| The Mirror: A History |
[Aug. 13th, 2008|08:15 am] |
 The Mirror: A History by Sabine Melchior-Bonnet is really a great read, one of those books that goes on my Breakfast of Champions for Fantasy Writers list. It's teeming with ideas and images and amazing bits of history. It starts out by describing what it was like to live in a world without mirrors, a household item we all take for granted these days. Then it goes into the history of how the art of mirror making was developed over the centuries and focusing in on when things really took off in the 1500's when Venice and France offered state sponsorship to glass makers. The Venetians were the best at this time, but mirrors were still small and not very clear. There was all kinds of industrial espionage going on between the two countries, and France finally stole some of Venice's best mirror makers away. With the government subsidized mirror works the end result was eventually The Palace of Versaille and its famous Hall of Mirrors. This is just a small part of the book, which goes on to talk about how the mirror changed society, art, literature. There's a great segment where the writer shows how the philosophy of the reflected image, because there were whole philosophies concerning reality and illusion linked to the mirror going all the way back to Socrates, informed the work of the artist Albrecht Durer -- fascinating. You can't go wrong with this book.
Here's what Booklist had to say about it:
Imagine life without mirrors. It wasn't long ago that only the wealthy could check their appearances, Melchoir-Bonnet explains in this brisk, surprising, and enjoyable history. She describes the small and precious polished stone and metal mirrors of antiquity and the crafting of the first sizable glass mirrors in sixteenth-century Venice, where a mirror cost nearly three times as much as a painting by Raphael. Mirrors quickly became all the rage among European nobility, and Melchoir-Bonnet relates some amazing tales of industrial espionage and skullduggery associated with France's effort to establish its own mirror-making factories to meet the decadent demands of Louis XIV. Melchoir-Bonnet also explores the profound symbolism associated with the looking glass in a richly metaphorical inquiry that illuminates the realms of religion, magic, philosophy, literature, art, and science. Socrates encouraged people to learn from what they saw in the mirror; the church warned against vanity and lasciviousness; while writers and artists celebrated beauty even as they pondered the pitfalls of illusion and the valuing of image over substance. |
|
|
| Comments: |
Oooo, interesting. Thanks for the heads up.
temporous: If you get to it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Added to my Amazon wishlist so that I can remember to look it up again later. :)
...that sounds fascinating. Thank you. :)
*bookmarks*
Hope you like it if you check it out.
Sounds like a fascinating book...a nonfiction book that even I might be able to get through.
I think you might like it.
Jeff, any other books come to mind for Breakfast of Champions for Fantasy Writers list? Thanks.
sbenenati: Good idea for a post. Check the ditch later or early tomorrow. Thanks!
Sounds like interesting stuff, Jeff. Thanks for the tip. I must say, I was heartened to read Ellen's comment and see I'm not the only one who has a *really* hard time getting through just about any non-fiction book.
Nick: Check your e-mail. Seeing your post reminded me that I was supposed to read your story, which I've done. I like the non-fiction basically just to take in information my imagination can churn into fiction.
There;s a piece-of-crap movie that plays with this stuff (natch, it's the remake of a J-Horror film) opening tomorrow called Mirrors. The original, though not a great film by any means, played with the reality/illusion stuff more than, probably, does the remake.
Lucius: Too bad. I just went and looked it up. It has Queefer Sutherland in it. An automatic by-pass.
yeah, it's gonna be crap, scary crap, cause the director is Aja, who did Haute Tension...but crap no less. If I can recall the name of the originaj, I'll pass it along FWIW... | |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
14theditch's journal
