Piatra Neamţ - d.

12 martie 1966, Paris) a fost un pictor suprarealist evreu, originar din

România.

Fiu al unui fabricant de cherestea din Piatra Neamţ şi frate al folcloristului Harry
Brauner, respectiv cumnat (târziu) al folcloristei şi artistei plastice Lena Constante, Victor
Brauner urmează şcoala primară la Viena, unde familia se stabileşte pentru câţiva ani.
După revenirea familiei sale în ţară, în 1914, Victor îşi continuă studiile la Şcoala
evanghelică din Brăila; în această perioadă începe să-l pasioneze zoologia.

Frecventează Şcoala de Arte Frumoase din Bucureşti (1919 - 1921) şi şcoala particulară
de pictură a lui H. Igiroşeanu. Vizitează oraşele Fălticeni şi Balcic, şi începe să picteze
peisaje "cezanniene". Apoi, după propria-i mărturisire, trece prin toate fazele: "dadaiste,
abstracţioniste, expresioniste". În 1924, la 26 septembrie, are loc prima sa expoziţie
personală, la Bucureşti, la "Galeriile Mozart". În această perioadă îl întâlneşte pe poetul
Ilarie Voronca, cu care va înfiinţa revista "75HP", în care Victor Brauner publică
manifestul "Pictopoezia" şi un articol "Supra-raţionalismul". Pictează şi expune "Cristos
la Cabaret" (în maniera pictorului Georg Grosz) şi "Fata din fabrică" (în maniera lui
Holder). Participă la expoziţia "Contimporanul" (noiembrie 1924). În 1925 face primul
voiaj la Paris, de unde se întoarce în ţară, la Bucureşti în 1927.

În perioada 1928 - 1931 colaborează la revista "Unu", revistă de avangardă, cu concepţii

dadaiste şi suprarealiste, în care publică reproduceri după majoritatea tablourilor şi
desenelor sale: "desene limpezi şi portrete făcute de Victor Brauner prietenilor săi, poeţi
şi scriitori"

În 1930 se instalează la Paris, unde îl întâlneşte pe Brâncuşi, care-l iniţiază în arta

fotografică. Tot în această perioadă se împrieteneşte cu poetul român Benjamin Fondane
şi îl întâlneşte pe Yves Tanguy, care-l va introduce mai târziu în cercul suprarealiştilor.
Locuieşte pe strada Moulin Vert, în acelaşi imobil cu Giacometti şi Tanguy. În acest an
pictează "Autoportretul cu ochiul scos", temă premonitorie.

În 1933 are loc prima expoziţie personală la Paris, la "Gallerie Pierre", prezentată de
André Breton. Sunt expuse o serie de tablouri în care tema ochiului e mereu prezentă:
"Puterea de concentrare a domnului K" şi "Straniul caz al domnului K" sunt tablouri pe
care André Breton le compară cu piesa "Ubu Roi" a lui Alfred Jarry, "o imensă satiră
caricaturală a burgheziei."

Victor Brauner participă la toate expoziţiile suprarealiste.

În 1935 revine în ţară, la Bucureşti. Se încadrează aici în rândurile Partidului Comunist[1]

pentru scurtă vreme şi fără o înregimentare expresă. La 7 aprilie 1935 are loc vernisajul
unei expoziţii personale, în sala Mozart. Despre aceasta, Saşa Pană, în romanul
autobiografic "Născut în 02" scrie: "7 aprilie 1935... Expoziţie de factură suprearealistă".
Catalogul prezintă 16 picturi cu un vers, cu o imagine suprararealistă, delicioase prin
insolitul lor, poate creaţii ale unui dicteu automat şi, precis, fără nici o referire la pânza
respectivă. Sunt redactate în franceză. Savoarea lor se păstrează şi în româneasca lor
transpunere. Expoziţia a prilejuit apariţia în ziare şi reviste a numeroase, interesante
articole critice şi luări de atitudine cu privire la suprarealismul în arte şi literaturtă.

Alte aprecieri despre participările lui Brauner la expoziţii suprarealiste: Acest curent cu
toata aparenţa sa de formulă absurdă... este un punct de tranziţie spre arta care vine. (D.
Trost, în "Rampa" din 14 aprilie 1935). În "Cuvântul Liber" din 20 aprilie 1935, în
articolul "Expoziţia lui Victor Brauner", Miron Radu Paraschivescu scria: "Faţă - de
exemplu - de ceea ce putem vedea în sălile de expoziţie vecină lui Victor Brauner, pictura
acestuia însemnează integrare, atitudine care, în măsura artisticului este socială. Fiindcă
V. Brauner ia atitudine prin însăşi factura şi ideologia plasticii lui."

În ziua de 27 aprilie, creează ilustraţiile pentru culegerea de poeme a poetului Gellu

Naum "Drumeţul incendiar" şi "Libertatea de a dormi pe frunte". În 1938 se întoarce în
Franţa. La 28 august, pierde ochiul stâng într-o dispută violentă care a avut loc între
Dominquez şi Esteban Frances. Victor Brauner, încercând să îl apere pe Esteban, a fost
lovit cu un pahar aruncat la Dominquez: premoniţia s-a adeverit. Episodul îl inspiră pe
scriitorul argentinian Ernesto Sabato care îl foloseşte în romanul său "Despre eroi şi
morminte".

În acelaşi an întâlneşte pe Jaqueline Abraham care-i va deveni soţie. Creează o serie de

picturi numite "lycantrope" sau uneori "chimere". În 1940 părăseşte Parisul însoţit de
Pierre Malbille. Locuieşte câtva timp la Perpignan, la Robert Rius, apoi la Cant-Blage (în
Pirineii Orientali) şi la Saint-Felin d'Amont, unde are domiciliu obligatoriu, dar păstrează
legăturile cu suprarealiştii refugiaţi la Marsilia.

În 1941 obţine permisiunea de a locui în Marsilia. Grav bolnav, este internat în clinica
"Paradis".

Pictează "Preludiu la o civilizaţie" (aflată în colecţia Gelman). După război, ia parte la

bienala din Veneţia; călătoreşte în Italia. În 1959 se instalează în atelierul din strada
Lepic. În 1961 călătoreşte în Italia. Se instalează la Varangéville unde lucrează în cea mai
mare parte a timpului.

În 1965 creează un ansamblu de tablouri-obiecte pline de inventivitate şi vioiciune,

regrupate sub titlurile "Mythologie". şi "Fêtes des mythes". Mitologia lumii moderne,
unde omul este infăţişat cu umor, tandreţe şi pesimism totodată, înstrăinat de noile sale
"mame" care sunt "L'automoma" şi "L'aeroplapa". Critica sau acceptarea acestei lumi,
altădată "atât de înspăimântătoare" şi în care "realitatea devenea un lucru teribil de
vătămător", dar pe care viaţa a făcut-o mai acceptabilă. Nu se va nega că aceste tablouri,
pictate la Varangéville, în 1964 la Athanor, unde Victor Brauner s-a retras, sunt viziunile
pline de umor şi de fantezie a lumii viitorului, pe care voia să ni le lase, ca un dar
(sărbătoare) pe care ni-l oferă ea acum. În această Mitologie se află şi ultimul tablou
prevestitor "La fin et le debut" (realizat în 1965) care aminteşte că "dacă viaţa pictorului
s-a sfârşit, opera lui însă începe să trăiască" (Dominique Bozo, în "La petit journal des
grandes Expositions" - "Victor Brauner" - au Musée National de l'Art moderne - Paris du
2 juin au 28 septembre 1977").

