This thesis investigates the manufacture and use of ceramics over four centuries in Lincolnshire, and considers the evidence for date and function of the pottery itself and for the social standing and economy of the potters, late survivors of the medieval peasant craftsman tradition. Documentary and physical evidence are both searched to produce the most comprehensive possible list of sites and potters names, and to highlight the areas of doubt where neither type of source can give sufficient proof. The methods of pottery production are also examined and two specific types of vessels are discussed in detail as examples of the search for -=origins. From this point the search widens to consider the importation principally by sea of pottery from other parts of the country and from Europe, and the prices of such wares are compared with prices of local products. This leads to certain conclusions about the economic pressures on local potters and their adjustments to deal with new problems and changing expectations. Contemporary sources, depositional evidence and context are next used to study the names and function of pottery, and finally the principles of dating are discussed, and a series of pottery groups are analysed to test the reliability and transferability of dating. Throughout pottery making is compared with comparable trades and Lincolnshire's position with that of the wider ceramic world.

Ancient glasses are invariably complex materials, in which the specific chemical composition and microstructure capture aspects of their technologies. The chemical characterisation of glasses in specific archaeological contexts has given useful insight into the peculiarities of diverse glass-making technologies. In addition such studies generate more general information upon an important range of phenomenon, including the pyrotechnological milieu, empirical knowledge of sophisticated chemistry, organisation of production, access to significant raw materials and long-distance trade. This study examines a wide selection of glass artefacts recovered from archaeological contexts in Northern and Central Italy from approximately 1200 BC to 200 BC. The earliest material is from the Final Bronze Age, and extends the characterisation of an established glass type, which is unique to Europe and distinct from the contemporary technologies of the Eastern Mediterranean. Using a combination of X-ray fluorescence analysis, electron microprobe and scanning electron microscopy glass artefacts from a thousand-year period from the same region are investigated. The shifting technologies permit the discussion of localised production and importation of glass from elsewhere. The chemical analysis reveals a complex picture of glass production, which defies the expected pattern, and there is evidence for new compositional types, which may yet prove to be diagnostic of highly localised production. The changing compositions are discussed in relation to the broader archaeological context.

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This thesis addresses the overlooked contribution of female graduates of the Birmingham Municipal School of Art to the Arts and Crafts movement, during the period of 1880 to 1930. Despite the special status which the Birmingham School enjoyed in its time, Birmingham’s Arts and Crafts movement as a whole has been relatively little studied. The role of women artists within this regional phenomenon has been even further neglected. Employing an object-led approach, this thesis uses artworks as the starting point and main vectors for the exploration of issues tied to materiality, technique, collaboration, authorship, politics, religion, regionalism and gender. The work of Georgie Gaskin (1866-1934), Celia Levetus (1874-1936), Kate Bunce (1856-1927), Myra Bunce (1854-1919), Florence Camm (1874-1960), Margaret A. Rope (1882-1953), and Mary Newill (1860-1947) will be studied in detail. It will be argued that these women artists were integral to the renewal of book-illustration, the revival of the artistic technique of painting in tempera, stained glass making and embroidery. A web of interactions crucial to their professional success will be traced based on geographical proximity, shared workspaces, and social connections. Craftswomen’s role as educators will also be investigated, revealing them as shapers and not merely followers or consumers of the movement. Informed in particular by the theoretical writings of the philosophers Arthur C. Danto, Jacques Rancière and feminist art historian Griselda Pollock, this thesis will offer a valuable update to a field largely untouched by current academic debates and saturated with survey publications. Combined with extensive archival research and the close inspection of artworks, this study aims to go beyond the additive approach of reinsertion. It seeks to provide a critical discussion of the materialisations of women’s participation in the formation of culture.

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The diploma thesis deals with the main personalities dealing with the applied arts concerning metal used between 1895 and 1915. The aim of this thesis is to focus on their artistic creation and to evaluate its contribution to the stylistic development of the applied arts in the Czech countries in the given period and to try also to evaluate the specificity of Czech artistic creation with regards to the main European art centers that influenced the Czech countries. Apart from this main goal, the thesis will deal with the role of education in the development of applied arts in the Czech countries. It will attempt to outline the mutual relationships and benefits between schools and artists. It will mainly focus on the School of Applied Arts as a center of artistic development of applied arts in the Czech countries.

