The Art History and Architecture Collection is a vital resource for academic libraries, offering extensive insights into various themes such as art movements, single-artist studies, decolonising art, gender and masculinity, citizenship, architecture and design. This collection aims to broaden the scope of art history, addressing a diverse range of visual cultural forms from the early modern period to the present.
The collection encompasses theories and histories of materiality, exploring the intricate relationship between making and thinking, fashion and culture, production and consumption, textiles and industry.
| Key series |
| Rethinking Art’s Histories |
| Studies in Design and Material Culture |
| Collection year | Titles |
| 2025 titles | 17 |
| 2023/4 titles | 28 |
| 2013-2022 titles | 74 |
| Total collection | 128 |
| Keywords |
| Singleartist studies |
| Subcultures |
| Design |
| Architecture |
| Citizenship |
| Surrealism |
| Art movements |
| Decolonising art |
| Queer art |
| Gender – masculinity |
| Modernism |
| Postmodernism |
| Thema subject categories |
| Architecture |
| Avant-garde |
| Ceramics, mosaics and glass: artworks |
| Colonialism and imperialism |
| History of art |
| Material culture |
| Performance art |
| Theory of art |
SDG coverage
Art history and architecture collection
Through a deep dive into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inventories, this chapter sheds light on the characteristics of the clothing and materials that craftspeople used to create colourful and rich outfits. Weaving together the insights of previous research with novel findings from the Refashioning the Renaissance project, the chapter offers a journey through Florence, Siena and Venice to discover the composition of artisans’ wardrobes and how they leveraged local, regional and international production and trade systems. From tracing the trends in materials, styles and colours that defined the era to analysing the intricacies of post-mortem inventories and the institutions involved in their production, the chapter provides an insight in the fashion choices of Renaissance Italian artisans.
As elements of fashionable dress, arms, armour and other types of defensive wear played a complex role in Italian society, giving expression to contemporary notions of masculinity and social status. In fact, the diplomat and writer on manners Stefano Guazzo (1530–93) observed in 1574 how ‘peasants dare to compete in their clothing with artisans, and artisans with merchants, and merchants with noblemen, so much so that once a grocer has taken up the habit of carrying arms and wearing the clothing of a noble, you cannot tell who he is until you see him in his shop selling his wares’. We know some non-elite men wore such objects, but just how widespread was the practice in the middle and lower classes really? With a special focus on Florence, as well as other Medici-governed territories, this chapter attempts to shed light on the convoluted practice of arms-bearing in early modern Italy. As we will explore, circumstances relating to one’s eligibility to carry weapons varied and depended on many factors. Further complicating matters was the practice of awarding arms licences to individuals through special dispensation. Relying on a variety of archival sources, including contemporary legislation, petitions for arms licences, and the large data set of Italian inventories collected by the Refashioning the Renaissance project, this chapter examines three main topics: how arms, armour and protective clothing were legally regulated, the prevalence of these objects in the urban middle and lower classes, and the complicated practice of petitioning the state for weapon privileges.
Luke Roberts combines biography with visual and literary close readings to discuss the afterlife of American artist-writer Pati Hill, whose xerox works developed an intimate exchange with domestic objects that was both a repurposing of housekeeping activities and a DIY circumvention of capitalist value.