În 1966 este ales pentru a reprezenta Franţa la Bienala din Veneţia, unde o sală întreagă îi
este consacrată. La 12 martie 1966, Victor Brauner moare la Paris, în urma unei boli
îndelungate. Mormântul sau, aflat în cimitirul Montmartre, are ca epitaf o frază extrasă
din Carnetele sale: "Peindre, c'est la vie, la vraie vie, ma vie".

Carnetele pictorului cu însemnări personale, pe care acesta le-a dat lui Max Pol Fouchet,
conţin în parte "cheia" creaţiei sale: "Fiecare tablou pe care-l fac este proiectat din cele
mai adânci izvoare ale neliniştei mele...".

Victor Brauner - Autoportret, 1923

Victor Brauner,Viaţa interioară,1939,Museum of Modern Art,New York

Victor Brauner- Téléventre
Victor Brauner- 1947,Suprarealistul,Foundation Peggy Guggenheim,Venetia

Hematitul (din limba greacă αίμα(haima) = sânge, datorită culorii roşii a unei
varietăţi ale sale) este forma minerală a oxidului feric, Fe2O3 (III). El cristalizează în
sistemul romboedric şi are aceeaşi structură cristalină ca ilmenitul sau corindonul.
Culoarea sa poate să varieze, de la negru la gri-argintiu, de la maroniu la roşiatic sau
chiar roşu. Este unul dintre cele mai importante minereuri de fier, fiind întâlnit de obicei
în formaţiunile feroase în benzi. Hematitul lustruit a fost considerat ca piatră preţioasă şi
utilizat pentru realizarea de ornamente, mai ales în Epoca Victoriană. De asemenea, se
utilizează pentru fabricarea de pigmenţi, în industria vopselelor.

Identificarea pe planeta Marte a unor zone bogate în hematit gri, minereu de bază al
fierului, a dus la întărirea ipotezei că în trecut pe planetă exista apă în stare liberă.
The Universe as a Hologram
Author unknown
Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm?

In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by
physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important
experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact,
unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even
heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the
face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such
as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the
distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles
apart.
Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with
this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel
faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount
to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to
come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others
to offer even more radical explanations.

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University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings
imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is
at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little
about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a
laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a
laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the
resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured
on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark
lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-
dimensional image of the original object appears. The three-dimensionality of such
images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is
cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the
entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film
will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike
normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by
the whole. The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely
new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western
science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical
phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

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A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this
approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get
the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes. This insight suggested to
Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason
subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the
distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal
back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some
deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually
extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following
illustration.
Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the
aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two
television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.
As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the
screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles,
each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish,
you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When
one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one
faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full
scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously
communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

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This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in
Aspect's experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection
between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we
are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the
aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from
one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity
that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And
since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself
a projection, a hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling
features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a
deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected. The
electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles
that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that
shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature
may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the
universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a
seamless web.

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as

fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which
nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the
images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of
this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past,
present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it
might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and
pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past. What else the superhologram contains is
an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is
the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains
every subatomic particle that has been or will be -- every configuration of matter and
energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It
must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of "All That Is."

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Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in
the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not
contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a "mere
stage" beyond which lies "an infinity of further development". Bohm is not the only
researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working
independently in the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram
has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.

Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories
are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being
confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain.

In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that
no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory
of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was
that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious "whole
in every part" nature of memory storage. Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the
concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had
been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small
groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in
the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece
of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is
itself a hologram. Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many
memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to
memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average
human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms
possess an astounding capacity for information storage--simply by changing the angle at
which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many
different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter
of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information. Our uncanny ability to quickly
retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories
becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles.
If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you
do not have to clumsily sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to
arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped", "horselike", and "animal native to
Africa" all pop into your head instantly. Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the
human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross-
correlated with every other piece of information--another feature intrinsic to the
hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every
other portion, it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

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The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more
tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is
able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies,
sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and
decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram
functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless
blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a
lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives
through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions. An impressive body of
evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations.
Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists.

Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model

into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the
source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one
ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability. Zucarelli has
also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to
reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism.

Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality by relying on
input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support. It
has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies
than was previously suspected. Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual
systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent on
what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are
sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the
holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up
into conventional perceptions. But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's
holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's
theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there"
is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only
selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into
sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality?

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Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the
material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings
moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.
We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we
extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many
extracted out of the superhologram. This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of
Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and
although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A
small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of
reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some
mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the
paranormal as a part of nature.

Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-
psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the holographic
paradigm. In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the
greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the
accessing of the holographic level. It is obviously much easier to understand how
information can travel from the mind of individual 'A' to that of individual 'B' at a far
distance point and helps to understand a number of unsolved puzzles in psychology. In
particular, Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of
the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of
consciousness.

In the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a psychotherapeutic
tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the
identity of a female of a species of prehistoric reptile. During the course of her
hallucination, she not only gave a richly detailed description of what it felt like to be
encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species's anatomy
was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head. What was startling to Grof was that
although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation with a
zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles colored areas on the head do
indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal. The woman's experience was
not unique. During the course of his research, Grof encountered examples of patients
regressing and identifying with virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research
findings which helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States).
Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details
which turned out to be accurate. Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only
puzzling psychological phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared
to tap into some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no
education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary practices and
scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience, individuals gave
persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of the future, of
regressions into apparent past-life incarnations.

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In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy
sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the common element in such
experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual's consciousness beyond the
usual boundaries of ego and/or limitations of space and time, Grof called such
manifestations "transpersonal experiences", and in the late '60s he helped found a branch
of psychology called "transpersonal psychology" devoted entirely to their study. Although
Grof's newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a rapidly
growing group of like-minded professionals and has become a respected branch of
psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able to offer a
mechanism for explaining the bizarre psychological phenomena they were witnessing.
But that has changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm. As Grof recently
noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth that is connected not only to
every other mind that exists or has existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the
vastness of space and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays into
the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.

The holographic prardigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology.
Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed out that if the
concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the
brain produces consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of
the brain -- as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret as physical.
Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers to point
out that medicine and our understanding of the healing process could also be transformed
by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is but a
holographic projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more
responsible for our health than current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as
miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which
in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body.

Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work so well
because in the holographic domain of thought images are ultimately as real as "reality".
Even visions and experiences involving "non-ordinary" reality become explainable under
the holographic paradigm. In his book "Gifts of Unknown Things," biologist Lyall
Watson discribes his encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a
ritual dance, was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air.
Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to watch the woman,
she caused the trees to reappear, then "click" off again and on again several times in
succession. Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such
events, experiences like this become more tenable if "hard" reality is only a holographic
projection. Perhaps we agree on what is "there" or "not there" because what we call
consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious at
which all minds are infinitely interconnected.

