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Submerged Intelligence for Global Omens
This book acts as a cautionary tale, urging society to proactively invest in forging a path towards the future by drawing upon the insights gleaned from the past. Underwater cultural heritage is not merely a collection of broken ruins on the ocean floor; it holds the potential to provide strategic intelligence into global security challenges and future uncertainties. By understanding and valuing the unknown force of underwater cultural heritage, we can anticipate and navigate potential future challenges, harnessing its hidden power to shape the course of history.
Volume Editors: and
This book explores how European naturalists and artists perceived, investigated, and presented the relationship between insects and colors from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. The contributors to this volume examine the creative methods and strategies that were developed to record color-related information about insects through studies on Hoefnagel’s glazed metal and hand-coloring practices; the lepidochromy technique used in paintings by Marseus van Schriek and later naturalists; the representation of sexual dimorphism of color and variable color of caterpillars in the images of Goedaert, Merian, Albin, and Rösel von Rosenhof; the painting-by-numbers technique applied to Schäffer’s bookplates on Regensburg insects; Schiffermüller’s watercolor originals of caterpillars; and finally, the color fading of exotic cabinet specimens and how this issue was tackled by Abbot and Smith. The volume is lavishly illustrated with rare and unpublished images and offers new insights into the interrelation between natural history and visual practices concerning the color of insects, with a special focus on butterflies and moths.

Contributors are Harald Bruckner, Kay Etheridge, Beth Fowkes Tobin, Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel, Karin Leonhard, V.E. Mandrij, Kimberly Schenck, Stacey Sell, Giulia Simonini, and Friedrich Steinle.
Interconnected investigations between conservators, historians, heritage scientists and museum professionals centre on objects that were essential to medieval Christianity in Scandinavia (c. 1100‒1530). Through new and diverse physical data from polychrome sculptures, shrines, winged altarpieces and painted banners, the authors probe a range of issues and problems, from original devotional functions and changing appearances, to the impacts of changing liturgies, locations and priorities, including those for curation within museums.
This book highlights the diversity of theoretical and practical approaches to sacred medieval religious objects, and brings together new findings related to the transformations of these objects since the Reformations.
Contributors are Karl Christian Alvestad, Alexandra Böhme, David Buti, Francesco Caruso, Aoife Daly, Tine Frøysaker, Elina Gertsman, Irka Hajdas, Poul Grinder Hansen, Karoline Kjesrud, Lena Liepe, Hana Lukasova, Maite Maguregui, Austin Nevin, Elena Platania, Anne Irene Riisøy, Katrine S. Scharffenberg, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Calin Constantin Steindal, Noëlle L.W. Streeton, Einar Uggerud, Anna Vila, and Jørgen Wadum.
Re-discovering Objects on the Silk Roads
Volume Editors: and
Saved from Desert Sands, edited by Kelsey Granger and Imre Galambos, unites historians, codicologists, art historians, archaeologists, and curators in the study of material culture on the Silk Roads. The re-discovery of forgotten manuscript archives and sand-buried cities in the twentieth century has brought to light thousands of manuscripts and artefacts. To date, textual content has largely been prioritised over physical objects and their materiality, but the material aspects of these objects are just as important. Focusing primarily on the material and non-textual, this volume presents studies on silver dishes, sealing systems, manuscripts, Buddhist paintings, and ceramics, all of which demonstrate the centrality of material culture in the study of the Silk Roads.
Editor-in-Chief:
Brill’s Studies in Art & Materiality is a peer-reviewed book series dedicated to innovative scholarship about the relation between art, materials, and making.

Artists possess knowledge about materials, their affordances and interactions, and skillfully transform materials into art objects. The resulting specific materiality of a work of art is not only an index of its making, but is also fundamentally connected to meaning, aesthetic perception, mimetic potential, economic value, cultural and social impact, as well as its endurance and preservation. Understanding these connections enhances the field of art history and opens new avenues of investigation, ranging from the focused situated study of individual materials and art objects to comparative inquiries that cross traditional boundaries between genre, time, and space. The development of salient theoretical and methodological frameworks to study the materiality of art connects art history and its sub-disciplines (technical art history, museum studies) to anthropology, history of science, archaeology, material culture studies, as well as the cognitive sciences.

The series accommodates scholarly monographs, collections of essays, conference proceedings, and reference works that engage with the rich meanings of art works’ materiality.

The series is not restricted to a particular chronological period or geographical region, thereby allowing for a broad range of topics. In addition, the series has an interdisciplinary component, while keeping a distinct profile. As such, the series promises rich, innovative content for a wide academic readership.

In: The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China
In: The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China
In: The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China
In: The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China
In: The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China