At the end of their first year, our PhD students in Art History have to do a presentation in front of the whole faculty, and then answer questions. It's meant to involve a close reading of a particular art object/image - together with an abstract, an annotated bibliography, and so on. At best, it's like a min-conference - and it's always great to hear where students' interests and passions lie. But not everyone brings in items for show and tell from inter-library loan ... in this case, a completely compelling advertising/how-to manual from Yale Silk Works. Though the (fascinating) talk was about late C19th American crazy quilting, this particular YSW publication was all about how to make paper flowers. That is, it gave very elaborate instructions about how to cut and arrange tissue paper petals and leaves - beautifully ignoring the fact that it was also advertising the fact that one could buy kits of exactly these materials, ready-cut ...
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