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If this is true, it is the most profound implication of the holographic paradigm of all, for it
means that experiences such as Watson's are not commonplace only because we have not
programmed our minds with the beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic
universe there are no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality. What
we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any picture we
want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with the power of the mind to the
phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda during his encounters with the Yaqui
brujo don Juan, for magic is our birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to
compute the reality we want when we are in our dreams. Indeed, even our most
fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as
Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on
holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful
coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a
metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry.
Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or dies
an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that it has already had an
influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if it is found that the holographic
model does not provide the best explanation for the instantaneous communications that
seem to be passing back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted
by Basil Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London, Aspect's findings "indicate that
we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality".

Holographic Universe: Discovery Could

Herald New Era In Fundamental
Physics
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2009) — Cardiff University researchers, who are part of a British-
German team searching the depths of space to study gravitational waves, may have
stumbled on one of the most important discoveries in physics, according to an American
physicist.

See also:
Space & Time
 Black Holes
 Astrophysics
 Space Telescopes

Matter & Energy

 Quantum Physics
 Albert Einstein
 Physics

Reference
 Mechanics
 Gravitational wave
  Astrophysics
 Introduction to general relativity

Craig Hogan, a physicist at Fermilab Centre for Particle Astrophysics in Illinois is

convinced that he has found proof in the data of the gravitational wave detector GEO600
of a holographic Universe – and that his ideas could explain mysterious noise in the
detector data that has not been explained so far.

The British-German team behind the GEO600, which includes scientists from the School
of Physics and Astronomy's Gravitational Physics Group, will now carry out new
experiments in the coming months to yield more evidence about Craig Hogan's
assumptions. If proved correct, it could help in the quest to bring together quantum
mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity.

In order to test the theory of holographic noise, the frequency of GEO600´s maximum
sensitivity will be shifted towards ever higher frequencies. The frequency of maximum
sensitivity is the tone that the detector can hear best. It is normally adjusted to offer the
best chance for hearing exploding stars or merging black holes.

Even if it turns out that the mysterious noise is the same at high frequencies as at the
lower ones, this will not constitute proof for Hogan's hypothesis. It would, however,
provide a strong motivation for further study. The sensitivity of GEO600 will then be
significantly improved by using 'squeezed vacuum' and by the installation of a mode filter
in a new vacuum chamber. The technology of 'squeezed vacuum' was particularly refined
in Hannover and would be used in a gravitational wave detector for the first time.

Professor Jim Hough of Glasgow University, one of the pioneer developers of

gravitational wave detectors, says: 'Craig Hogan made a very interesting prediction. It
may be the first of a number of unexpected possibilities to be investigated as gravitational
wave detectors become more sensitive.'

Professor Bernard Schutz, Professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy, member of
the Gravitational Physics Group at the School, and recently elected as an Honorary
Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society said: "It would be truly remarkable if GEO600
is sensitive to the quantum nature of space and time. The only way to confirm that would
be to carry out controlled experiments, the results of which can be solely attributed to
holographic noise. Such an experiment would herald a new era in fundamental physics".

Professor Dr. Karsten Danzmann, director of the Hannover Albert-Einstein-Institute, said:

"We are very eager to find out what we can learn about the possible holographic noise
over the course of the coming year. GEO600 is the only experiment in the world able to
test this controversial theory at this time. Unlike the other large laser interferometers,
GEO600 reacts particularly sensitively to lateral movement of the beam splitter because it
is constructed using the principle of signal recycling. Normally this is inconvenient, but
we need the signal recycling to compensate for the shorter arm lengths compared to other
detectors. The holographic noise, however, produces exactly such a lateral signal and so
the disadvantage becomes an advantage in this case. You could say that this has placed us
in the very centre of a tornado in fundamental research!

Searching for the graininess of space

The smallest possible fraction of distance is called the 'Planck length" by physicists. Its
value is 1.6 x 10-35 m – this is impossible to measure by itself. The established physical
theories cease to function at this scale. GEO600 scientists are testing a theory by US
physicist Craig Hogan, who is convinced he can hear the noise of space quanta in the data
of the gravitational wave detector GEO600. Hogan suggests that the mirrors in an
interferometer wander relative to one another in very rapid steps of the tiny Planck
amount, that accumulate during the time of a measurement into something as large as a
gravitational wave would produce. Hogan and the GEO600 scientists are following up
the question whether a certain 'noise signal' in the data recorded by the detector can be
traced back to the graininess of space and time.

GEO600

Because of its innovative and reliable technology, GEO 600 has gained an excellent
worldwide reputation and is considered a think-tank for international gravitational wave
observation. It was here that the most modern lasers in the world were developed which
are being used in all the gravitational wave observatories in the world today. Researchers
at GEO600 are taking technology a step further with 'squeezed vacuum'. This technology
is designated for use in the third generation of gravitational wave detectors.

GEO600 is a joint project of scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational
Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, or AEI), Leibniz Universität Hannover, Cardiff
University, the University of Glasgow and the University of Birmingham. It is funded
jointly by the Max Planck Society in Germany and the Science and Technology Facilities
Council in UK.

DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the
GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field
stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge,
at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets,
however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres.

For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves -
ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron
stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it
might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over
inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher
approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he
knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab
particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental
limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth
continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper
photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted
by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of
Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the
GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension
of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical
footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how
the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional
plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In
the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested
that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience
might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant,
2D surface.

The "holographic principle" challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you
woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening
on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do
live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the
holographic principle are true.

Susskind and 't Hooft's remarkable idea was motivated by ground-breaking work on
black holes by Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and
Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge. In the mid-1970s, Hawking showed
that black holes are in fact not entirely "black" but instead slowly emit radiation, which
causes them to evaporate and eventually disappear. This poses a puzzle, because
Hawking radiation does not convey any information about the interior of a black hole.
When the black hole has gone, all the information about the star that collapsed to form
the black hole has vanished, which contradicts the widely affirmed principle that
information cannot be destroyed. This is known as the black hole information paradox.

Bekenstein's work provided an important clue in resolving the paradox. He discovered

that a black hole's entropy - which is synonymous with its information content - is
proportional to the surface area of its event horizon. This is the theoretical surface that
cloaks the black hole and marks the point of no return for infalling matter or light.
Theorists have since shown that microscopic quantum ripples at the event horizon can
encode the information inside the black hole, so there is no mysterious information loss
as the black hole evaporates.
Crucially, this provides a deep physical insight: the 3D information about a precursor star
can be completely encoded in the 2D horizon of the subsequent black hole - not unlike
the 3D image of an object being encoded in a 2D hologram. Susskind and 't Hooft
extended the insight to the universe as a whole on the basis that the cosmos has a horizon
too - the boundary from beyond which light has not had time to reach us in the 13.7-
billion-year lifespan of the universe. What's more, work by several string theorists, most
notably Juan Maldacena at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has confirmed
that the idea is on the right track. He showed that the physics inside a hypothetical
universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking
place on the four-dimensional boundary.