This thesis examines the effects that the religious changes heralded by the Counter Reformation and the decrees regarding religious imagery and the Eucharist promulgated at the Council of Trent had on the decoration of Venetian churches from the close of the Council in 1563 until the first years of the seventeenth century. Although politically Venice shielded her independence from the power of the Papacy, she nonetheless responded in conformity to the Tridentine decrees and played an important role throughout the Cinquecento as a centre for religious renewal. In turn this had an important impact on the fabric and decoration of the city’s churches, particularly in the last two decades of the Cinquecento. Focusing on four Venetian churches that were the objects of extensive decorative programmes during the late Cinquecento; San Giacomo dall’Orio, Santa Maria dell’Umiltà, the Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore, this thesis combines archival and visual evidence to reach a deeper understanding of how the decoration of the Venetian church changed in this period. The central tenet of this thesis is that Venice made an important and early contribution towards developing the ‘ideal’ visual response required by the Council of Trent. In the immediate aftermath of the Council of Trent until the end of the century Venice enjoyed a period of important artistic renewal and achievement. This ‘golden age’ emerged in the years following Trent and in a period characterised by ongoing war and ravaging pestilence. Yet far from discouraging creative genius, the contemporary religious and political upheaval appears to have challenged artists and patrons to ever greater achievements. It thus appears that the conditions imposed by the Council of Trent created a framework within which artists could better represent the values of the renewed Catholicism of the late sixteenth century.

Founded on the premise that the existing literature on Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel does not give a comprehensive, balanced and objective survey of the dress designs produced by the house from 1916-1929, the thesis ‘Reviewing Chanel’ provides a catalogue raisonné of the designs shown in British and French Vogue during this period. This representative sample of Chanel’s work facilitates the very necessary and overdue re-assessment of Chanel’s early career and contribution to twentieth century fashion. Part One of the Introduction includes a review of the existing literature on Chanel and explains the rationale behind the production of a catalogue of the dress designs reproduced in British and French Vogue. Part Two serves as the introduction to the twenty-eight essays which outline the principal developments in each of the dress design collections presented by the house between 1916-1929. Each essay provides an analytical summary of the key themes and developments of the collection and relates Chanel’s work to that of the other leading houses in Paris during this period.

Key pattern is a type of abstract ornament characterised by spiral shapes which are angular rather than curved. It has been used to decorate objects and architecture around the world from prehistory onward, but flourished in a unique form in Insular art (the art of early medieval Britain and Ireland, c. AD 600-1100). Ornament of many kinds was the dominant mode in Insular art, however, key pattern has remained the least studied and most misunderstood. From the 19th century, specialists mainly have relied on simplified, line-drawn reproductions rather than original artworks. These 'correct' hand-made details, isolate patterns from their contexts, and in the case of Insular key pattern, de-emphasise its important physical structures. This resulted in misunderstandings of key pattern's structure and an inability to recognise evidence for medieval artists' working processes. Postwar art historians and archaeologists then largely abandoned study of ornament structure altogether, in critical reaction to this earlier method. For two centuries, academics have overlooked the artists' role in pattern-making, and how their creative agency is reflected in patterns' internal structures. In response, this thesis presents a new, artist-centred method for the study of Insular key pattern, which adapts Michael Brennan's pioneering approach to Insular interlace (a different pattern), to suit key pattern's distinct structure. Close examination of objects and monuments, rather than idealised 'types', has revealed how Insular artists themselves understood key pattern and handled it in the moment of creation. The core of the thesis is an analysis of key pattern's structural properties, i.e. its physical parts and the abstract, often mathematical concepts that Insular makers used to arrange and manipulate these parts, in order to fix mistakes, fulfill specific design goals, or invent anew. Case studies of individual artworks support this analysis and demonstrate how key pattern is a vehicle for accessing Insular artists' thought processes, as they improvised with the pattern's basic structures for maximum creative effect. For the first time, this thesis also places Insular key pattern in its global context, via comparative analyses of key patterns from other world art traditions. This investigation has confirmed key pattern's origin in prehistoric basketry and weaving technologies and explains why Insular key pattern's geometric complexity remains unparalleled. The adaptation and expansion of this new analytical method for key pattern also proves its applicability to any type of ornament from any culture, making it immediately useful to art historians and archaeologists. This thesis therefore represents a larger paradigm shift that brings ornament study into the 21st century.