An Ornament To The City

The "iron lace" that graces the businesses, homes, squares, and cemeteries of Mobile, Alabama, is as vital a part of that southern port city as it is of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah. Until now, its story has never been fully told. In this attractive volume, John S. Sledge's rich narrative, combined with evocative historic images and Sheila Hagler's stunning contemporary photographs, eloquently conveys as never before how ornamental cast iron defines Mobile's heart and soul. Cast iron was the wonder of the Victorian age, according to Sledge. In Mobile, the material's diverse applications were on display in hulking locomotives and boilers, flamboyant fountains, imposing fences, and endless other forms and structures. The city's ornate iron balconies, dozens of which still remain, elicited the greatest wonder, then as now. Local publications have long extolled Mobile's enchanting ironwork. Only now, however, has the subject been situated within national trends in design, industry, and consumer tastes. It is a colorful saga featuring rawboned iron founders, artisan slaves, hustling salesmen, conniving architects, willful plunderers, romantic artists, and dedicated preservationists. Drawing on rare surviving business records and other archival sources, Sledge skillfully reconstructs how the local iron industry developed and then fiercely competed with big northern foundries. As a working preservationist, Sledge pays particular attention to how many of Mobile's most splendid ornamental iron pieces have weathered hard times, natural disasters, and misguided development to remain a delight for tourists and residents alike. Hagler's beautiful photographs provide a powerful and sometimes moody visual accompaniment to this fascinating tale.

Situated on the southwest coast of modern Turkey, Miletos stood for centuries as one of the paramount cities in the Hellenic world, a gateway between the East and West. It became especially famous as the most prolific mother city in Greek history, sending out at least forty-five known primary and secondary settlements into the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, while at home developing into an intellectual and artistic center and one of the birthplaces of Western science and philosophy. A history of Miletos is long overdue. Despite the significance of this city in antiquity and the important results of ongoing excavations there, the last full-scale discussion of Miletos was written in 1915. In Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia, Vanessa B. Gorman provides the first and only modern, integrated history of the city, collecting and scrutinizing sources about Miletos for the period stretching from the first signs of habitation until 400 B.C.E. This book reviews the archaeological evidence for the physical city, demonstrates the likelihood of both Minoan and Mycenaean settlements there, and substantiates the fact of the Persian destruction and refoundation of Miletos along orthogonal lines. With insight and diligence, Gorman surveys the cults known to have existed during this period; traces the political progress of the city through monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, and democracy; and sketches the terms of its subjugation under the Persians and later the Athenians. Providing a detailed and up-to-date account of the development of one of the major urban centers of Asia Minor, Gorman's book will engage classicists, historians, and Near Eastern specialists. Vanessa B. Gorman is Associate Professor of History, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

How does ‘decoration’ work? What are the relations between ‘figurative’ and ‘ornamental’ modes? And how do such modern western distinctions relate to other critical traditions? While these questions have been much debated among art historians, our book offers an ancient visual cultural perspective. On the one hand, we argue, Greek and Roman materials have proved instrumental in shaping modern assumptions. On the other hand, those ideologies are fundamentally removed from ancient ideas: an ancient perspective can therefore shed light on larger aesthetic debates about what images are – or indeed what they should be.This anthology of specially commissioned essays explores a variety of case studies (both literary and art historical alike): it discusses materials from across the ancient Mediterranean, and from Geometric art all the way through to late antiquity; the book also tackles questions of ‘figure’ and ‘ornament’ in relation to different media – including painting, free-standing statues, relief sculpture, mosaics and architecture. A particular feature of the volume lies in bringing together different national academic traditions, building a bridge between formalist approaches and broader cultural historical perspectives.

'Urban Design: Ornament and Decoration' focuses on decorating the city and how ornament has been used to bring delight to the urban scene. The authors show how the pattern and distribution of street and square and other major elements in the city can be enhanced by the judicious use of decorative surface treatment and by the careful placing of hard and soft landscape features. This second edition, updated by Cliff Moughtin and now available in paperback, includes a new chapter on mud architecture. Case studies of city decoration are also outlined to bring together the ideas discussed and to show how ornament and decoration can be used to emphasize the five components of city form: the path, the node, the edge, the landmark and the district.

Through fire, flood and war, bolstered by the wealth of its natural resources, Fairmont began as a town of wooden houses and progressed to a city of skyscrapers. Over 150 structures in the historic downtown of Fairmont, West Virginia are documented in this volume, the first-ever researched work of the city's architectural history. Highlighted are those structures from Fairmont's period of astronomical growth, 1890 to 1930.

In this paradigm changing study of art and thought from antiquity to the Italian Renaissance Clare Lapraik Guest re-evaluates the central role and theoretical dignity of ornament in pre-modern art and literature.