According to Hogan, the holographic principle radically changes our picture of space-
time. Theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects will cause space-
time to convulse wildly on the tiniest scales. At this magnification, the fabric of space-
time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred
billion billion times smaller than a proton. This distance is known as the Planck length, a
mere 10-35 metres. The Planck length is far beyond the reach of any conceivable
experiment, so nobody dared dream that the graininess of space-time might be
discernable.

That is, not until Hogan realised that the holographic principle changes everything. If
space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose
outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of
information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the
outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe.

Since the volume of the spherical universe is much bigger than its outer surface, how
could this be true? Hogan realised that in order to have the same number of bits inside the
universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the
Planck length. "Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry," says Hogan.

This is good news for anyone trying to probe the smallest unit of space-time. "Contrary to
all expectations, it brings its microscopic quantum structure within reach of current
experiments," says Hogan. So while the Planck length is too small for experiments to
detect, the holographic "projection" of that graininess could be much, much larger, at
around 10-16 metres. "If you lived inside a hologram, you could tell by measuring the
blurring," he says.

When Hogan first realised this, he wondered if any experiment might be able to detect the
holographic blurriness of space-time. That's where GEO600 comes in.

Gravitational wave detectors like GEO600 are essentially fantastically sensitive rulers.
The idea is that if a gravitational wave passes through GEO600, it will alternately stretch
space in one direction and squeeze it in another. To measure this, the GEO600 team fires
a single laser through a half-silvered mirror called a beam splitter. This divides the light
into two beams, which pass down the instrument's 600-metre perpendicular arms and
bounce back again. The returning light beams merge together at the beam splitter and
create an interference pattern of light and dark regions where the light waves either
cancel out or reinforce each other. Any shift in the position of those regions tells you that
the relative lengths of the arms has changed.

"The key thing is that such experiments are sensitive to changes in the length of the rulers
that are far smaller than the diameter of a proton," says Hogan.

So would they be able to detect a holographic projection of grainy space-time? Of the

five gravitational wave detectors around the world, Hogan realised that the Anglo-
German GEO600 experiment ought to be the most sensitive to what he had in mind. He
predicted that if the experiment's beam splitter is buffeted by the quantum convulsions of
space-time, this will show up in its measurements (Physical Review D, vol 77, p 104031).
"This random jitter would cause noise in the laser light signal," says Hogan.

In June he sent his prediction to the GEO600 team. "Incredibly, I discovered that the
experiment was picking up unexpected noise," says Hogan. GEO600's principal
investigator Karsten Danzmann of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in
Potsdam, Germany, and also the University of Hanover, admits that the excess noise, with
frequencies of between 300 and 1500 hertz, had been bothering the team for a long time.
He replied to Hogan and sent him a plot of the noise. "It looked exactly the same as my
prediction," says Hogan. "It was as if the beam splitter had an extra sideways jitter."

Incredibly, the experiment was picking up unexpected noise - as if quantum convulsions

were causing an extra sideways jitter

No one - including Hogan - is yet claiming that GEO600 has found evidence that we live
in a holographic universe. It is far too soon to say. "There could still be a mundane source
of the noise," Hogan admits.

Gravitational-wave detectors are extremely sensitive, so those who operate them have to
work harder than most to rule out noise. They have to take into account passing clouds,
distant traffic, seismological rumbles and many, many other sources that could mask a
real signal. "The daily business of improving the sensitivity of these experiments always
throws up some excess noise," says Danzmann. "We work to identify its cause, get rid of
it and tackle the next source of excess noise." At present there are no clear candidate
sources for the noise GEO600 is experiencing. "In this respect I would consider the
present situation unpleasant, but not really worrying."

For a while, the GEO600 team thought the noise Hogan was interested in was caused by
fluctuations in temperature across the beam splitter. However, the team worked out that
this could account for only one-third of the noise at most.

Danzmann says several planned upgrades should improve the sensitivity of GEO600 and
eliminate some possible experimental sources of excess noise. "If the noise remains
where it is now after these measures, then we have to think again," he says.
If GEO600 really has discovered holographic noise from quantum convulsions of space-
time, then it presents a double-edged sword for gravitational wave researchers. One on
hand, the noise will handicap their attempts to detect gravitational waves. On the other, it
could represent an even more fundamental discovery.

Such a situation would not be unprecedented in physics. Giant detectors built to look for
a hypothetical form of radioactivity in which protons decay never found such a thing.
Instead, they discovered that neutrinos can change from one type into another - arguably
more important because it could tell us how the universe came to be filled with matter
and not antimatter (New Scientist, 12 April 2008, p 26).

It would be ironic if an instrument built to detect something as vast as astrophysical

sources of gravitational waves inadvertently detected the minuscule graininess of space-
time. "Speaking as a fundamental physicist, I see discovering holographic noise as far
more interesting," says Hogan.

Small price to pay

Despite the fact that if Hogan is right, and holographic noise will spoil GEO600's ability
to detect gravitational waves, Danzmann is upbeat. "Even if it limits GEO600's
sensitivity in some frequency range, it would be a price we would be happy to pay in
return for the first detection of the graininess of space-time." he says. "You bet we would
be pleased. It would be one of the most remarkable discoveries in a long time."

However Danzmann is cautious about Hogan's proposal and believes more theoretical
work needs to be done. "It's intriguing," he says. "But it's not really a theory yet, more
just an idea." Like many others, Danzmann agrees it is too early to make any definitive
claims. "Let's wait and see," he says. "We think it's at least a year too early to get
excited."

The longer the puzzle remains, however, the stronger the motivation becomes to build a
dedicated instrument to probe holographic noise. John Cramer of the University of
Washington in Seattle agrees. It was a "lucky accident" that Hogan's predictions could be
connected to the GEO600 experiment, he says. "It seems clear that much better
experimental investigations could be mounted if they were focused specifically on the
measurement and characterisation of holographic noise and related phenomena."

One possibility, according to Hogan, would be to use a device called an atom

interferometer. These operate using the same principle as laser-based detectors but use
beams made of ultracold atoms rather than laser light. Because atoms can behave as
waves with a much smaller wavelength than light, atom interferometers are significantly
smaller and therefore cheaper to build than their gravitational-wave-detector counterparts.

So what would it mean it if holographic noise has been found? Cramer likens it to the
discovery of unexpected noise by an antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1964. That
noise turned out to be the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang
fireball. "Not only did it earn Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson a Nobel prize, but it
confirmed the big bang and opened up a whole field of cosmology," says Cramer.

Hogan is more specific. "Forget Quantum of Solace, we would have directly observed the
quantum of time," says Hogan. "It's the smallest possible interval of time - the Planck
length divided by the speed of light."

More importantly, confirming the holographic principle would be a big help to

researchers trying to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity. Today the
most popular approach to quantum gravity is string theory, which researchers hope could
describe happenings in the universe at the most fundamental level. But it is not the only
show in town. "Holographic space-time is used in certain approaches to quantising
gravity that have a strong connection to string theory," says Cramer. "Consequently, some
quantum gravity theories might be falsified and others reinforced."

Hogan agrees that if the holographic principle is confirmed, it rules out all approaches to
quantum gravity that do not incorporate the holographic principle. Conversely, it would
be a boost for those that do - including some derived from string theory and something
called matrix theory. "Ultimately, we may have our first indication of how space-time
emerges out of quantum theory." As serendipitous discoveries go, it's hard to get more
ground-breaking than that.

