anthropology, ethnography, and the Bashkir language research, computational linguistics, dialectology, folk art, literary studies, archeography, and the study of written and printed materials – these are the main research areas of the Institute’s scientists.

물질문화와 맥베스의 스툴

The study of material culture has influenced a wide range of humanities disciplines, and has been the subject of inquiry by archaeologists and social anthropologists, while the study of objects has also been the focus of critical attention in history and literature. Many of these methods have been developed in relation to contemporary materiality, and work on objects from the past has also been shaped by this. In early modern England, objects were seen as marvels that were useful, thought-provoking, wondrous, entertaining, and generated meaning in their own modest ways. Even relatively inexpensive and simply made objects had ingenuity and a clear understanding of how objects performed emotions, so they were not just ideas about things, but meaningful ways of communicating in everyday life. Much of the work on early modern materiality has been done through Shakespeare’s plays, and this article therefore aims to outline the different ways in which recent criticism has related Shakespeare’s plays to early modern material culture, to explore how objects are mediated between the theatrical text and the wider culture through Shakespeare’s plays, and to suggest and explore future scholarly directions in this area through the study of material culture and the construction of identity, production and consumption as part of the early modern period. It argues that greater scholarly attention to forms of material culture, namely early modern objects and the processes associated with them, may offer fruitful new avenues for understanding the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays work with audiences.

Anastasia G. Yangaki, Ceramics in Plain Sight: The Bacini of the Churches of Crete. “Reflections” of the Late Medieval and the Early Modern Material Culture of the Island. Vol. 1. The Regional Unit of Chania.

Anastasia G. Yangaki, Ceramics in Plain Sight: The Bacini of the Churches of Crete. “Reflections” of the Late Medieval and the Early Modern Material Culture of the Island. Vol. 1. The Regional Unit of Chania. pp. 352, 311 figs. Athens: Institute of Historical Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2021. ISBN 978-960-7905-70-3, paperback €40.

Modern Martyrdom and Material Culture


 
 
 Martyrdom has long been associated with the essence of the Coptic identity. The public execution of the 21 Martyrs of Libya in 2015 allowed for a rekindling of the Coptic narrative of persecution both locally and globally through digital and physical material culture. This movement occurred in the aftermath of decades of significant social and political change which redefined the structure of Egyptian society and the place of the Coptic minority within it. Digital material culture in the form of social media campaigns, an animation film and recorded interviews allow for a global audience and an international outcry from Copts around the globe, creating a new sense of unity in suffering that transcends physical boundaries. The physical material culture includes traditional iconography and a church that serves as a local monument to the legacy of sacrifice left by the 21. Together, physical and digital material culture intertwine to preserve the heritage of the Copts in a movement of solidarity never before seen. The martyrdom of the twenty-first occurred during a time filled with social and political change around the world, fueled by activism and resistance to long-established societal norms.
 
 

Globalizing early modern central and eastern European art : a discussion forum

The following roundtable is the result of a conversation between six scholars who met in the summer of 2021 to share their views on the challenges and opportunities associated with tracing and popularizing central and eastern Europe’s global and transcultural histories with a focus on early modern art and material culture. The topics addressed include the long tradition of studying art from a global perspective in the region, groups of objects ripe for reinterpretation, preferred methodologies, and the unique contributions scholars of the region are poised to make to the global turn.

Africanos y afrodescendientes en la América hispánica septentrional: Espacios de convivencia, sociabilidad y conflicto

Africanos y afrodescendientes en la América hispánica septentrional: Espacios de convivencia, sociabilidad y conflicto

Bookbinders in the Early Modern Venetian Book Trade

AbstractBookbinders are still among the least known of the professions of the early modern Italian book trade, partly because they rarely signed their work. However, they had an undeniably fundamental role in the production and circulation of books (both manuscript and printed) across Italy, and especially in Venice, where the book trade was a particularly lively industry. In recent years, there has been a strong interest in early modern material culture but little attention has been paid to bookbinders, who quite literally shaped the materiality of books. This article looks at the scarcity of documentary sources on Venetian bookbinders between 1450 and 1630 both as a methodological challenge and as evidence of their role in local production and consumption of books. It explores both the lack of sources documenting the professional lives of binders, and sources traditionally underused in book history, to highlight the social lives of binders. Evidence of binders’ family finances, marriages, and social and geographical mobilities is used to identify their lower social standing in the early modern Venetian book world in comparison to booksellers, the overlapping of their professional roles, and the locations of binders’ workshops in the topography of the city.

