Search results for ""Wunderkammer""

Wunderkammern are showing up everywhere these days. Design webshops, expos, interior design stores: they all try to bring back the memory of the century-old tradition of Wunderkammer, or 'the Cabinet of Curiosities'. This book is a Wunderkammer in itself, showcasing the most beautiful exotica, which explorers and adventurous merchants brought back from all over the world for rich collectors. Be amazed by beautiful seashells, stuffed animals, sculptured ostrich eggs, botanical drawings, 'dragons' preserved in formaldehyde, and bewildering Indiana Jones-like stories. A fascinating New World presented itself to them, and in this book, you'll see it through their eyes.

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This book examines the life of Lady Charlotte Guest Schreiber, who provided the first complete translation of the Mabinogion and ran her late husband’s ironmongery. This book examines how collecting porcelain, playing cards, and fans allowed her to create a series of private signifying systems that countered the prevailing Victorian discourse assigned to women.

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Odile Decq: The Wunderkammer of Odile Decq invites you to take a voyage and explore Odile Decq's unique and complete universe of architecture, urban planning, design and art, which celebrates the freedom of imagination and shines a light on her distinctive approach to what is conventionally defined as architecture. Perhaps nothing could set the tone for this book better than Odile Decq's own poetic words, a credo that has become evident after 40 years of architectural and design practice: "The horizon line is a constant temptation, and gives the desire of beyond, the absence of limits blurs the perception, creates ambiguity, fusion, and illusion. The consciousness of elsewhere, the perception of the space beyond." With intricate sketches and concept models, rich photography and an intimate and unique commentary, this concept monograph (aptly described as a cabinet of curiosities) showcases quintessential frameworks of Odile Decq's multidisciplinary design approach; it illuminates her inspirational sources; and most importantly, demonstrates the coherence that is legible on every scale of her work. From her signature concept of dynamic space, setting body into tension and movement, to lifelong ideals of organic transformation of object, perception, and fluidity of things, there are within these pages as many realised and imaginary obsessions as there are aesthetic fascinations.

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Julia Kristeva (1941) es una de las grandes intelectuales europeas de hoy. Escritora, teórica literaria, psicoanalista, feminista, su mirada lúcida sobre fenómenos y personajes clave del pensamiento y las artes se ha convertido en un referente para varias generaciones. En su ya mítico Sol negro aborda en profundidad la génesis y la poética de la melancolía: duelo por una belleza inalcanzable y fuente de lo sublime. Desde su privilegiado diván, Kristeva no solo atiende a los síntomas de una sociedad entera, sino que analiza los casos particulares y reveladores de tres grandes de la literatura: Nerval, Dostoievsky, Duras. Y nosotros, lectores, asistimos a su análisis con la mente iluminada y el alma, doliente.

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DUNGEONS AND DOCUMENTSSoul Howl’s trail has gone cold, so Mira heads back to Alcait Academy with the few clues she managed to find. With some help from her friend Solomon, they decipher that the answers she seeks are hidden below the Kingdom of Alcait. The Fool’s Wunderkammer is a labyrinth full of one-of-a-kind research and dangerous curiosities. Can Mira find what she’s looking for there…and make it out alive?

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Dinosaur skeletons, eggs, bones, and fossils have become increasingly coveted objects for collectors. Dinosaurs are Collectible explores the reasons for their popularity and tells the stories behind the many illustrious finds from the past. This beautifully illustrated and printed publication by the author of Wonders are Collectible and Wunderkammer includes a chapter devoted to dinosaurs in both high and popular culture, and features an exceptional collection of prints, photos, drawings, and micrograph scans.

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The catalogue of a unique collection, ROBOTS 1:2 presents the space-themed toys in the R. F. Robot Collection held by the Vitra Design Museum. "Small kinetic sculptures of great originality": that is how Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra and founder of the Vitra Design Museum, describes the objects in his collection. In many years of careful research, he compiled a rare Wunderkammer of toy robots made mainly in Japan between 1937 and 1973. The term robot was coined in 1921 by Czech writer Karel Capek in his play R. U. R., which foreshadowed some of the impact robots have had on human lives – from relieving us of hard, dangerous, or unpleasant tasks to taking over our jobs, from small everyday dependencies to shifts in social power dynamics. While the large-format predecessor to this book presented the exhibits in their original size, ROBOTS 1:2 shows the space toys on a 1:2 scale. The largest robot determines the size of the book: this conveys a sense of the uncanny ambivalence that clings to even the most playful representatives of their kind. The fantastic pictures on the original packaging often displayed alongside the figurines vividly illustrate an image of the future that by this time is itself part of our past. QR codes give access to short films showing a number of robots in action. The R. F. Robot Collection, housed in the »Wunderkammer« on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, can be visited as part of a guided tour.For more information please go to www.design-museum.de.

