Word: brasses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Californian Jane Kimball never planned to write a book or start a website. But one $15 engraved brass vase inspired a collection of more than 700 pieces and the pursuit of the stories behind them. The vase--originally a 1915 German artillery shell--is an example of trench art, mostly produced in World War I but still being made in Kosovo today. It has recently taken off as a hot commodity and subject of scholarship: the first book on trench art was published in April by Nicholas Saunders of University College London, and an exhibition opened in May in France...
Africa, its people already plundered by slavers, its animals by poachers and its mineral wealth by miners, is now yielding up its cultural heritage. Across the continent, artifacts are looted from museums, from universities and straight from the ground. Most of the objects--ancient terra-cotta and stone figures, brass and bronze sculptures, wooden grave markers, masks and doors--end up in the U.S. and Europe, where collectors prize such items as the 16th century Benin bronze castings whose technical finesse rivals works produced by Europeans of the same era. Among the most sought-after items are figurines from Kawu...
...robbed of hundreds of their most valuable items. In an infamous break-in at the National Museum in Ile-Ife in 1994, thieves with an inside contact smashed open 11 display cases. Their haul, which included some of the best-known 12th and 13th century Ife terra-cotta and brass heads--all uninsured--was worth about $200 million. It was the museum's third burglary that year. Nigerian traders also target villages like Kawu, buying artifacts from locals or encouraging rudimentary digging. "It's not exactly excavation," says Abiye Ichaba, head of research and documentation at the Abuja Council...
...season wonders like My So-Called Life and Action have found second lives on MTV and FX. Video stores shelve Ally McBeal next to All of Me. Critics can debate endlessly whether we are in a Golden Age of TV, but this is definitely the golden, silver and brass age of reruns...
...DreamWorks film studio. Spielberg has the warmest of directorial styles; Kubrick's is among the coolest. One aims to seduce the audience; the other wanted to bend moviegoers to see it his way, or to hell with them. The resulting fugue is like a piece composed for brass but played on woodwinds, a Death Valley map on which Spielberg has placed seeds, hoping they will somehow blossom...