Check out other weird cosmology features from New Scientist

Marcus Chown is the author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You (Faber, 2008)

camfor
Cinnamomum camphora este un arbore cu o inaltime de 40-50 m, cu o longevitate
impresionanta (aprox. 1000 ani) originar din Asia de est.

Poate fi obtinut si prin sinteza chimica.

Camforul face parte din grupul terpenelor (substante hidroaromatice).

Acestea sunt substante cristalizate, care se depun in urma pastrarii uleiurilor volatile, mai
ales atunci cand sunt tinute la temperaturi scazute.

Camforul se utilizeaza in produse destinate unor afectiuni dermatologice, respiratorii,

circulatorii si reumatice.

Are actiune antipruriginoasa, antinevralgica, antiinflamatoare, rubrefianta si de stimulare

a circulatiei sanguine.

Camelia
Camellia japonica, trandafirul japonez, este un arbust din familia ceaiului (Theaceae). A
fost remarcat pentru prima oara la poalele padurilor montane din China si Japonia de
catre iezuitul austriac Kamel (sec. XVIII), aflat in vizita pe acele meleaguri. Calugarul a
fost incantat de explozia de culoare care inviora baza muntilor si dat numele lui acestei
plante.

Din momentul patrunderii in Europa (sec XVIII),

aceasta planta a devenit nelipsita din toate marile gradini,
parcuri, terase, locuinte. In regiunile cu ierni blande (Belgia,
Olanda, Franta, Anglia), camelia creste foarte bine iarna in
gradini. In patria de origine, Japonia, este foarte apreciata,
aparand peste tot, pe portelanuri, lemn fin, stampe etc., fiind
folosita si pentru extragerea unor uleiuri cu importanta
cosmetica si medicinala.

In cultura exista numeroase varietati cu flori, care au aspectul

unui trandafir, de diferite marimi, colorate in nuante variate de
rosu, roz, violet, alb etc., simple sau cu mai multe randuri de petale, cu margine simpla sau
ondulata. Specia salbatica are flori simple corai, cu stamine galbene. Frunzele sunt verzi-inchis,
lucioase, usor zimtate pe margine. Plantele adulte ajung pana la 1,5-2 m inaltime.

Camelia este destul de pretentioasa in privinta conditiilor de mediu. Are o perioada de crestere
intensa primavara-vara, iar spre sfarsitul verii se formeaza muguri de floare. Dupa formarea
bobocilor, camelia trebuie tinuta la repaus (temperaturi mai scazute, pana la 10 grade Celsius),
timp de 1-2 luni.

In functie de varietate, inflorirea are loc in perioada octombrie-mai, cel mai adesea in ianuarie. Cu
cat sunt mai multe flori pe planta, cu atat inflorirea dureaza mai mult. O floarea dureaza in jur de
o saptamana.

Iarna se tine in incaperi racoroase, departe de sursele de caldura. Vara se amplaseaza intr-un loc
aerisit, usor umbrit, ferit de insolatie. Iarna are nevoie de multa lumina. Apa se administreaza
moderat in tot cursul anului. Pamantul nu se lasa sa se ususce complet. Apa trebuie sa fie la
temperatura camerei si necalcaroasa. Se pulverizeaza des frunzele cu apa, mai ales vara. Aerul
trebuie sa fie usor umed. Pentru marirea umiditatii atmosferice, ghivecele se pot amplasa pe un
pat de pietris umed. Substratul trebuie sa fie acid, fibros, hranitor, bine drenat (amestec de turba,
pamant de frunze, ace de brad, nisip).

Translantarea se face primavara la interval de 4-5 ani, dupa trecerea florilor, in rest se
improspateaza doar pamantul de la suprafata. Tot primavara, dupa inflorire, se fac taieri de
corectare a coroanei si de curatire.

In perioada calda a anului se pot aplica ingarsaminte sub forma de solutii 0,1 % cu reactie acida,
bilunar. Perioada de administrare a ingrasamintelor trebuie sa corespunda cu cea de crestere
intensa.

In perioada de formare a bobocilor si cand ei sunt aproape sa se deschida, nu trebuie modificat

locul plantei, deoarece acestia sunt foarte sensibili si cad. De asemenea, daca pamantul este
excesiv de ud si daca au loc schimbari bruste de temperatura, bobocii sunt compromisi.

In cazul unor temperaturi foare scazute, a excesului de apa in sol, a apei calcaroase, a curentilor
de aer, frunzele se innegresc si cad. De asemenea, un sol foarte calcaros si o apa dura produc
decolorarea frunzelor cu un desen caracteristic deficitului de fier.

Inmultirea este greoaie in conditii de apartament. Se poate realiza prin seminte semanate in
primavara urmatoare recoltarii, in substratul dat pentru plantele adulte. Butasii se pot confectiona
si pune la inradacinat primavara sau la sfarsitul verii. Se folosesc butasi usor lemnificati (varfuri
de 5-10 cm), cu cel putin 2 noduri. Se trateaza de obicei cu substante rizogene (stimulatori de
inradacinare) si se pun la inradacinat in substrat cald (20-22 grade Celsius) si umed, asigurandu-
se si umiditatea atmosferica ridicata. Inradacinarea dureaza aproximativ 2 luni. Pentru inmultirea
unor soiuri deosebite se practica altoirea in ochi sau in pana (metode clasice), iarna sau
primavara. Prin seminte se obtin plante noi care nu pastreaza caracteristicile soiului.

Legenda Cameliei
Legenda spune ca traia o data o fiica de imparat deosebit de frumoasa, dar deosebit de
singura, pe nume Camelia. Pentru a-si umple timpul, aceasta isi petrecea majoritatea
timpului vorbind cu florile si invatase limbajul acestora.

In imparatia peste care domnea tatal fetei traia un balaur care obisnuia sa manance toate
fetele in varsta de 14 ani. Cu cat se apropia mai mult fata de varsta de 14 ani, cu atat era
mai bine pazita si cu atat erau parintii ei mai ingrijorati. Cu toate ca o pazeau cei mai
iscusiti ostasi, la ora 12 noaptea cand fata implinea 14 ani, balaurul reuseste sa intre in
castel, in turnul unde fusese inchisa fata si sa o rapeasca, urmand sa o duca departe si sa o
manance. In drum spre locul unde locuia balaurul, Camelia implora florile de pe pajistile
inflorite peste care trece sa o transforme intr-o floare si sa o salveze.

Florile ii asculta voia si o transforma intr-o floare roz deosebit de fina, pe care balaurul o
scapa din gheare si care cum atinge solul prinde radacini si da nastere la noi flori de cele
mai variate culori si forme. Aceasta floare urma sa se numeasca Camelia.

Limbajul Cameliei
Camelia este o floare care simbolizeaza norocul, prezenta de spirit. Barbatul care
daruieste unei femei o Camelie o considera pe aceasta unica, deosebita, norocoasa.
Femeia careia ii plac Cameliile este in general solitare, o femeie puternica, independenta,
careia ii place sa se descurce singura.

