Arts of fire

2019

This paper examines the decorative motifs of the arabesque, an Islamic art form, in Vladimir Nabokov’s (1899-1977) postmodern novel Pale Fire (1962). The arabesque integrates different shapes and patterns to produce a single ornament containing symmetric, repetitive and kaleidoscopic motifs. It also produces a single continuous line that interweaves the various elements into an unbounded unified whole. The first half of the paper outlines the development of the arabesque, the geometric logic of which has been derived by Islamic scholars from Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. It discusses how the geometric concepts of the arabesque contribute to Pale Fire’s symmetric structure as well as the significance of Islamic calligraphy in Arabic aesthetics, namely in the 1001 Arabian Nights tales. As the evolution of the arabesque into literary style was adopted by Nabokov as a postmodern aesthetic, the second half of this article notes the elements of the arabesque in Pale Fire which include sy...

Two Sides of the Horizon, 2020

After a thousand years of progress, the Zoroastrian religion was declared as a national religion by Ardashir I, the founder of the Sassanid Empire. This is the first time in Iranian history that religion is affiliated with the government. Due to political stability and economic progress, the Zoroastrian religion reached its golden era with its flamboyant fireworks and numerous fire temples. Gradually, there are three Bahram fires, each of which belongs to a certain social class. The aim of this article is to define the meanings of fire in Zoroastrianism and to discuss the importance of fire among the Sassanid politics with the help of historical documents. Lastly, according to my own explorations and experiences, I will analyze historically and archaeologically three Bahram Sassanid fires in order to describe Sassanid society according to religious principles, historical events, and archaeological examples.

2004

Students and scholars of the Italian Renaissance easily fall under the spell of its achievements: its self-confident humanism, its groundbreaking scientific innovations, its ravishing artistic production. Yet many of the developments in Italian ceramics and glass were made possible by Italy's proximity to the Islamic world. The Arts of Fire underscores how central the Islamic influence was on this luxury art of the Italian Renaissance. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Getty Museum on view from May 4 to August 5, 2004, The Arts of Fire demonstrates how many of the techniques of glass and ceramic production and ornamentation were first developed in the Islamic East between the eighth and twelfth centuries. These techniques - enamel and gilding on glass and tin-glaze and lustre on ceramics - produced brilliant and colourful decoration that was a source of awe and admiration, transforming these crafts, for the first time, into works of art and true luxury commodities....

Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World, 2020

Ovens, hearths and furnaces were used by early Islamic societies for baking, cooking, and the production of various artefacts. The archaeological evidence from one research area in central Israel, from the seventh-eleventh centuries, accordingly presents a variety of fire installations. This paper offers an interpretation of their function through the analyses of terminology in contemporary texts, ethno-archaeological data, and spatial relations in the archaeological record. The paper suggests that domestic baking and cooking left almost no remains in the archaeological context. Instead, fire installations in the research area were almost exclusively related to crafts.

Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2024

"Early Modern Fire" offers new perspectives on the history of fire in early modern Europe (ca. 1600–1800). Far from the background role that scholarship has traditionally assigned to fire, the essays in this volume demonstrate its centrality to understanding the entangled histories of science, technology, and society in the pre-industrial period. Analysing case studies ranging from alchemy to cooking and from firefighting to fireworks, the contributors show that the history of fire is not only one of change and progress, but also of continuity, characterised by the persistence of traditional know-how, small-scale innovation, and the coexistence of different paradigms.

Journal of thermal analysis and …, 2001

The notion of fire/light/heat/energy is recognized as an integrating element in the pathway of ordering matter and society, and its historical aspects are thoroughly reviewed. Fire is argued to be a philosophical archetype and its role in the early concept of four elements is discussed. The Indian, Arabic and Greek historical bases are mentioned. Alchemy is briefly reviewed as a source of the wider adoption of fire. The era of renaissance and the new age are also included. The message of fire/heat is nowadays focused on the progress of civilization, with the assumption of engines as information transducers based on the conscious exploitation of fire. The role of chaos is emphasized. Overall, a condensed but consistent view is given of the various concepts that emerged during the historical progress of the understanding of heat (noting 61 references).

Indiana, 2020

For centuries, objects manufactured by Amazonian indigenous populations have been collected and distributed to European museums. These have included many understudied fire-related objects. Certain categories of artifacts produced by fire or used in fire structures, such as pottery, are subject to regular analysis, but in narratives produced from these objects fire is almost absent, a mere coadjutant. Fire, however, is not limited to a secondary role in relationships, requiring an adjustment in the investigator's gaze to tell stories about people and things through time, intertwined with the story of the fire itself. This article presents results of a study of ethnographic Amazonian artifacts housed in European museums, with fire use as an investigative guiding thread. By applying the concept of family of objects to fire-related artifacts, the study intends to demonstrate how such an approach can inspire new narratives on objects that are, despite their shared relation to fire, frequently interpreted separately. Resumo: Há séculos, objetos manufaturados por populações indígenas amazônicas vêm sendo coletados e distribuídos para museus europeus, incluindo-se muitos objetos relacio-nados ao fogo ainda pouco estudados. Certas categorias de artefatos produzidos pelo fogo ou utilizadas em estruturas de combustão são comumente sujeitas a investigações, como a cerâmica, mas nas narrativas produzidas sobre estes objetos o fogo está praticamente ausente, sendo mero coadjuvante. O fogo, entretanto, não se limita ao papel secundário nas relações, sendo necessário um ajuste no olhar do investigador para contar histórias sobre pessoas e coisas ao longo do tempo, entrelaçadas com a própria história do fogo. Este trabalho apresenta os resultados de um estudo com coleções etnográficas amazônicas abrigadas em museus europeus, tendo o uso do fogo como fio condutor. Aplicando o conceito de família de objetos aos artefatos relacionados ao fogo, o estudo pretende demonstrar como tal abor-dagem pode acender novas narrativas sobre objetos que, apesar de sua relação em comum com o fogo, são frequentemente interpretados separadamente. Palavras-chave: objetos relacionados ao fogo; família de objetos; coleções etnográficas; Amazônia.

