Interpretive Dictionary of Exotic Materials

This publication is a clear guide to the most important exotic materials used in the craft of art, where each entry forms a comprehensive set of information about the origin, nature, occurrence and use of the material, often also pointing out the most interesting artifacts of artistic craftsmanship in history, and if they survive, and their present location. The text contains a lot of new information that has not been published in the Czech Republic before, and in a number of entries it revises erroneous and professionally outdated conclusions from older publications. It also lists old Czech, slang or commonly used foreign names of materials, which immediately identify a particular material. A number of entries also describe simple tests to recognize the authenticity of the material and warn of imitations. The book also contains a short essay on the topic of exotic materials in the history of arts and crafts from the point of view of collecting and historical phenomena by Doc. PhDr. Jiří Dvorský, art historian and forensic expert. The dictionary is supplemented by a rich pictorial appendix.