John Taylor Retailored

Abstract The works of John Taylor the Water Poet (1578–1653) have in recent years been reappraised by scholars of early modern material culture for their expression of a working-class voice, for their inventive manipulation of the print market, and above all for their embodiment, in contrast to dominant Renaissance paradigms of literary worth, of a poetics of physical labour. In this article I revisit the figure of the tailor in Taylor’s defences of his own literary practice, showing that he cleaved to a simplistic distinction between originality and theft, identifying tailoring with the latter. I then examine three examples of his reworkings of previous poems—a micro-drama about the Thirty Years War, an anti-Papist dialogue, and an extended piece of nonsense verse—in an attempt to demonstrate that, despite Taylor’s critical assertions, they can after all best be thought of retailorings, neither properly original nor stolen. This category, however, is a modern one, and I conclude that we have no choice but to appreciate Taylor’s poems, or those of any other early modern writer, on our own terms.

The Even Language: Studying, Teaching and Linguistic Ecology Challenges

The article is devoted to the history of the study and teaching of the Even (Lamut) language in Russia in the period from the 17th – to the beginning of the 21st century. Special attention is paid to the problem of linguistic ecology. The fundamental and applied researches in the synchronic and diachronic aspects, as well as issues of teaching the Even language in families, pre-school educational institutions, colleges and higher educational institutions of Russia are studied. Ethnolinguistics is considered as a possible tool of language preservation and development, i. e., the Even language teaching in the close connection with traditional and modern material and spiritual culture. In this way, the role of vocabulary reflecting the song and dance creative activity, decorative and applied art, ceremonies (of life cycle: birth, wedding, funeral) and economy (hunting, fishing, reindeer breeding), taboo and euphemisms, folk knowledge (metrology, meteorology, space orientation, medicine, calendar, food and cuisine, etc.), as well as the words of religious beliefs (animism, shamanism, Christianity) in the formation of a language picture of the world and the Evens’ mentality is being determined. The role of state institutions, civil society organizations, as well as the members of small-numbered ethnic groups per se in the preservation and development of their language and culture is described. The attention is paid to the translation as the tool of a unique language preservation

On the Trail of a Knight of Santiago: Collecting Music and Mapping Knowledge in Renaissance Europe

Abstract The 2011 discovery that the substantial collection of sixteenth-century printed partbooks preserved in Madrid’s Real Conservatorio Superior de Música originally belonged to an Austrian diplomat, Wolfgang Rumpf, has opened up new perspectives on the formation of early modern music libraries. Employed by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Rumpf was also an informant of Philip II of Spain, who rewarded him with induction into the chivalric Order of Santiago. The Order, headquartered at Uclés, received the bulk of Rumpf’s music library after his death. This article uses Rumpf’s library, and the catalogue he commissioned from the Imperial Librarian Hugo Blotius, to shed light on the music book’s place in early modern material culture, and music’s place in an expanding world of knowledge. Rumpf’s partbooks were not, in the first instance, intended for performance; they reflect instead his assiduous efforts to assemble a ‘universal library’ in which music books formed an integral part.