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Take a fresh look at the world through the lens of a self-confessed nature-obsessed artist. Asuka Hishiki possesses not only a sense of profound awe and wonder at the intricacies of the natural world, but also the talent to communicate it through her paintings. Recalling the Wunderkammer (literally, 'wonder rooms') of 16th and 17th century European collectors, Asuka Hishiki's Botaniphoria: A Cabinet of Botanical Curiosities encompasses subjects as diverse as rotting vegetables, endangered species, mundane weeds and backyard insects - all treasures to her and transformed into objects of intense and fragile beauty through her skill with watercolour. Her work is held in prestigious collections such as The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, California, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Pennsylvania. One of the first people to appreciate her work said about it, 'your work is not to hang upon a wall in a bright living room, but to put in a drawer in the study. Then, alone in the middle of the night, to take out and ponder upon.' In the best traditions of Wunderkammer, this book is an artfully arranged collection intended to be pondered upon. From the interactions of the objects within the paintings, to the quirky choice of subjects and the realism with which they are portrayed, they will bear revisiting again and again. As Asuka admits, painting is her language. She is an extremely adept communicator in it.

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This is a new translation of Quiccheberg's seminal 16th century text on the collection and display of objects. Samuel Quiccheberg's Inscriptiones, first published in Latin in 1565, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the pragmatic value of curiosity cabinets, or Wunderkammer, to princely collectors in 16th-century Europe and, by so doing, inspire them to develop their own such collections. Quiccheberg shows how the assembly and display of physical objects offered nobles a powerful means to expand visual knowledge, allowing them to incorporate empirical and artisanal expertise into the realm of the written word. Quiccheberg's descriptions of early modern collections provide both a point of origin for today's museums and an implicit critique of their aims, asserting the fundamental research and scholarly value of collections: collections are to be used, not merely viewed. The First Treatise on Museums makes Quiccheberg's now rare publication available in English translation. Complementing the translation are a critical introduction by Mark Meadow and a preface by Bruce Robertson.

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Keepsake, guidebook, and wunderkammer of enthusiasms, Andy Sturdevant's essays offer a new way of thinking about urban spaces and the contemporary Midwest. Craigslist ads, homemade signs at Target Field, and alleyways all open up with possibilities for measuring cultural time and the resonance, not provincialism, of spaces closely observed. Published to coincide with Sturdevant's solo show at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow reveals the essayist as pied piper and artist, whose canvas is the city. Andy Sturdevant is an artist, writer, and arts administrator living in south Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has written about art, history, and culture for a variety of Twin Cities--based publications and websites, including mnartists.org, Rain Taxi, Art Review, Preview!, Mpls.St.Paul, and heavytable.com. His essays have also appeared in publications of the Walker Art Center, and he writes a weekly column on arts and visual culture in Minneapolis--St. Paul for MinnPost. His work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Soap Factory. Andy was born in Ohio, raised in Kentucky, and has lived in Minneapolis since 2005.

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Una de las poetas más eminentes de Francia, como la definió Paul Éluard, Valentine Penrose (1898-1978), nacida Boué, formó parte del grupo surrealista de los años 20-30 en París, y sin embargo ha sido prácticamente olvidada por el relato oficial y las antologías del movimiento. Con una obra poética verdaderamente original, cargada de referentes mágicos y esotéricos, femeninos y naturales, de gran sensualidad y erotismo netamente lésbico, Penrose ha sido acaso más conocida por su novela La condesa sangrienta, que eclipsó el resto de su trabajo. Wunderkammer edita por primera vez en castellano su obra literaria completa, que incluye en este volumen los poemarios Imágenes de Épinal (1926), Hierba a la luna (1935), Poemas (1937), Suertes del fulgor (1937), Dones de las femeninas (1951, con veintisiete collages realizados por la propia autora) y Las magias (1972); diversos poemas publicados en revistas y antologías, y algunos poemas inéditos, además de sus piezas en prosa El nuevo Cándido,

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Brazil unites some of the most creative manifestations of popular art in the world. By presenting works by the legendary Mestre Vitalino and other artists from Pernambuco, the Jequitinhonha Valley and Niterói An Art of Resilience fosters awareness of this amazing art of the people. This new publication documents Rolf Fehlbaum`s collection of popular art from Brazil. They are on display in the »Wunderkammer«, a gallery of special objects from the world of popular culture, located on the Vitra Campus. Rather than representing the full scope of Brazilian popular art this collection is based on specific personal choices that were formed by the first pieces, which were by Mestre Vitalino, Zé Caboclo, Adolton and Ulisses. While most of the objects deal individually with different aspects of life, there are three groups of objects that are treated separately: the Bumba Meu Boi spectacle, the Maracatu carnival procession, and the cruel raids of the cangaceiros around Lampião and Maria Bonita. The groups are accompanied by essays written by the Brazilian anthropologists Ricardo Lima and Guacira Waldeck.