Numele Camelia
Numele de Camelia vine din latina insemnand enorias. Prin prisma etimologiei si a
legendei florii, o persoana cu numele de Camelia este independenta, puternica, norocoasa
si de obicei reuseste in tot ceea ce isi propune. Numele de Camelia sugereaza ambitie si
perseverenta.

Carex acutiformis
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Salt la: Navigare, căutare

Carex acutiformis

Carex acutiformis (rogoz) este o plantă erbacee, ce poate atinge 40 cm înălțime cu

frunze alungite tăioase din familia Cyperaceae, care trăiește răspândită mai ales în
regiunile de pășuni umede, sau de mlaștină. Planta se poate confunda ușor cu rogozul
negru (Carex nigra).

Brusture
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Brusture
 Brusture

Clasificare științifică
Regn: Plantae
Încrengătură: Magnoliophyta
Clasă: Magnoliopsida
Ordin: Asterales
Familie: Asteraceae
Gen: Arctium
Specie: A. lappa
Nume binomial
Arctium lappa
L.
v•d•m

Brusturele (Arctium lappa) este o plantă erbacee bienală din familia Asteraceae,
cultivată în grădini pentru rădăcinile sale comestibile sau întîlnită fregvent ca buruiană.
Cuprins
[ascunde]
 1 Descriere
 2 Origine și distribuție
 3 Cultivare
 4 Compoziție chimică
 5 Utilizare culinară
 6 Utilizare în medicina tradițională
 7 Referințe

 8 Legături externe

[modificare] Descriere

Brusturele este oarecum înalt, putând ajunge până la 2 metri înălțime. Are frunze mari,
alternate,frunzele bazale care apar în primul an de vegetație ,triunghiulare ,ovate sau
cordate,cu marginele întregi, cu un pețiol lung,tomentoase pe partea inferioară.

Florile sunt tubulate de culoare mov-violet ,cu antere și stamine concrescute și grupate în
calatidii globulare, care formează un corimb. Acestea apar la mijlocul verii. Calatidiile
sunt înconjurate de un involucru format din numeroase bractee, fiecare curbată sub forma
unui cârlig, permițând să se agațe de blana animalelor și să fie cărate pe distanțe mari.
Fructele sunt achene; cu o lungime de cca 6 mm , comprimate, cu papusuri scurte.

Rizomul este scurt ,cărnos ,continuat cu o rădăcina pivotantă lungă de până la 50 cm

lungime , de culoare brun-cenușie. Tulpină cilindrică ,cu șanțuri longitudinale ,ramificată
,acoperită cu peri.

[modificare] Origine și distribuție

Specia este nativă regiunilor temperate ale lumii vechi, din Scandinavia până la Marea
Mediterană, și din Arhipelagul Britanic până în Rusia, iar din Orientul Mijlociu până în
China și Japonia, inclusiv India. A fost naturalizată aproape pretutindeni și poate fi găsită
mai ales în zonele cu soluri bogate în azot.Este considerată o plantă ruderală (crește pe
terenuri necultivate ,lunci,câmpuri,margini de drum). Este deseori cultivată în Japonia,
unde oferă numele unui tip special de construcție.

[modificare] Cultivare

Preferă solurile lucrate, bogate în humus, complet însorite. Brusturele este foarte sensibil
la îngrășămintele pe bază de azot. Înmulțirea se face direct prin semințe, în timpul verii.
Recolta are loc la trei până la cinci luni de la însămânțare, toamna târziu, moment după
care rădăcinile devin prea fibroase.
[modificare] Compoziție chimică

Rădăcina conține inulină , acid palmitic ,steric și cofeic ,ulei volatil ,viatmine din
complexul B, nitrat de potasiu ,steroli ,hormoni vegetali ,taninuri și mucilagii .Frunzele
conțin fitoncide , arctiină și lapanol.

[modificare] Utilizare culinară

Fel de mâncare japonez, kinpira gobō, format din gobō (rădăcină de brusture) şi ninjin
(morcov) sotate, alături de kiriboshi daikon sotat

Brusturele era utilizat în Evul Mediu drept legumă, dar acum este rar folosit, cu excepția
bucătăriei japoneze, unde este numit gobō (牛蒡 sau ゴボウ), bucătăriei coreene, unde
este numit ueong (우엉), și bucătăriilor italiene și portugheze, unde se numește bardana.
Plantele sunt cultivate pentru rădăcinile lor, care pot ajunge până la un metru lungime și
un diametru de 2 centimetri.

Tulpinile imature, care vor avea flori, pot fi culese de asemenea primăvara târziu, înainte
de apariția florilor. Gustul este asemănător anghinarei, aceste două plante fiind înrudite.

În a doua jumătate a secolului al XX-lea, brusturele a fost recunoscut internațional

datorită creșterii popularității dietelor macrobiotice, care susține consumarea plantei.
Rădăcina conține o cantitate considerabilă de fibre dietetice gobō (GDF, 6g per 100g),
calciu, potasiu, aminoacizi[1] și are un număr mic de calorii. Conține polifenoli, care
cauzează culoarea închisă la suprafață și gustul pământos, prin formarea de complexe
tanin-fier.

Rădăcina este foarte crocantă și are o aromă dulce, slabă, puțin pământoasă, care poate fi
redusă prin menținerea bucăților tăiate în apă pentru circa 10 minute. Combinația cu
carnea de porc în supa miso (tonjiru) și takikomi gohan (pilaf japonez) este considerată
delicioasă.
 Iască

Un fel de mâncare japonez este kinpira gobō,

rădăcini de brusture și morcov tăiate julienne,
stropite cu sos de soia, zahăr, mirin și/sau
sake și ulei de susan. O altă mâncare este
makizushi de brusture (sushi umplut cu
rădăcină de brusture murată; rădăcina de
brusture este de obicei colorată artificial în
Fomes fomentarius
portocaliu, pentru a semăna cu morcovul).
'
[modificare] Utilizare în medicina
Clasificare științifică după...
tradițională
Regn: Fungi
Naturaliștii populari consideră brusturele Subregn:
uscat ca fiind un agent diuretic, diaforetic și
purificator al sângelui,deasemenea ajută la Încrengătură: Basidiomycota
eliminarea toxinelor renale și hepatice. Subîncrengătură:
Semințele de brusture sunt utilizate în
medicina tradională chineză, sub numele de Clasă: Basidiomycetes
niupangzi ( chineză 牛蒡子; pinyin: Subclasă: Agaricomycetidae
niúpángzi).
Supraordin:

Iască Ordin: Polyporales

Subordin:
De la Wikipedia, enciclopedia liberă
Salt la: Navigare, căutare Suprafamilie:
Familia Polyporaceae
Iasca (Fomes fomentarius) este o ciupercă din
familia Polyporaceae, care crește pe Subfamilie:
trunchiurile arborilor. Gen: Fomes
'
Cuprins ' {{{descrie9B}}}
[ascunde]
 1 Prezentare ' {{{descrie9C}}}
 2 Mod de viață, răspândire Nume binomial: Fomes fomentarius
 3 Utilizare
Clasificare: Jean Jacques Kickx
 4 Legături externe '

[modificare] Prezentare ' {{{descrie14}}}

Iasca crește un timp îndelungat, durata de
creștere poate atinge 30 de ani. Partea
germinativă a ciupercii are o formă de consolă
'
' {{{descrie15A}}}
' {{{descrie15B}}}
' {{{descrie15C}}}
' {{{descrie16}}}
' {{{descrie17}}}
ce are dimensiuni între 10 - 30 de cm și o grosime de până la 20 cm. Corpul ciupercii este
de culoare cenușie deschisă, care cu timpul devine de o culoare mai închisă până la
negru. Iasca este la periferie semicirculară, cu partea superioară bombată acoperită cu o
crustă dură cu încrețituri concentrice. Partea inferioară este plană, de culoare brună,
prevăzută cu pori.