서구 근대 물질문화의 유입과 경험의 공간으로서 초기 선교사 사택 연구

이 글은 조선에 입국한 초기 선교사의 사택을 통해 서구의 근대물질문명이 유입되고 경험되었 음을 밝히는 종교사회학적 연구이다. 초기 선교사 사택들은 안정적이고 독립적인 삶을 영위할 수 있는 유일한 공간이었다. 이들은 본국에서 살았던 방식에 맞게 주택을 신축하거나 기존 주택을 매 입해 개조하였다. 신축 시, 이들은 유럽풍 주택을 선호하였고, 기존 주택을 매입할 경우에도 내부 는 서구식으로 개조하는 경우가 많았다. 이들은 가구부터 식료품에 이르기 까지 각종 서양 물품을 주택 내에 비치하여 이를 기반으로 서구식 삶을 유지하였다. 선교사 주택이 선교사들에게 사적인 공간임에도 불구하고 이들은 때로 전도의 목적으로 자신들의 주거공간을 조선인들에게 개방하였 다. 사택을 구경 온 조선의 일반 대중들은 서구의 자본주의와 물질문명의 결과물들을 직접적으로 목도하게 되었고, 이런 그들에게 선교사들은 서구의 물질적 번영을 기독교와 인과적 관계로 연결 시키며 포교를 시도하곤 하였다. 이 같은 시도와 노력으로 인해 개신교는 조선인들의 의식 속에서 경제적 힘이나 풍요와 연결되었고, 이렇게 형성된 물질적 이미지는 이후 선교 활동이나 교회 성장 에 도움을 주었다. 그러나 기독교와 물질문화의 연결은 때로 ‘라이스 크리스천’과 같은 문제를 일 으켰고, 더 나아가 기독교가 청빈보다는 풍요와 번영의 종교로 자리 잡게 되는 토대가 마련되기도 하였다. 선교사 주택과 그 안에서 재현되었던 서구식 삶의 모습이 기독교의 물질적 이미지를 구축 되는 데 있어 일정부분 역할을 하였다는 것은 분명한 사실이라 할 수 있다.

A Major Change in Rate of Climate Niche Envelope Evolution during Hominid History.

SummaryHomo sapiens is the only species alive able to take advantage of its cognitive abilities to inhabit almost all environments on Earth. Humans are able to culturally construct, rather than biologically inherit, their occupied climatic niche to a degree unparalleled within the animal kingdom. Precisely, when hominins acquired such an ability remains unknown, and scholars disagree on the extent to which our ancestors shared this same ability. Here, we settle this issue using fine-grained paleoclimatic data, extensive archaeological data, and phylogenetic comparative methods. Our results indicate that whereas early hominins were forced to live under physiologically suitable climatic conditions, with the emergence of H. heidelbergensis, the Homo climatic niche expanded beyond its natural limits, despite progressive harshening in global climates. This indicates that technological innovations providing effective exploitation of cold and seasonal habitats predated the emergence of Homo sapiens.

СТРОИТЕЛЬНЫЕ МАТЕРИАЛЫ И ТЕХНОЛОГИИ СОВРЕМЕННОГО ЖИЛИЩА: АРХИТЕКТУРНЫЙ И ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТЫ

the questions of architectural and environmental solutions in the field of design and construction of low-rise residential buildings, including the distinctive properties of building materials due to the conditions of modern material culture, aesthetic features of the external and internal appearance of these buildings are considered. It is noted that the conceptual approach to the choice of technologies in the construction of these objects helps to determine the necessary organization and structure of work, as well as additional artistic methods of architectural expression. It is also indicated that along with the architectural expressiveness one of the main requirements for the comfort of living in a residential building becomes environmental safety. Considerable attention is paid to modern building materials and innovative technologies that form new creative challenges facing architects.

Royal Jewelry Exchange in Sixteenth Century Anglo-Scottish Politics

This paper explores how Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth i utilized jewelry in political settings to construct meaning, represent themselves, and negotiate personal and political relationships. Studying the complexities of jewelry’s exchange and circulation between the courts of England and Scotland provides a more nuanced picture of early modern diplomacy and material culture. Jewelry provided a valuable resource from which rulers and diplomats regularly drew when framing their political discourse. Jewels used in diplomacy were as politically meaningful as the gestures and rituals of formal diplomatic audiences and domestic ceremonies. As an object of exchange with a variety of functions, jewelry was absorbent of meaning and memories. Thus, jewelry could forge bonds between those who exchanged it, and also bring about hostilities and complications.