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There are many ways to try to improve our lives - we can turn to the wisdom of philosophers, the teachings of religions or the latest experiments of psychologists. But we rarely to look to history for inspiration - and when we do it can be surprisingly powerful. Showing the lessons that can be learned from the past, cultural historian Roman Krznaric explores twelve universal topics, from work and love to money and creativity, and reveals the wisdom that we've been missing. There is much to be learned from Ancient Greece on relationships, from the industrial revolution on job satisfaction, and from Ming-dynasty China on bringing up our children. Just as a Renaissance 'Wunderkammer' was a curiosity cabinet full of fascinating objects, each with a story behind it, The Wonderbox is full of stories and ideas from history, each of which sheds invaluable light on the decisions we make every day, whether we think about the different uses of the senses or changing attitudes to time. History is usually read for pleasure or for insight into current affairs, but The Wonderbox, stepping into the territory of Alain de Botton and Theodore Zeldin, is 'practical history' - using the past to think about our day to day lives.

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The Wunderkammer, or “cabinet of curiosities,” saw collectors gathering objects from many strands of artistic, scientific, and intellectual endeavor, in an ambitious attempt to encompass all of humankind’s knowledge in a single room. From the Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg, these aristocratic virtuosos acquired, selected, and displayed the objects in real-life catalogues that represented the entire world—spanning architecture, interior design, painting, sculpture, gemology, geology, botany, biology and taxonomy, astrology, alchemy, anthropology, ethnography, and history. Marvel at the unicorn horns (narwhal tusks), gems, rare coral growths, Murano glasswork, paintings and peculiar mechanical automata. Browse through illustrations of exotic and mythical creatures and discover the famed “Coburg ivories,” an astounding collection of crafted artifacts. These collections are nothing short of a journey through time, from the Renaissance and Age of Discovery, the Mannerist and Baroque periods, up to the present day. Although many of these cabinets of curiosities no longer exist, others have been meticulously reconstructed, and new ones born. These marvelous cabinets of curiosities can now be explored by all in this XXL collection. To realize this mammoth undertaking, Massimo Listri traveled to seven European countries over several decades; the result is a set of gorgeous photographs, an authoritative yet accessible introduction, and detailed commentary on each of the 19 chambers highlighting the most remarkable items in each collection. Discover how these timeless treasures both describe and defined civilization, the modern concept of the museum, and our very knowledge of the universe.

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The Wunderkammer, or “cabinet of curiosities,” saw collectors gathering objects from many strands of artistic, scientific, and intellectual endeavor, in an ambitious attempt to encompass all of humankind’s knowledge in a single room. From the Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg, these aristocratic virtuosos acquired, selected, and displayed the objects in real-life catalogues that represented the entire world—spanning architecture, interior design, painting, sculpture, gemology, geology, botany, biology and taxonomy, astrology, alchemy, anthropology, ethnography, and history. Marvel at the unicorn horns (narwhal tusks), gems, rare coral growths, Murano glasswork, paintings and peculiar mechanical automata. Browse through illustrations of exotic and mythical creatures and discover the famed “Coburg ivories,” an astounding collection of crafted artifacts. These collections are nothing short of a journey through time, from the Renaissance and Age of Discovery, the Mannerist and Baroque periods, up to the present day. Many of these cabinets of curiosities no longer exist, others have been meticulously reconstructed, and new ones born. These marvelous cabinets of curiosities can now be explored by all in this collection. To realize this mammoth undertaking, Massimo Listri traveled to seven European countries over several decades; the result is a set of gorgeous photographs, an authoritative yet accessible introduction, and detailed commentary on each of the 19 chambers highlighting the most remarkable items in each collection. Discover how these timeless treasures both describe and defined civilization, the modern concept of the museum, and our very knowledge of the universe.