As Paul Hills argues, Renaissance Venice was a true tinder-box. If the authority over the water element gave the Venetian Republic endless reasons to be proud of, the consequent fires happening in Venice over the centuries were at the heart of citizens’ concerns. Equally, the demiurgic power of fire was equally the source of outstanding new developments taking place in Renaissance Venice. Fire’s industrial potential continued to be harnessed spectacularly in glass furnaces at Murano. Following Sansovino’s redevelopment of Saint Mark’s Square in the 16th century, the government mint building with the system of high-temperature ovens was moved from the Rialto to the centrally located marble-encrusted siege at the Bacino San Marco. Finally, the colourful display of pyrotechnics and bonfires left the heaps of visiting pilgrims and ambassadors in awe during Venetian lascivious festivities. This paper explores the ways in which Venetian craftsmanship emulated or attempted to accommodate the complex nature of fire. In arguably the most enigmatic dream-romance to ever come out from the Venetian press, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the narrator, Poliphilo records the sight of ‘’altars with a burning fire aloft’’ upon which mystical flames ‘’to which unbridled eyes can be unarmed’’ appear. Fire or mystical creatures of the semblance of fire, run wild through the pages of this romance. The poetics of Poliphio’s account reverberates with scientific explorations of the time that dealt with the dynamism of life. The growing awareness of metabolic processes occurring in nature went hand in glow with alchemical studies on fire as an agency of creation capable of transmuting matter and breaking down elemental distinctions. I take into account three case studies which, due to the distinctiveness of materials involved in their production, illuminate respectively different qualities of the fiery substance. I begin by looking at glass casendelli, hanging glass lamps produced in the Murano factories. Later, the fantasy of fire petrified will usher us into a discussion on the iconographical programme in the Saint Mark’s Basilica. Finally, the works of Titian and Jacopo Bassano will supplement our understanding of the undying desire among the Venetian painters to suspend the flickering effects of fire in layers of paint. Stokes and Ruskin taught us that Venice has always been a bemusing theatre of material affinities. In their writings, the appearance of Venetian edifices, their rhythmical arches, veiny marble specchi and sun-reflecting brick façades were perceived as an imaginative extension of the water’s optical qualities. As much as this brief outline follows the rhetoric of Venetian Renaissance objects as depositories of particular material intertextuality, my point is to shift the debate towards sensuality that until now has been largely overlooked. In the context of Renaissance antiquarianism, theoretical divagations on the nature of fire were symptomatic of the revived interest in such classical sources as Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. Far from the binarity of combustion and exhaustion, for Pliny fire was an element of special properties. As a life force in its own right, the fire was a crucial component of a whole range of phenomena including earthquakes or rain showers. Objects discussed in this paper testify to the rise of a new pictorial language which saw fire as evocative energy capable of permuting states; constantly shifting between creation and destruction.

Journal18, 2023

Throughout the early modern period, wealth and the desire for domestic comfort shaped an intensely intertwined yet intricate set of concepts centered on the hearth. For Western Europe, scholars have investigated quite thoroughly the increasing demand for warmth and the evolution of heating systems.The situation in the Eastern Mediterranean has attracted less attention, even from specialists of the Ottoman Empire. This essay aims to explore Ottoman wall-mounted fireplaces as a building technology and an opportunity for sculptural expression in luxurious interiors. The main goal is to shed light on technical improvements as well as material and formal changes that took place between the late seventeenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a period of intense architectural renovation both in the Ottoman capital and its provinces.

Alexei Lidov. The Holy Fire and Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, East and West. Published in: Visual Constructs of Jerusalem. Eds B. Kuhnel, G. Noga-Banai, H. Vorholt. Turnhout, Belgium: BREPOLS Publishers, 2014, p. 241-249. , 2014

In this paper I address the phenomenon of the Holy Fire and the hierotopical and art historical aspects of this great miracle of the Christian world. According to the belief of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Fire descends every Great Saturday of Easter upon the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It seems very significant that the Holy Fire was perceived as a kind of the most important relic, which could be preserved and transferred from Jerusalem to any other place. I will argue that there is a possibility to reconstruct the ritual, spatial and artistic environment, which came to being in conjunction with the Paschal miracle of the Holy Fire. Some particular rites are discussed: "Lo Scoppio del Carro" in Medieval Florence, ''les lanternes des morts" in France, Italy, Spain. As I have argued elsewhere, it was the cupola of the kouvouklion over the Holy Sepulchre that pre-destined the appearance of the onion-shaped domes A number of other sources, testifying to the influence of the Holy Fire are also discussed in the paper. All of them make it clear that the Miracle of the Holy Fire was a powerful, though nowadays underestimated, paradigm of the Christian visual culture, which exercised its influence on both iconographic devices and concepts of particular sacred spaces that played a crucial role in translations of New Jerusalems.