A New Contribution to Early Modern Memory Studies

Reviewed by: A New Contribution to Early Modern Memory Studies by Patricia Phillippy Andrew Hiscock (bio) Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton by Patricia Phillippy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 269 pp. Hardcover $110.00. Patricia Phillippy's latest publication is a complex and intriguing project. Whereas many studies exploring the field of early modern memory studies have trained their readers' attentions resolutely upon the axis of time or space, Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton places its discussions firmly in a situational logic, theoretically framed by the referencing of the phenomenological thinking of Merleau-Ponty—"the crisscrossing of the self and the world" (qtd. in Phillippy, 85)—among others. Phillippy acknowledges the widely held contention down the ages that memorial prowess might serve as an index to selfhood, but extends her study further by formulating the vision of collaborative cultural matrices in the early modern period whereby objects and their subjects emerge as "mutual partners in acts and performances of memory" (13). The quarries in this study are many and various, extending to the fields of architectural, monumental, textile, jewelry, textual, and literary interest as well as to the curiosities of wunderkammern. In this fluent and absorbing discussion, the dominant metaphor that guides the reader through one consideration of remembrance—"the retrieval and reuse of remnants of the past" (1)—speaking to another through multiple experiences of materiality is that of "bleeding through" a sequence of cultural planes: "I remove monuments from [End Page 297] limited antiquarian and parochial interests to locate them in provocative relationship with early modern texts" (9). The study begins by examining how material artefacts in the early modern period might, or might not, be seen to preserve and to renew the past. Here, the initial test case of humanist attitudes towards the perceived properties of amber—"capable of quasimiraculous works, valued for its curative properties, mysteriously endowed with a magnetism … and emitting a sweet smell" (5)—remains highly illuminating and offers an excellent base from which to launch an ambitious investigation into early modern material culture in seventeenth-century England. Phillippy's account of the post-Reformation island realm negotiating a change of focus in its cultures of worship "from the spiritual efficacy of remembrance toward a proliferation of its material displays" (8) remains highly readable and complements in its meticulous detail other key contributions that have already been made to this lively field of scholarly studies. In her first chapter, Phillippy explores early modern cultural discourses of iconography and iconoclasm as sometimes remarkably evenly matched in a number of narratives of post-Reformation religious communities. Equally illuminatingly, in the same way that some studies of Medieval drama have pointed to the ways in which materials and properties by companies were rescued and recycled for alternative forms of performance, this study looks at how certain ecclesiastical practices and objects might be discarded, recovered, and redeployed according to the changeful environments of parish and household affiliations. Detailed accounts of the architectural and monumental spaces of church buildings (notably an enquiry into the reported motivations and actions that characterized the violent transformation of Peterborough cathedral) as well as revealing insights into the commemorative practices identified at the heart of early modern family life (especially that of the Northamptonshire Puritan family of the Montagus) build incrementally to offer the reader a rich and complex panorama of early modern society's theatres of remembrance. Phillippy's emphases upon the staging and performance of memory in such locales seamlessly leads to a sequence of insights into selected dramatic works such as Shakespeare's late romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale) and Milton's Comus. The initial account of Cymbeline is among the most intriguing, foregrounding the motifs of "dispersal and reincorporation" (94) linked to Innogen's roles as wife, daughter, and sister. Exploring how the romance's narrative may be seen to be structured [End Page 298] around attempted sacraments and rites (and, on occasions, their failures), Phillippy draws attention to the ways in which figures come back and forth from perceived afterlives to shape present experience: thus, "when her brothers lay Innogen (as Fidele) to rest, they perform a ritual that is improvised, yet recycled; natural, but...

Building materials and technologies of modern housing: architectural and environmental aspects

The issues of architectural and environmental solutions in the design and construction of low-rise residential buildings, including the distinctive properties of building materials, due to the conditions of modern material culture, aesthetic features of the external and internal appearance of these buildings are considered. It is noted that the conceptual approach to the choice of the technologies in the implementation of the construction of these objects helps to determine the necessary organization and structural work, as well as additional artistic means of architectural expressiveness. It is also indicated that, along with architectural expressiveness, environmental safety becomes one of the main requirements for the comfort of living in a dwelling house. Considerable attention is paid to modern building materials and innovative technologies that form new creative challenges facing architects.

