Francis Cheetham's classic survey of English medieval alabasters includes a richly illustrated catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum's unparalleled collection. English alabasters represent a unique contribution to medieval art. Less sophisticated, perhaps, than other contemporary forms of religious art, they were a neglected area of study until this volume was first published in 1984. Stories from the New Testament and The Golden Legend were the most favoured subjects, and the numerous examples that survive in churches and museums throughout Europe attest to their wide and enduring appeal. FrancisCheetham examines here all aspects of their production and demonstrates how the panels and altarpieces can aid our understanding of life and devotional practice in medieval times. At the heart of this fascinating study is arichly illustrated catalogue of the 260 examples in the collection of London's Victoria and Albert Museum: a collection "so comprehensive that it would be possible to write a survey of the subject almost without recourse to pieces elsewhere," as Sir Roy Strong notes in his Foreword. Their division into subject categories is an invaluable aid to identification and classification. The late Francis Cheetham was an acknowledged expert on medieval English alabasters, and this reissue of his classic work will be welcomed by historians, art historians, collectors and dealers alike, taking its place alongside his Alabaster Images of Medieval England which was published by the Boydell Press in 2003.

This volume offers fresh approaches to both the material and the subject matter of late medieval English alabaster sculptures, bringing them into dialogue with twenty-first-century scholarship on pre-modern visual culture. Devotional alabaster images, too often thought of as "folk art" and narrowly English, were avidly collected and appreciated throughout Europe in the late Middle Ages, and this collection of essays seeks to help integrate them into the current discourse on materiality, the role of seriality in the changing modes of artistic production of the late Middle Ages, and the broad debate about whether it is useful to draw distinctions between elite/high and folk/low culture.

New interpretations of an art form ubiquitious in the Middle Ages. English alabasters played a seminal role in the artistic development of late medieval and early modern Europe. Carvings made of this lustrous white stone were sold throughout England and abroad, and as a result many survived the iconoclasm that destroyed so much else from this period. They are a unique and valuable witness to the material culture of the Middle Ages. This volume incorporates a variety of new approaches to these artefacts, employing methodologies drawn from a number of different disciplines. Its chapters explore a range of key points connected to alabasters: their origins, their general history and their social, cultural, intellectual and devotional contexts. ZULEIKA MURAT is a Research Fellow and Lecturer in the History of Medieval Art at the University of Padua. Contributors: Jennifer Alexander, Jon Bayliss, Claire Blakey, Stephanie De Roemer, Rachel King, AndrewKirkman, Aleksandra Lipinska, Zuleika Murat, Luca Palozzi, Sophie Phillips, Nigel Ramsay, Christina Welch, Philip Weller, Kim Woods, Michaela Zöschg

While marble is associated with Renaissance Italy, alabaster was the material commonly used elsewhere in Europe and has its own properties, traditions and meanings. It enjoyed particular popularity as a sculptural material during the two centuries 1330-1530, when alabaster sculpture was produced both for indigenous consumption and for export. Focussing especially on England, the Burgundian Netherlands and Spain, three territories closely linked through trade routes, diplomacy and cultural exchange, this book explores and compares the material practice and visual culture of alabaster sculpture in late medieval Europe. Cut in Alabaster charts sculpture from quarry to contexts of use, exploring practitioners, markets and functions as well as issues of consumption, display and material meanings. It provides detailed examination of tombs, altarpieces and both elite and popular sculpture, ranging from high status bespoke commissions to small, low-cost carvings produced commercially for a more popular clientele.

English Medieval Industries is an authoritative modern survey of medieval crafts and their products. It is heavily illustrated by pictures of surviving objects and contemporary representations of medieval work. Each industry is approached by material (amongst others stone, tin, lead, copper, iron, brick, glass, leather, bone and wood), discussing its acquisition, working and sale as a finished product. The contributors are the leading experts in their fields. They describe the specialist work that went to make the housing, clothing, tools, vessels and ornaments of medieval people. A general bibliography provides a valuable reference tool.