This beautifully designed book shows how the seemingly mundane objects that populate desks and cubicles everywhere are now being re-imagined as collector's items. And as today's trendsetting artists and designers are increasingly returning to non-digital techniques and methods, letterpress stationery, typewriters, and ink pens have developed the cache of vintage fashion and cars. Stationery Fever showcases the plethora of retro and fine office goods being produced and sold around the world. Organized like your favourite stationery store-pencils, pens, notebooks, erasers, greeting cards, school supplies, etc.- it features exquisitely photographed objects that transcend the decades since laptops took over most of our office needs. Each chapter highlights distinct objects and features a store that specialises in that category. Along the way, readers will learn the history of the lined notebook, the proper way to sharpen a pencil, and the story of how postcards came to be. Whether you're stuffing a college backpack or decorating your home office, this book will appeal to lovers of lo-fi and bespoke objects alike.

Crossword enthusiasts will love this book. Our largest collection of easy crosswords yet, it's packed with more than 300 crosswords from puzzlemaster Charles Timmerman. While perfect for beginners, these puzzles will also appeal to more advanced fans who enjoy a light and easy crossword every once in a while.

This extra-large volume is sure to excite gamers searching for puzzles they can do easily and with confidence. And solving crossword puzzles can help to improve vocabulary, memory, and problem-solving skills. Crossword fans young and old will find it's the perfect companion for hours of puzzling fun

Across America and around the world, people wander through flea markets to search for lost treasures. For decades, no such market was more renowned than the legendary Chelsea flea market, which sprawled over several blocks and within an old garage on the west side of Manhattan. Visitors would trawl through booths crammed with vintage dresses, rare books, ancient swords, glass eyeballs, Afghan rugs, West African fetish dolls, Old Master paintings, and much more. In The Golden Flea, the acclaimed writer Michael Rips takes readers on a trip through this charmed world. With a beguiling style that has won praise from Joan Didion and Susan Orlean, Rips recounts his obsession with the flea and its treasures and provides a fascinating account of the business of buying and selling antiques. Along the way, he introduces us to the flea's lovable oddball cast of vendors, pickers, and collectors, including a haberdasher who only sells to those he deems worthy; an art dealer whose obscure paintings often go for enormous sums; a troubadour who sings to attract customers; and the Prophet, who finds wisdom among all the treasures and trash. As Rips's passion for collecting grows and the flea's last days loom, he undertakes a quest to prove the provenance of a mysterious painting that just might be the one.

On the Great Plains, a land barren of wood and rock for the traditional rail and stone fences, the wire fence was a logical invention. Hundreds of barded-wire designs were invented, and the more practical patents were manufactured and shipped west at great profit. Today collectors are carefully searching out that wire for both enjoyment and historical interest.

This book was designed to provide a well-organized identifying, classifying, and cataloguing system for the many designs and variations of barded wire. Nearly one thousand drawings and three indexes to patents, inventors, and manufacturers provide an immediate means of identification.

Art collectors and their collections make up an important part of the contemporary arts and crafts infrastructure. Not only do museums and art collectors improve an artist's financial situation by buying their work, but their collections also have symbolic meaning. To be included in the right collection can give an artist a high level of recognition; at the same time, the purchase secures their work a place in a system whose aim is to preserve art for the future. Collecting is a selection process which has economic, social, political and art historical implications, and consequences for the artist, the art scene and the public. In On Collecting the authors look at collecting from public, private and personal perspectives to shed light on some of the structures that are responsible for how artworks become 'collectable' and thus available to the public in museums and public spaces. On Collecting is the fourth volume in the series Documents on Contemporary Crafts. The series is published by Norwegian Crafts and offers critical reflection on contemporary crafts, seeking to stimulate discourse within the field. With essays by: Glenn Adamson, Liesbeth den Besten, Paul Derrez, Eivind Furnesvik, Margaret Wasz, Trude Schjelderup Iversen, Gunnar Kvaran, Knut Ljogodt, Nanna Melland, Yuka Oyama, Anthony Shaw and Petter Snare.

Record covers are a sign of our life and times. Like the music on the discs, they address such issues as love, life, death, fashion, and rebellion. For music fans the covers are the expression of a period, of a particular time in their lives. Many are works of art and have become as famous as the music they stand for-Andy Warhol's covers, for example, including the banana he designed for The Velvet Underground. This edition of Record Covers presents a selection of the best rock album covers of the 60s to 90s from music archivist, disc jockey, journalist, and former record-publicity executive Michael Ochs's enormous private collection. Both a trip down memory lane and a study in the evolution of cover art, this is a sweeping look at an underappreciated art form. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

The Women for Victory series provides a thorough and authoritative reference for American servicewomens history and uniforms of WWII, and is designed for scholars of womens or military history, veterans, collectors, re-enactors and others interested in the history and dress of these servicewomen on active military service. Carefully researched historical background information about the female wartime services is combined with comprehensive documentation of their distinctive uniforms. Color photos of original clothing and accessories, modeled in full-length studies and supported by close-up views, show various uniforms and insignia in detail. The text and color photographic portions are supplemented by original wartime photos, many previously unpublished, as well as documents, tables and drawings. Vol.1 examines the two oldest female military components of the U.S. armed forces: the Army Nurse Corps, and Navy Nurse Corps. The book also covers two lesser known groups of militarized medical female service personnel: the Army Hospital Dietitians and Army Physical Therapists.

