Peacock (eBook)

Christine E. Jackson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012 | 1. Auflage
192 Seiten
Reaktion Books (Verlag)
978-1-86189-496-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Breathtakingly beautiful and exotic, the peacock inspires devotion among both artists and bird lovers. Its iridescent plumage, when fully displayed, is a delight to behold.

The bird itself, as Christine E. Jackson notes in Peacock, appears to enjoy its audience, preening and strutting about within a few feet of humans. It is not surprising, then, that these vain birds and their distinctive feathers have been the prized possessions of kings for nearly three thousand years. Jackson here explores the peacock's beauty—and its apparent attitude—through fairy tales, fables, and superstitions in both Eastern and Western cultures. Peacock takes stock of the bird as it appears within art, from the earliest mosaics to medieval illuminated manuscripts to modern graphics, with a special emphasis on the peacock's symbolic value in the nineteenth-century arts and crafts and art nouveau movements. Jackson further details the peacock's colorful presence in hats, clothing, and even sports equipment.

A sweeping combination of social and natural history, Peacock is the first book to bring together all the shimmering, colorful facets of these magnificent birds.

---

People in most countries are familiar with the blue peacock. It is one of the very few bird species that will tolerate a person standing within a few feet of it, and appears to appreciate an audience when it unfurls its magnificent train into a 6-7-foot arc of glittering iridescent feathers. The train feathers with their eye-spots have been prized possessions for centuries.The first record of a peacock in the Middle East, taken there from its homeland in the Indus Valley, was when King Solomon imported them c. 950 BC. The story of the peacock spread westwards and its impact on different countries is both surprising and fascinating. Peacocks became the subject of fairy stories, legends, fables, myths and superstitions.Images of peacocks have appeared in mosaics, frescoes, paintings from illuminated manuscripts through to modern graphics, and in the nineteenth century they represented opulence, luxury and vibrant beauty in the artefacts created by the Arts and Crafts, the Aesthetic and the Art Nouveau movements' craftsmen in glass, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery and other materials. The feathers of peacocks have been used in head-dresses, hats and helmets, to fletch arrows and to tie artificial flies for fishermen.This is the first book to bring together all the facets of the peacock including natural and social history, its role in religions and mythology in the East and West, and its place in the history of art and artefacts.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.10.2012
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Naturführer
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• ISBN-10: 1-86189-496-1 / 1861894961
• ISBN-13: 978-1-86189-496-0 / 9781861894960