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The future of the world’s ice is at a critical juncture marked by international debate about climate change and almost daily reports about glaciers and ice shelves breaking, oceans rising, and temperatures spiking across the globe. These changing landscapes and the public discourse surrounding them are changing fast. It is science wrought with mystery, and for Beth Peterson it became personal. A few months after Peterson moved to a tiny village on the edge of Europe’s largest glacier, things began to disappear. The glacier was melting at breakneck pace, and people she knew vanished: her professor went missing while summiting a volcano in Japan, and a friend wandered off a mountain trail in Norway. Finally, Peterson took a harrowing forty-foot fall while ice climbing. Peterson’s effort to make sense of these losses led to travels across Scandinavia, Italy, England and back to the United States. She visited a cryonics institute, an ice core lab, a wunderkammer, Wittgenstein’s cabin, and other museums and libraries. She spoke with historians, guides, and scientists in search of answers. Her search for a noted glacier museum in Norway led to news that the renowned building had set on fire in the middle of the night before and burned to the ground. Dispatches from the End of Ice is part science, part lyric essay, and part research reportage—all structured around a series of found artifacts (a map, a museum, an inventory, a book) in an attempt to understand the idea of disappearance. It is a brilliant synthesis of science, storytelling, and research in the spirit of essayists like Robert Macfarlane, John McPhee, and Joni Tevis. Peterson’s work veers into numerous terrains, orbiting the idea of vanishing and the taxonomies of loss both in an unstable world and in our individual lives.

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“Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer…a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived.” —Melissa Febos, The New York Times Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award“DeSanctis encounters spies and love interests, but it’s her lushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to read.” —The Washington Post Vogue's Best Books of 2022The Washington Post’s Best Travel Books of 2022Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home.Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.

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“Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer…a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived.” —Melissa Febos, The New York Times Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award“DeSanctis encounters spies and love interests, but it’s her lushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to read.” —The Washington Post Vogue's Best Books of 2022The Washington Post’s Best Travel Books of 2022Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home.Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.

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This new publication is dedicated to the Baranger Motion Displays of the R. F. Collection housed at the Vitra Design Museum. Motion Displays were conceived as eye-catching and novel moving objects, which – primarily in the US – were used in jewellers’ shop-window displays to attract customers. The Baranger Motion Displays were produced by Baranger Studios in Pasadena, CA between 1937 and 1957 and were lent to thousands of jewellers’ shops over the years. Primarily during the 1990s, Rolf Fehlbaum, Vitra Chairman Emeritus and founder of the Vitra Design Museum, worked to assemble a carefully selected a comprehensive collection of these objects in Weil am Rhein. With large-scale illustrations of the different Motion Displays and an atmospheric photo essay featuring black-and-white details of the objects, the book provides an unprecedented and in-depth view into this collection. In an accompanying essay, Bill Shaffer traces the success story of the displays and sheds light on the significance of the red cases in which they were delivered to the jewellers. Along with Robots 1:1 and Space Fantasies 1:1, Baranger Motion Displays is the third publication to focus on the R. F. Collection. Visitors can view the collection of Motion Displays at the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein as part of the “Wunderkammer” (cabinet of curiosities), which also presents other parts of Rolf Fehlbaum’s wide-ranging collection. In order for readers to be able to experience the wonders of these moving objects for themselves, each Motion Display has been given a QR Code in the book which links to an entertaining video clip of the display in action.

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The poems in Pantry take their titles from kitchen objects. Some objects are common to most kitchens, like dishwashers and double boilers, and others are less common, like pie birds and olive pitters. The poems are not literally about these objects. Rather, the objects, or some aspect of them—a shape, a use, some minute detail—are landmarks in an interior domestic landscape. And few domestic landscapes are more interior than the pantry, a place where objects are laid aside for later use, sometimes years later or not at all. These are the things we hold onto, forget, and discover again. They are the things underlying our material lives. The poems in this book begin here, in the closely packed pantry, but then slip beneath the material objects to explore the domestic lives that spark, seethe, and sometimes explode around them. "In Pantry, Lilah Hegnauer exalts kitchen articles and utensils, their graspable measure of handles, solidity of copper, the comparative impermanence of their bodies in relation to ours," says D.A. Powell, recipient of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Prize in Poetry. "Like Stein and Ponge, Hegnauer uncovers the magical—and tremendously affecting—life of objects in each crenature, joint and flange.” "Pantry is no Food Network test kitchen, no fusty closet of canned goods," says Lisa Spaar, author of Vanitas, Rough. "Erotic, witty, smart, playful, these poems make the quotidian realm of objects an occasion for wooing, meditation, and praise. Think of the Gertrude Stein of Tender Button meeting Emily Dickinson (“Vesuvius at Home”) in a throw-down match where what’s at stake is the veracity and voracity of female desire, and you’ll have a sense of the spell cast by this intoxicating wunderkammer of a book.”

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