[modificare] Mod de viață, răspândire

Iasca trăiește o viață parazitară pe arborii din pădurile de foioase, și mai rar pe conifere.
Ciuperca produce slăbirea structurii trunchiului parazitat ducând frecvent la ruperea
trunchiului, dar ciuperca putând trăi mai departe ca saprofit pe trunchiul în putrefacție.
Iasca poate fi întâlnită în India și Pakistan ca și Eurasia, America de Nord.

[modificare] Utilizare

Deja în perioada neolitică, iasca (trama) a fost folosită la aprinderea focului. Mai târziu în
evul mediu ea a fost fiartă curățită de crustă și apoi îmbibată cu o soluție de nitrat de
amoniu sau urină și apoi uscată. Astfel preparată, era suficientă numai o scânteie pentru
aprinderea ei. Până în secolul XIX a fost folosită în farmacie sub numele de „Fungus
chirurgorum” pentru oprirea hemoragiei. Necesarul de iască a fost în acel timp foarte
mare, ajungându-se la importul ei din Scandinavia. În Europa de vest iasca mai este
folosită și astăzi în scop decorativ, sau în florărie la confecționarea coroanelor funerare.
În România din iască se confecționează pălării, genți sau alte obiecte de artizanat pentru
turiști.

De la Wikipedia, enciclopedia liberă

SOC
Salt la: Navigare, căutare
Soc
 Sambucus nigra
Clasificare ştiinţifică
Regn: Plantae
Încrengătură: Magnoliophyta
Clasă: Magnoliopsida
Ordin: Dipsacales
Familie: Adoxaceae
Gen: Sambucus
v•d•m

Socul (Sambucus L.) este un gen de plante din grupa arbuştilor, cu 20-30 de specii. Genul
face parte din familia Adoxaceae. Cea mai cunoscută specie este socul negru (Sambucus
nigra).
Cuprins
[ascunde]
 1 Descriere
o 1.1 Tratamente naturale pe baza de soc
 2 Vezi şi

 3 Legaturi externe

[modificare] Descriere

Acest arbust, cu ramurile adesea curbate, are o înălţime de la 1 la 10 metri. Scoarţa

acestuia are culoarea verde-gri şi este fisurată. Frunzele, şi cu precădere cele dintâi,
apărute primăvara, reprezintă o atracţie pentru numeroase insecte, şi dintre acestea mai
ales pentru fluturii de noapte.

Florile hermafrodite, ce apar la începutul verii, sunt parfumate, pe când frunzele au un

miros neplăcut atunci când sunt frecate în mâini. Florile au câte cinci stamine şi cinci
petale de culoare albă.

Fructele se prezintă sub forma unor bobiţe negru-violacee de 6-8 mm, dispuse în
ciorchine.

Socul se multiplică prin seminţe.

[modificare] Tratamente naturale pe baza de soc

Socul (Sambucus nigra) este apreciat ca remediu natural, in principal datorita

proprietatilor terapeutice ale tuturor partilor componente ale acestui arbust: frunzele
(actiune laxativa), florile (diuretice, sudorifice), fructele (vitaminizante, antinevralgice),
scoarta (este foarte bogata in substante diuretice).
Popular, socul era intrebuintat la tratarea si vindecarea unor numeroase afectiuni: tuse,
dureri de cap, afectiuni ale aparatului respirator, friguri. Astazi socul cunoaste o utilizare
variata: bronsita, raceala, gripa, afectiuni ale rinichilor, guta, reumatism, bronsita, arsuri,
rani, umflaturi, stari febrile (favorizeaza transpiratia abundenta).
Ceaiul din fructe de soc este recomandat a fi utilizat pentru tratarea obezitatii, dar si a
hemoroizilor (uz extern). Ceaiul din flori de soc are un rol extrem de important in tratarea
afectiunilor vezicii urinare.
What symptoms lead to someone being classified a psychopath?

A lack of empathy, guilt and remorse; callousness, impulsivity, promiscuity, hot-

headedness and pathological lying, among others. Each of these traits is scored on the
Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which is compiled from an interview and an extensive
background report. The scale goes from 0 to 40. The average prisoner scores 22. We
consider a score of about 30 as indicating that someone meets the criteria for the disorder.

When someone scores 34 or higher, we find that we are dealing with a person who is
fundamentally out of the ordinary. It is palpable in their clinical presentation. They are
completely different from other inmates. And it turns out that their brains are different
too, both in structure and in function.

What exactly have you found that makes them so different?

We have now done more than 1500 scans of prisoner volunteers, using a mobile fMRI
(functional magnetic resonance) scanner. In general, what we find in the brains of
individuals with psychopathy is that one or more aspects of the paralimbic system - part
of the brain involved in the processing of emotions and impulse control - is abnormal.

Finding out that the brains of psychopaths are different shouldn't surprise anybody. Only
now, with the help of the imaging studies, we have been able to describe how they are
different.

Why do you use prisoners as your subjects?

Individuals with psychopathy have a large impact on the criminal justice system.
Between 15 and 35 per cent of prisoners in US jails meet criteria for the disorder,
compared with about 1 per cent in the general population.

Does the comfort of conformity ease

thoughts of death?
 25 February 2011 by Jessica Hamzelou
 Magazine issue 2801. Subscribe and save
 For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain and Death Topic Guides

AS THE light at the end of the tunnel approaches, the need to belong to a group and be
near loved ones may be among your final thoughts.

So say Markus Quirin and his colleagues at the University of Osnabrück in Germany. The
team prompted thoughts of death in 17 young men with an average age of 23 by asking
them whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements such as "I am afraid of
dying a painful death". At the same time, the men's brain activity was monitored using a
functional MRI scanner.

To compare the brain activity associated with thoughts of death with that coupled to
another unpleasant experience, the team also prompted thoughts of dental pain using
statements like "I panic when I am sitting in the dentist's waiting room". Although the
threat of dental pain is unpleasant, "it's not a threat of death", Quirin says.

Quirin's team found that thoughts of death, but not of dental pain, triggered heightened
activity in brain regions such as the right amygdala, which is associated with fear and
anxiety. More surprisingly, the team also saw increased activity in the caudate nucleus
when the men thought of death - an area of the brain associated with performing habitual
behaviours (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsq106).

Quirin thinks the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger could explain the
unexpected result. Heidegger said that doing what everyone else does is a defence against
anxiety. According to Quirin, performing culturally learned habitual behaviours to fit in
with the crowd could be a strategy to reduce the anxiety associated with death.

