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The article presents the design and production of silver jewelry developed at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, produced in the ORNO Folk and Artistic Industry Cooperative, operating in Warsaw in the years 1949–2003. The basis of the discussion is the so-called “The Great Book of ORNO” - a handwritten catalog of products, kept by the president of the cooperative, Romuald Rochacki, in the years 1949–54. The Book, which has not yet been the subject of analysis, contains drawings of approximately 280 works, enriched with information about the authors, the time of filing the design, production, artistic and technical assessments, etc. The analysis of the drawings and information about the cooperative entered into the Book allows us to indicate the genesis of the design ORNO – based on the idea of self-education and improvement of the creative skills of the cooperative members, as well as the knowledge about Polish art taught to them during lectures and sightseeing trips. ORNO silver jewelry is an important trend in Polish applied art design after 1945.
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The human need to relate with the natural environs is the foundation of biophilic design. Thus, such a design solution aims to establish a relation between the built environment and nature; it is fundamental to the well-being of the users of a given space. The objective of this study is to assess the relationship between employees’ sensation of well-being and work place design in Malta, the smallest-in-size member state of the European Union, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on an online questionnaire circulated to all employees in the civil service and public authorities of Malta, the present working environs were studied and proposed design solutions were put forward. The data collected was analyzed by making use of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Apertures were found to have substantial impact on the employees’ mental well-being, health and mood; whilst reducing anxiety, they increase the perceived health ratings. Naturally lit and ventilated workspaces lead to higher productivity and less fatigue. The survey results provide a snapshot of the current work environs and provide data for improving their re-design along biophilic principles, an important consideration given that the island’s workforce suffers from the highest rates of depression, anxiety and elevated stress levels within the European Union.
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Sometimes a single work of art can tell a whole story. The Ludovisi group presented here originally stood on a long sculptural plinth on the terrace of the Athena sanctuary in the ancient metropolis of Pergamon. Viewed from its back, one sees a Gaul with raised sword and his defeated opponent to the left. This impression remains until the moment when the front of the warrior can be seen. There, in fact, the sword is being used to commit suicide in order to escape slavery; the dying woman is apparently his wife. This way art becomes a repository of collective memory.
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This paper analyzes a faithful copy of a 6th/7th-century amulet which exemplifies the parallel use of multiple distinct varieties of religious imagery within a single art work. The amulet combines a detailed Christological cycle, engraved on the one side, with a representation of a winged creature, standing on two crocodiles, on the other, derived from images of Horus, an ancient Egyptian god. Such an intriguing combination of religious imagery taken from distinct cultural contexts testifies to the survival and integration of earlier beliefs in early Byzantine Egypt and to the various strategies employed by worshippers in the hope of reaching out to several divine forc-es at once.
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The phiale fountain of the Episcopal basilica of Philippopolis was built of elements, most of which had belonged to a Roman fountain/nymphaeum. Considering the dual cultural orientation of Philippopolis, both to the West and to the East, we propose to refer to the fountain’s marble vessel as a labrum for its original use in the Roman period. Its decoration and structure are different from the examples known to us, thus suggesting that it was made-to-order. During the period of its reuse in a Christian environment, it is defined as a phiale – with regard to its sub-sequent reuse in a Christian setting as a spolium with an altered size, appearance, function and meaning.
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The church of St. John Vladimir (near Elbasan, Albania) contains a large number of carved stones from a wide lap of time. A survey of the structures and an inventory of those carved elements is in process. First results of this work are presented here. Carved elements offer several indices for the chronology of the site and for the church existed here even prior to the dedication to St. John Vladimir by Karl Thopia in 1380. Evidence goes back to the roman period.
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St. Simeon Stylites the Elder is one of the most venerated and frequently portrayed pillar saints. He is the founder of the distinctive and unusual form of monastic asceticism, and in numerous examples he is represented in an iconographic variant in which his bare leg, eaten by worms and covered with wounds, protrudes or hangs from the capital. The main focus of this research is the iconography of the version in question and its origin, including the shapes of columns, the territorial distribution, as well as the location and disposition in wall paintings, from the oldest known example belonging to the 12th century.
