The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art

The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date information on all aspects of this fundamental area of the visual arts. In a convenient one-volume format, this encyclopedia provides fascinating historical and current uses of materials and techniques in a wide range of areas from painting and sculpture to non-traditional media such as digital and video art. Combining scholarly rigor with lively, clear writing this book is an accessible and indispensable resource for anyone who studies, creates, collects, or deals in works of art.
Coverage includes materials in art practice (e.g. ink, enamel, digital materials); materials in conservation (e.g. adhesives); classes of artifacts (e.g. wallpaper, mosaic, ceramic); techniques and methods (e.g. book binding, gilding, printing, weaving), terms (e.g. rustication), tools (e.g. easel, laser), theory (e.g. technical examination, conservation controversies), fakes & forgeries, and conservation theorists and practitioners.

Gerald W. R. Ward is the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He holds degrees from Harvard University and Boston University and formerly served as a curator at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. He has curated numerous exhibitions and published widely on American art, furniture, and decorative arts. He has also taught at Boston University and the University of Delaware.