ЭТНАГРАФІЗМ ТВОРАЎ УЛ. КАРАТКЕВІЧА (НА МАТЭРЫЯЛЕ РАМАНА “КАЛАСЫ ПАД СЯРПОМ ТВАІМ”)

The article is devoted to the study of the distinctive feature of V. Korotkevich’s idiostyle, in particular, the folklore and ethnographic reflection of objective reality, the maximum and immediate proximity of themes, topics and visual means of the social and historical life of people, their traditional artistic creation-folklore, images and typical symbols of this people , to a living folk language in the diversity of its dialectal features. The historical paths of Belarus, the daily life of Belarusian people, their identity, the Belarusian Polesie along with its inhabitants, including flora and fauna, are widely and truthfully shown, apoetized by V. Korotkevich with true love of his son for his mother (nature, land,Motherland). The object of our study was such linguistic (speech) units that acquired a reference, symbolic, and metaphorical meaning in the work “Ears under your sickle” and identified the national culture, having significant value in the development of the modern material and spiritual culture of Belarusian people. V. Korotkevich’s novel “Ears under your sickle” is incomplete: it was stopped writing halfway not only in the creative, but also in the physical life of the writer-patriot, the poettribune, the artist-philosopher. During his short life, V. Korotkevich appeared both as an outstanding poet, and as an original prose writer-narrator, and as an original screenwriter as well and playwright who does not repeat the specific methods and techniques of reflecting objective and subjective reality demonstrated by his predecessors, but has his own so- called idiostyle. The authors of the article come to the conclusion that V. Korotkevich’s use of the Belarusian-language phrases and paremias, their creative processing and genre development give the works a nationally realistic sound, bring them closer to the living folk language, traditional artistic creation, typical images and symbols of Belarusian people, thus creating a distinctive feature of V. Korotkevich’s idiostyle , his folkloreethnographic reflection of objective reality. Such linguistic material enriches not only the language of Belarusian fiction, but also the entire Belarusian literary language.

Источники и литература по современной материальной культуре сельского населения Дагестана: историографический обзор

Источники и литература по современной материальной культуре сельского населения Дагестана: историографический обзор

СКУЛЬПТУРА ЯК ПРОДУКТ ПРОМИСЛОВОГО ДИЗАЙНУ. ДОСВІД ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ В ПРОЕКТНІЙ ПРАКТИЦІ

Мета дослідження полягає у виявленні та розгляді терміну «промислова скульптура» в діяльності промислового дизайнера. Методи дослідження полягають у застосуванні комплексу загальнонаукових методі (хронологічний та історико-порівняльний, метод термінологічного аналізу), що сприяв виявленню і розгляду об’єктів промислової скульптури в проектній дизайнерській практиці. Наукова новизна роботи полягає у позначенні певного відокремлення об’єктів промислової скульптури і їх розгляд у вгляді окремого сегмента в сучасній предметній культурі. Висновки. Положення, викладені в статті, свідчать про те, що скульптурні композиції, виконані в жанрі монументально-декоративної пластики можуть бути розглянуті як об’єкти промислового дизайну. Абстрагування від основного об’єкта скульптури – людини (результату), і зосередження на роботі скульптора (процесі) дозволяє виявити певну тотожність з процесом роботи промислового дизайнера, якого можна вважати скульптором промислової форми.Об’ємна дизайнерська форма також будується згідно законів композиції, в тому ж реальному просторі і з урахуванням антропометричних особливостей споживачів, тому створювані дизайнером декоративні композиції формально-абстрактного характеру для внутрішнього архітектурного і зовнішнього урбаністичного середовища можна назвати терміном промислова скульптура. Ілюстративний матеріал об’єктів промислової скульптури представлений проектною діяльністю авторів статті.Крім того, встановлено, що застосування 3D-моделювання позитивно впливає на проект до самого останнього моменту роботи над ним, має більш високу якість об’єкта і сприяє інтеграції дизайнерського проекту в виробничий процес. Такий спосіб дозволяє проводити глобальні модифікації виробу як у процесі дизайн-проектування, так і в процесі виробництва нових об’єктів, і їх майбутніх модифікацій. На основі розглянутих авторських та студентських проектних розробок промислових скульптур можна зазначити, що сприйняття цих об’єктів базується не на понятті масштабності, а на понятті масштабу в контексті пропорційних відносин. Таким чином, головним моментом виступає незмінне співвідношення зорових мас об’єкта, незалежно від його лінійних розмірів.