Avid Amelioration

I see you''re lost too. Let's wait for the bus together.

123,200 notes

nearly-headless-horseman:

totalnerd666:

her-my-oh-ne:

#can we just stop and appreciate Harry’s face in this scene? #I mean, he’s literally waiting for someone to say something about Hermione’s blood status #she’s the only Muggleborn in the slug club full of purebloods and well known people #and Harry’s there just like “say something I dare you” #and if you look at her face, you can see the actual hesitation and somewhat fear of what will happen next after telling of her parents occupation #Harry truly is acting like Hermione’s big brother, which I absolutely love #i just adore this scene

I love that Neville looks genuinely interested in what hermione’s talking about.

Harry: I wish a motherfucka would talk shit right now
Say something, make my day
Das right

(Source: pottergifs, via yamino)

87 notes

gdfalksen:

I have never cosplayed before, but I keep getting messages and emails  telling me that I “must cosplay” this character from the latest Bioshock game. The thing I find amusing about this is that I must wonder: would it really be cosplaying if I already have pretty much all the makings of that outfit in my closet from things that I wear normally?

534 notes

art-of-swords:

The Decoration of Arms and Armour

  • by Dirk H. Breiding (Department of Arms and armour, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

With few exceptions, arms and armour of virtually all periods and from all the world’s cultures were decorated to varying degrees. The desire to embellish objects of everyday and special use was naturally extended to those that served such important purposes as obtaining food, self-defense, and maintaining power.

Most cultures valued weapons and armour as signs of rank and status, as traditional symbols of the warrior class, and as diplomatic gifts. However, it was the use and function of the individual weapon or armour that determined why, how, and to what extent an object was decorated.

While the equipment of the common man-at-arms was often plain or the decoration kept to a minimum, it was the arms and armour of the higher levels of society - nobility, military commanders, and elite warriors - that would conspicuously be adorned with costly decoration. In times when wealth equalled power, this degree of decoration was as much an expression of the wearer’s status and rank as it was indicative of the value placed on such arms and armour by the owner. However, on arms and armour for practical use, on the battlefield or for hunting, care was taken that the decoration did not impede function.

Only the equipment and accoutrements for tournaments and especially for ceremonial use were sometimes so lavishly decorated that the importance of the decoration began to supercede the function of the actual object. A somewhat different variety is the symbolic decoration that was meant to empower both the object and its owner with magical and apotropaic qualities, to justify claims to power or to denote religious beliefs, education, and sophistication. 

In the Museum’s collection of arms and armour, the diversity of decoration of earlier periods and various cultures is represented with such outstanding examples as a Mesopotamian gold and silver axhead of the late third to early second millennium B.C., and a presentation model of a Colt Percussion revolver (1995.336) of the mid-nineteenth century with elegant gold inlay. 

Some of the foremost artists of their time - painters, draftsmen, and goldsmiths - were actively engaged in designing arms, armour, and their decoration, or decorating the objects themselves. Cennino Cennini’s famous handbook on artistic techniques, Il libro dell’arte, written around 1400, describes how to make crests for helmets used in tournaments.

Many court painters appear to have also been involved in the embellishment and painting of banners and shields. Artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, and Hans Holbein drew elaborate designs for cannons, sword hilts, scabbards, armour, and etched decoration of various parts of armour, while field and tournament armours were etched with designs of exquisite quality by printmakers like Daniel Hopfer.

Since the sixteenth century, famous goldsmiths and silversmiths such as Bartolomeo Campi, Étienne Delaune, or Elisaeus Libaerts became involved in the designing and decorating - even the production - of armour, sword hilts, and firearms. Decoration itself could take many forms. The simplest was the addition of separate decorative and/or symbolical elements to an otherwise strictly functional object or group of objects, for example, the crests on helmets of the European knight and Japanese samurai.

More sophisticated decoration involved the mechanical alteration of an object’s shape, form, and surface, or adorning the latter in a variety of artistic techniques and styles with additional materials such as paint, semi-precious and precious metals and stones, textiles, and fur. In many cases, various materials and different artistic techniques might be combined to decorate one object or group of objects.

Pictures:

  1. Yatagan, circa 1525-30; made by the Workshop of Ahmed Tekelü, Turkey (Istanbul)
  2. Dagger with jeweled hilt, Mughal period, circa 1605-27, Northern India
  3. Smallsword with scabbard, hallmarked for 1773-74, Master GG (active Paris, circa 1744), France (Paris)
  4. Morion, circa 1560-65, Germany (Brunswick)

Source: © 2000–2013 The Metropolitan Museum of Art