Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-251) and index.
Contents:
Understanding antiques -- An antique's story : the Nef -- A definition of the antique -- An archeology of antiques : a history of antique collecting and connoisseurship -- Collecting and connoisseurship in the Greco-Roman world -- The Chinese analogue -- Medieval survival -- Renaissance -- The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- Revolutions Romantic and industrial : the nineteenth century -- The American century -- Archeological conclucions -- The ten criteria of antiques -- Antiques and civilization.
Summary:
"In Antiques: The History of an Idea, Leon Rosenstein, a distinguished philosopher who has also been an antiques dealer for more than twenty years, offers a sweeping and lively account of the origin and development of the antique as both a cultural concept and an aesthetic category. He shows that the appeal of antiques is multifaceted: it concerns their value as commodities, their age and historical and cultural associations, their uniqueness, their sensuous and tactile values, their beauty."--BOOK JACKET.
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