Author and poet Kathryn Carole Ellison's nine beautiful books of poetry are a result of a lifetime of writing-first as a journalist. Then, because she had some life lessons to share with her children, she chose poetry as a means of communicating. Her books-Celebrations, Heartstrings, Inspirations, Sanctuary, Awakenings, Sojourns, Gratitude, Tapestry, Milestones, Beginnings, Horizons and Moments-contain poems from a collection written over a span of 43 years. The "Poems of Life and Love" are as fresh and relevant today as they were when she first wrote them. She has also created a Journal titled Gifts of Life and Love. Ellison began writing poetry for her children in the 1970s when they were reaching the "age of reason," and she was leaving an abusive marriage, becoming a single parent, and overcoming alcohol addiction. She wanted to share "life's lessons" and "words of wisdom" with her them. Poetry was her way to communicate with her teenage children to help them make good decisions in life, without a barrage of words and lectures that would fall on deaf ears. And so, the Advent Poems began. Ellison gave her children one new poem a day during Advent, along with a trinket. More than 40 years later, her grown children still look forward to each Advent season to receiving her poems. In total, Ellison has penned more than 600 inspirational and wisdom-filled poems for living a more joy-filled life and overcoming every-day challenges. After Ellison's second husband died of Alzheimer's disease in 2008, she decided it was time to share her poetry with the world. In 2014, at the age of 75, she started a business and began the journey into the world of publishing and fulfilling her life's purpose. Ellison wants to share the message that it's never too late to pursue one's dreams. She believes the philosophy that "you can be old at 30, or young at 90"-that it's all up to us. And she believes there is no better time than now to share the poems with the world at large. The present, broken world needs some good-old fashioned lessons in kindness, civility and common sense.

Thousands of copyright-free images of quaint 19th-century items: fans, corsets, toiletry kits, sewing machine, meat grinder, ice cream freezer, typewriter, camera, lantern, carpet sweeper, high-topped "storm" slippers and much more-all arranged according to category. A fascinating, inexhaustible supply of design inspiration.

Ancient gems are precious stones with engraved images. Intaglios (gems with incised negative images) functioned as seals, jewelry, and amulets. Cameos (with raised relief images) were jewels or for display. Gems are a testimony to social and cultural history and reflect historical events. This book looks at their history from the Minoan/Mycenaean period to Late Antiquity (4th/3rd millennium BC a " 5th century AD) andtheir continued use and reinterpretation in the Middle Ages, as well as their reception by collectors, experts, and artists from the Middle Ages to Modern Times.

Arkansas Made is the culmination of the Historic Arkansas Museum's exhaustive investigations into the history of the state's material culture past. Decades of meticulous research have resulted in this exciting two-volume set portraying the work of a multitude of artisan cabinetmakers, silversmiths, potters, fine artists, quilters, and more working in communities all over the sate. The work of these artisan groups documented and collected here has been the driving force of the Historic Arkansas Museum's mission to collect and preserve Arkansas's creative legacy and rich artistic traditions. Arkansas Made demonstrates that Arkansas artists, artisans, and their works not only existed, but are worthy of study, admiration, and reflection.

Curiosities and Texts The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England Marjorie Swann "Highly recommended."--"Library Journal" A craze for collecting swept England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Aristocrats and middling-sort men alike crammed their homes full of a bewildering variety of physical objects: antique coins, scientific instruments, minerals, mummified corpses, zoological specimens, plants, ethnographic objects from Asia and the Americas, statues, portraits. Why were these bizarre jumbles of artifacts so popular? In "Curiosities and Texts," Marjorie Swann demonstrates that collections of physical objects were central to early modern English literature and culture. Swann examines the famous collection of rarities assembled by the Tradescant family; the development of English natural history; narrative catalogs of English landscape features that began to appear in the Tudor and Stuart periods; the writings of Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick; and the foundation of the British Museum. Through this wide-ranging series of case studies, Swann addresses two important questions: How was the collection, which was understood as a form of cultural capital, appropriated in early modern England to construct new social selves and modes of subjectivity? And how did literary texts--both as material objects and as vehicles of representation--participate in the process of negotiating the cultural significance of collectors and collecting? Crafting her unique argument with a balance of detail and insight, Swann sheds new light on material culture's relationship to literature, social authority, and personal identity. Marjorie Swann teaches English at the University of Kansas. Material Texts 2001 288 pages 6 x 9 10 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3610-1 Cloth $59.95s 39.00 World Rights History, Literature