Laced with tiny bubbles, most amber sinks in fresh water, but in the brine of the sea it dances, half suspended in the waves, when loosened from its ancient subaquatic bed. Until the nineteenth century, seaborne amber was so plentiful that no one thought to mine it: why bother when the stones arrived in the shallows, or washed onto the beach? The Teutonic Knights entered the gem trade with all the charm and equanimity they had brought to baptizing Old Prussians. They set up strict rules for collecting, carving and dealing: apprehended smugglers were hanged from the nearest tree. The destiny of this brutally controlled material was rosary beads, devotional images, and carved saints. Trade was brisk, and profitable, "for throughout Christendom no price was too high for a rosary strung with lucent amber beads." Judah is an amazing writer. She weaves stone through human history showing us how we gave different types of stone the power of royalty and worship. She breaks down the history of each individual stone and how it’s impacted the human race through history. We interweave them in our mythology. They become a medium for our artwork generation after generation. Our advancement as a species came about by forging stone tools even now the Industrial Revolution was possible because of coal.

Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones - Goodreads

Inspired by the lapidaries of the ancient world, Lapidarium is a collection of essays about sixty different stones that have influenced our shared history.

Geology is a story-telling science, requiring great leaps of poetic imagination,’ writes Hettie Judah in Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones. Stones that come to us hard and cold and unchanging are the product of immense geological heat and upheaval. They provide glimpses into the inhuman abyss of time and are windows onto past epochs. And stones and minerals underpin every part of every civilisation, explaining and revealing, showing that the pinnacles of wealth, luxury and artistic achievement are often allied to misery, despoliation and violence. A collection of extravagant stories about artists, miners, princes, chancers, criminals – and above all collectors [...] a real cabinet of curiosities" In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman army. The great Muslim empire led by Sultan Mehmet II supplanted Christian Byzantium and gained control of trade routes through the Eastern Mediterranean. Italian merchants traded with the Ottomans for alum and dyestuffs, but it rankled that their textile industry was held ransom to a hostile and capricious power. Fascinating for Latin learners and for Tolkien fans of all ages, The Hobbit has been translated into Latin for the first time since its publication 75 years ago.

Lapidarium - The Secret Lives of Stones – 50 Watts Books Lapidarium - The Secret Lives of Stones – 50 Watts Books

Here's the thing: I wanted to be able to come away from each chapter able to say a couple of sentences about each stone, but this book will leave you with a half–remembered sentence on someone who owned the stone in a century you probably won't remember. It's just a wholly unbalanced book. I wanted to love it – I think there should be loads of books encouraging us to reconnect with the natural world, to come away with some general knowledge about our planet and our surroundings and how it's shaped human civilisation at large. These tales do none of this. They're much too niche, poorly pulled together and not particularly interesting. As much as I liked the Rani of Kapurthala's crescent-shaped emerald, I really can't say I know anything about emeralds in general after reading this book. And that was one of my favourite chapters. Het boek doet wat denken aan het boek van Kassia St Clair over kleuren , maar dan met bevlogen verhalen over gesteenten die toch wat deden nadenken Bv over de invloed van de prijs van de aflaten of over de PlayStation war , die de verhalen niet altijd even licht maken . A gem of a collection [...] a highly accessible guide delivered in a light, informative tone. Quietly authoritative, the author sustains our attention through the pithiness of her essays and the verve of her storytelling" This will allow me to finally focus on my passion project On Art and Motherhood - a book for which I have long struggled to find publishing support.

Funder reveals how O’Shaughnessy Blair self-effacingly supported Orwell intellectually, emotionally, medically and financially ... why didn’t Orwell do the same for his wife in her equally serious time of need?’

Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones | NHBS Good Reads Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones | NHBS Good Reads

Yet stone ruins are, in themselves, a potent symbol of the impermanence of power: the empire fallen, the despot toppled, the rubble of a plantation house watched over by its ghosts. Hayward Touring have announced details including the full schedule for Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood which tours to the Arnolfini, Bristol; MAC, Birmingham; Millennium Gallery, Sheffield and DCA, Dundee during 2024 and 2025 This review was originally published on NetGalley.com. I was given an ebook freely by NetGalley and the book’s publisher in return for a voluntary and honest review. This book is more people-centric than stone centric. Each essay isn't actually about a stone, it's a niche tale about people with a connection to the stone in question, and it's the people that the essay focuses on. This in itself isn't a failing, but combined with the overuse of minor historical details and dates and bulky context (which, surely could have been reduced down) it is quite difficult to sift through and actually find any vaguely interesting information.For too long, artists have been told that they can't have both motherhood and a successful career. In this polemical volume, critic and campaigner Hettie Judah argues that a paradigm shift is needed within the art world to take account of the needs of artist mothers (and other parents: artist fathers, parents who don't identify with the term 'mother', and parents in other sectors of the art world).

stones tell - ABC Radio National The stories that stones tell - ABC Radio National

An absolute feast for the senses, the book itself feels very much like a collector’s treasure hoarded wunderkammer of mythic and mysterious curiosities. It is split into six sections (Stones and Power, Sacred Stones, Stones and Stories, Stone Technology, Shapes in Stone, and Living Stones), and each section reveals a chapter devoted to unearthing an individual stone with imaginative, artful descriptions and a pretty wild, or wildly fascinating story connected to each stone. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ Hettie is curator of the Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood which will open at the Arnolfini in Bristol on 9 March 2024. Her book of the same title will be published globally by Thames & Hudson in summer 2024.Hettie Judah breaks her book down by types of stones into these categories;Stones and Powers, Sacred Stones, Stones and Stories, Stone Technology, Shapes in Stones and Living Stones. Under each of these divisions Judah discusses between 9-11 different stones. For centuries Europe looked to Constantinople for colored textiles. The great domed Byzantine city was the source of silks that floated on the air and caught the eye like exotic plumage; its workshops produced shimmering embroidery, and its merchants supplied the dyestuffs and mordants that allowed woolen textiles to be processed in glorious colors. Europe produced woad for blue, madder for pink, and other vegetable dyes, but none of these matched the intensity achieved with imported indigo, kermes, and saffron. In return for silks, dyes and spices were traded timber, honey, salt, wax, furs, and, until the ninth century, enslaved members of other European tribes.