User:Johnbod/Ice Age art

Old contents moved to Wikipedia:GLAM/BM/Ice Age art - you may be looking for that.

The Early Anglo-Saxons on Wikipedia: an Assessment - Response draft

The Early Anglo-Saxons on Wikipedia: an Assessment

Thanks very much for taking the trouble to investigate this & write it up. Most of what you say is of course true, although in several places our own linking and organization has let us down, and not led you to better content - I have tried to improve some key failures, but I'm sure plenty remain. I'm sure you've realized some of the key points about the way Wikipedia gets written:

• There is no editorial board, or anything much like it
• People write what they feel like writing; conscious gap-filling is very hit-and-miss, and often article placing and linking is not thought through.
• If no editors happen to be interested in a subject, very little gets written

I hadn't seen either Anglo-Saxon archaeology or Coinage in Anglo-Saxon England before, but both are pretty useless, even at linking to our other content. The coinage page didn't have as much as links to the long History of the English penny (c. 600 – 1066) or Sceat, really the main articles on this subject. These were linked via the categories at the bottom of the page, in this case Category:Anglo-Saxon money. These categories (they function like subject tags) are really the best way to explore what content there is, though they also often don't contain everything they should (as the AS burial one did not).

The same is probably true for the articles on sites, cemeteries and burials. Hidden in Category:Anglo-Saxon sites in England may be all sorts of other stuff - the shortish Spong Hill for example was not in the oddly-named Category:Anglo-Saxon burial practices, though it was linked in the burial article.

I have written on a number of AS topics mainly concerned with art history, including most, nearly all I think, of Anglo-Saxon art. I'm sorry there isn't more on the 5th & 6th centuries, but to some extent this I think reflects the sources used (Wilson etc - I have got the new Webster since writing it, but not used it much). I admit I find the early brooches confusing & less compelling than later stuff - I did also do Penannular brooch, but that doesn't have much AS relevance. I'm afraid jewellery of any period tends to be very poorly covered on WP. I found we have Harford Farm Brooch (short) & have mentioned that, & I hope to add more some time, or of course anyone else can. We also have Forsbrook Pendant, though with no image. I'm glad you liked the rest of the article.

I was a bit puzzled by "Admittedly, I find it slightly odd that Sutton Hoo, the Staffordshire Hoard and the Canterbury-St Martin's hoard are all subsumed under this category, as their significance is far wider than art." How "subsumed"? They are all mentioned in the art article, but have their own articles, the first two quite long; Sutton Hoo is in 13 categories altogether, if that's what you meant by "category". Sutton Hoo is one of the few AS articles we have mainly written by a proper archaeologist, and despite some additions rather long on the excavation history and short on the art history to my mind (or taste). Of course the great majority of the articles we have on AS art or artefacts are on manuscripts - 42 articles on Insular MS, plus others, and our coverage of art & artefacts naturally concentrates on the big showy and well-preserved pieces, just as most general books and museum presentation also do, tending to neglect the more typical bones, sherds and bits of broken brooches. But you don't need me to tell you that.

Coverage of other AS angles you mentioned is really just rather random: Anglo-Saxon glass is one of a series I think done by a class of glass archaeology students (Goldsmith's was it?), all very strong on the technical side - see Sassanian glass for another example. We just haven't had anyone very interested in developing Anglo-Saxon architecture, though the nearly 50 individual buildings in Category:Standing Anglo-Saxon churches are generally well-covered, and other articles in the category like Anglo-Saxon turriform churches. Anything to do with Anglo-Saxon runes is very well-covered, as far as the runes are concerned - see Category:Anglo-Saxon runes. I'm rather surprized we don't seem to more on AS warfare & weapons than Bamburgh Sword & a few helmets, plus generally Anglo-Saxon military organization and Anglo-Saxon warfare - usually "Milhist" is a strong area. Did you check out Category:Anglo-Saxon studies scholars, 85 strong? I couldn't see "– Leeds, Myres, Hawkes, Evison" there, but "etc" might be. In general, WP coverage of everything is long on articles on discrete subjects, whether people, places, events or objects, and much shorter on topical articles - the reverse of the traditional encyclopedic formula of course, but there we are. As you rightly say "The problem here is clearly not with the people that have contributed, but with the people that haven’t".

Old stuff

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Kano Kazunobu (1816-1863) was a Japanese artist best known for his series of 100 large scroll paintings of the "500 Arhats" or disciples of the Buddha, which occupied him from 1854 until his death. These were commissioned for the Zōjō-ji temple in Tokyo, who still own them, and regularly exhibited at the temple until it was largely destroyed in 1945. The paintings were then hardly seen until exhibitions in Tokyo in 2011 and Washington D.C. in 2012.

Life

Relatively little detail is known of Kazunobu's life. He was born in Edo (modern Tokyo) in 1816. Kanō school

References

• Smithsonian, Sackler Gallery. Online exhibition Masters of Mercy

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Muhammad - Draft of agreed statement for RFC

1. No images of Muhammad are known to exist from his lifetime or shortly after it.
2. The earliest images that do exist of Muhammad do not show very consistent or distinct features.
3. Islamic images showing Muhammad first survive from the mid-13th century.
4. Islamic images of Muhammad are limited in their geographical origin, coming from Persia, Central Asia and areas inhabited by Turks; they are much less common in Arabic-speaking areas.
5. Calligraphic renderings of the name of Muhammad are more common and more widespread geographically
6. Medieval Islamic images of Muhammad are narrative images, usually showing a number of figures, that depict specific incidents in his life, often to illustrate biographical accounts of his life.
7. In the 15th century, Islamic artists began to show Muhammad with a blank or "veiled" face, as an artistic convention to avoid representing his features. From the start of the 16th century, this became for a time the most common representation in Persia, and common in Ottoman Turkey.
8. Contemporary Islamic images of Muhammad include both "veiled" and unveiled types.
9. Sometimes Muhammad is shown entirely as a flame, extending a convention of showing him with a flaming halo.
10. When printing became common in Islamic countries, images of Muhammad began to be printed.
11. Although in modern times images of Muhammad are mostly found in Shia contexts, this was not always the case.
12. Muhammad currently has 6 figurative depictions of Muhammad, 5 Islamic and 1 Western.
13. All the Islamic ones show specific incidents and are placed in the article to be near the relevant incident in the text.
14. The dates of the Islamic images range from c. 1307 to 1808, the Western image is mid-19th century.
15. Of the Islamic images, three show his face, one is "veiled", and one uses the flame convention.
16. The images are placed starting several screens into the article; the infobox uses a calligraphic treatment of his name.