The image of Venetian glass is generally associated to glassware, but a more subtle kind of glass items worked in the lagoon city had been not less important and enduring: glass beads. On the contrary, if glasswork in Venice had suffered periods of crisis, it had been beadwork to provide some respite during emergency times, for example the first decades of the 19th century. Since the later Modern period Venetian glass beads have been commonly known as conterie, a word that recalls the time when the bigger ones were sold not by weight but by number and so ‘counted’. Before, conversely, they had been more precisely distinguished into three main sorts, corresponding to different ways of executi
The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge holds an incredibly rich collection of featherwork that was produced across the globe throughout various times, and scholars are eager to study these unique holdings in more detail. During the last months, the archaeological and anthropological collections managers, Imogen Gunn and Rachel Hand, hosted two Cambridge University historians, Professor Ulinka Rublack and Dr Stefan Hanß, to conduct joint research on the cultures of featherwork. Their research on feathers allows Rublack and Hanß to approach early modern cultural encounters and European identity formations in the light of the history of emotions, the body and the s