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The text presents several icons related to the veneration of St. Theodore Tyron on the first Saturday of the Great Lent. St. Theodore’s miracle with the koliva which is commemorated during the liturgy on that day is depicted on most of them. Some hagiographic works witnessing the connection between the saint’s veneration during Lent and the koliva miracle from as early as the 10th century on are pointed out. Despite that, the earliest known icons visualizing the miracle in question date only from the late 16th century. On the basis of the functions most of the icons had during the liturgy the study states the possible reasons having contributed to the emergence of iconographic works with that plot.
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The text presents a different view on Chiprovtsi goldsmith tradition in the light of the rich ornamental decoration of some of the preserved and signed church objects from the 17th century. The focus is on the exquisite decorative system of engraved Islamic motifs unfolded in the backgrounds of the works, as well as its specifics and place in the characteristic of the goldsmithing center.
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Although different aspects of the decoration of the reliquaries have been examined in Bulgarian art historiography, the symbolical meaning of the ornaments placed on them has remained beyond the interest of the scholars. To fill this gap, the study will attempt to demonstrate that the floral ornaments, including those that seem “merely decorative”, could have evoked meaningful associations for the believers. On the basis of some written sources, the article argues that they represent the sacredness of the objects through the visual transformation of the concept of Paradise as a beautiful garden.
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The text is dedicated to Bektashi-Hurufi scenes and letter-like compositions that visualize notions of personal and group cults. The scenes depict very particular metamorphic transformations, born of esoteric notions of the separation of the material from the spiritual or the body from the soul. The letter-like compositions are consisted of Arabic letters and represent highly specific calligraphic artifacts in which individual graphemes and/or lexemes are transformed into anthropomorphic figures. The scenes and letter-like compositions under examination were created on the basis of Sufism and its related Hurufi and Bektashi-Kizilbashi doctrines, which testifies to their great influence on the work of most Ottoman artists and calligraphers.
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Late medieval representations of St. Joseph in art as almost decrepit in the company of a young wife gave rise to mockery in the Western world. The religious meaning of the saint’s appearance was that the divine role entrusted to Joseph was that of custodian of Mary, and not a possible erotic threat to her. Based on a comparative study of iconography, I explore how an irreverent gesture of menace directed toward St. Joseph in the scene Betrothal of the Virgin can particularly be explained in the Italian art of the 14th and 15th centuries. On a larger scale, the article looks into how the Roman Catholic Church accommodated new theological meanings in order to allow younger representations of St. Joseph, and to expel any disruptive details out of art.
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The current research topic is the dissemination of Western saints throughout the Latin-controlled regions of the Greek-speaking Post-Byzantine world. The epidemics, especially of bubonic plague, which ravaged Europe from the 14th to the 18th century, served to increase the veneration of Franciscan healing saints. The starting point of this paper is an unpublished icon from a private collection in the Western Peloponnese (Greece). The icon exhibits the standard iconography of St. Anthony. No painter’s signature survived.
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The icon came in Sofia from the town of Achtopol on the South coast of the Black Sea. It is part of the collection of icons of the National Church Historical and Archaeological Museum, Sofia. The origin of the icon, its icon-painter, and its commissioner are unknown. Some details in the iconography of the saints, the religious, political, and cultural context to which it could refer, lead to the assumption that it should be executed in the 18th century and in the Ionian tradition. There is another hypothesis that it was transferred to the Achtopol during a migration of the Greek population from the Ionian Islands during the 18th or 19th centuries.
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The “Immaculate Virgin” (1865), in the Chryssopigi Monastery, Canea, painted and donated by Georgios Koutsoukakis, depicts a seated Virgin holding Christ and stepping on an inverted crescent moon and a serpent. Its indirect prototype, labeled “The Lady of the Angels”, was created by Ioannis Frangopoulos (1841), inspired by a relief on the façade of the homonymous church in Zakynthos, and by the Catholic devotional imagery of the “Immaculate Conception”. The diffusion of this peculiar iconography in Ottoman Crete since 1840’s through the painter Antonios Vevelakis (copied by Koutsoukakis), possibly indicates its re-interpretation as an anti-Ottoman symbol.
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