Intriguingly, activity in the caudate nucleus is also associated with feeling in love. The
solace found when thinking about a loved one could also alleviate the stress associated
with being close to death, says Mario Mikulincer at the Interdisciplinary Center in
Herzliya, Israel, who was not involved with the study. "This neural finding fits with our
behavioural findings that thoughts of mortality activate the attachment system,
motivating us to seek love and protection from significant others," he says.
Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, disagrees. "The
brain seems to be a mix-and-match system, in which regions are activated in endlessly
different combinations to create different nuances of emotion," she says. "Thoughts of
death, like thoughts of romantic passion, are strong and profound. One would expect at
least some of the same activation patterns."

Quirin's team now hopes to investigate brain activity in older people to find out whether
the same thoughts occur to a person nearing the end of their life.

Fan Tan
Introduction

Fan Tan, also known as Sevens or Domino and in Britain sometimes as Parliament is a
straightforward game in which the object is to get rid of all one's cards by playing them to
a layout.

Players and Cards

A standard international 52-card pack is used, the cards of each suit ranking A-K-Q-J-10-
9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2. From 3 to around 8 people can play, and it is probably best for 4-6
players. Deal and play are clockwise.

Deal

Any player may deal first, and the turn to deal passes to the left. The dealer shuffles
thoroughly and the player to dealer's right may cut. The dealer deals all the cards,
clockwise one at a time, starting with the player to dealer's left. Unless there are four
players, some of the players will have one more card than otrhers at the end of the deal.
This does not matter much - having an extra card is not necessarily a disadvantage, the
players with more cards get to play first, and in any case as the turn to deal rotates
different players take turns to start with a larger hand.

Play

During the play the cards are added to a face up layout on the table, which will ultimately
consist one row for each suit, beginning with the seven in the middle and building down
towards the two on the left and up towards the ace on the right.

The player to dealer's left begins, and the play continues clockwise. At your turn you
must if possible play one card of your choice to the layout. The cards that can played are:

 Any seven. A seven starts a new row for its suit.

 Any card which is next in sequence up or down to a card of the same suit that is
already on the layout. Lower cards are added to one side of the seven; higher
 cards to the other. If space allows the cards could be placed side by side so that
they eventually form a 13x4 grid, but a more compact layout in which the high
cards are piled on the 8's and the low cards on the 6's is often more practical.

A player who is unable to play a card must pass, which is sometimes indicated by
knocking the table. It is illegal to pass if you hold a card that could be played to the
layout.

The first player who succeeds in playing all his or her cards is the winner.

Variations

In some groups, everyone pays a chip to a common pool before the deal, and anyone who
passes must add a chip to the pool. The winner collects the pool, and in addition from
each opponent one chip for each card remaining in his or her hand.

In some versions, play is begun not by the player to dealer's left but by the holder of the
seven of diamonds, who must play it as the first card.

Lierne (vault)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plan of lierne vault - Ely Choir, (liernes are shaded black).

Lierne vault at the nave of Chester Cathedral
Ely Choir looking east. ca. 1890.

A Lierne (from the French lier - to bind) in Gothic rib vaulting is an architectural term
for a tertiary rib spanning between two other ribs, instead of from a springer, or to the
central boss. The type of vault that utilizes liernes is called a lierne vault or stellar vault
(named after the star shape generated by connecting liernes).

In England, the lierne came into use during the 14th century Decorated period. A good
example of lierne vaulting is at Gloucester Cathedral. In France, examples can be seen in
Flamboyant architecture, such as at Saint-Pierre, Caen.

The vault plan diagram of Ely Choir (right) shows the ribs as a double line, where the
main longitudinal ridge rib (middle vertical lines) and transverse ridge ribs (alternate
horizontal lines) intersect each other at the central bosses (large circles). The longitudinal
ridge rib runs down the centre of the Choir, and the transverse ridge ribs span from the
apex of each window at the sides of the Choir. Arched diagonal ribs span from piers
between the windows, from springers to the central bosses, and arched transverse ribs
(alternate horizontal lines) span from the springers to the main longitudinal ridge rib.
Secondary arched diagonal ribs, called tiercerons, span from the springers to the
transverse ridge ribs. Liernes (shaded black) span between the other ribs forming intricate
patterning.

Note: In French terminology relating to architecture, a lierne is a ridge rib, and hence has
a different meaning.
[edit] References
 Bond, Francis (1906) Gothic Architecture in England, Batsford, London.

Roman à clef
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Key to vol. 2 of Delarivier Manley's,New Atalantis (1709).

Roman à clef or roman à clé (French pronunciation: [ʁɔmɑɑ̃ n‿a kle]), French for "novel with a key", is a
phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction.[1] The fictitious names
in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and
thefiction.[2] This "key" may be produced separately by the author, or inferred through the use
ofepigraphs or other literary devices.[3]

Created by Madeleine de Scudery in the 17th century to provide a forum for her thinly veiled fiction
featuring political and public figures,[4] roman à clef has since been used by writers as diverse asVictor
Hugo, Phillip K. Dick, and Salman Rushdie.

The reasons an author might choose the roman à clef format include satire; writing about controversial
topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals without giving rise to charges of libel; the
opportunity to turn the tale the way the author would like it to have gone; the opportunity to portray
personal, autobiographical experiences without having to expose the author as the subject; avoiding
self-incrimination or incrimination of others that could be used as evidence in civil, criminal, or
disciplinary proceedings; and the settling of scores.

Biographically inspired works have also appeared in other literary genres and art forms, notably thefilm
à clef.[citation needed]

Contents
[hide]

1 Notable romans à clef

o 1.1 Prose

o 1.2 Verse and drama

2 See also

3 References

[edit]Notable romans à clef

[edit]Prose

 Le Jouvencel (1466), based on the life of Jean V de Bueil, companion of Joan of Arc

 The novels of 17th century French writer Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701).

 The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (1621) by Mary Wroth is considered to contain
significant autobiographical elements.
 Glenarvon (1816) by Lady Caroline Lamb which chronicles her affair with Lord Byron (thinly
disguised as the title character).
 Virtually all of the novels of Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) presuppose a knowledge
of English intellectuals and currents of thought of the time.
 The Blithedale Romance (1852) by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a fictional account inspired by, but
not specifically depicting, Hawthorne's experiences at the Brook Farm experiment.
 Ruth Hall (1854) by Fanny Fern (Sarah Payson Willis) describes Fern's own struggle to
become a successful newspaper columnist, and puts her family (including her brother, Nathaniel
Parker Willis) and two of her early editors in a most unflattering light.
 The Lady of Aroostook (1879) by William Dean Howells depicts Emily Dickinson's romantic
engagements with several men.
 Röda rummet (The Red Room) (1879) by August Strindberg presents thinly disguised
depictions of intellectuals of the period.
 The Green Carnation (1894) by Robert Hichens is based on the relationship between Oscar
Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.
 Buddenbrooks (1901) is a portrayal of Thomas Mann's family and of society in Luebeck.
 The protagonists of both Tonio Kröger (1903) and Death in Venice (1912) are representations
of Thomas Mann.
 The Seething Pot (1905) by George A. Birmingham is based on the citizens of County Mayo.
 The Fiery Angel (1908) by Valery Bryusov depicts the real-life triangle of black magic,
obsession and love between himself, Andrei Belyand Nina Petrovskaya while describing a story of
witchcraft in 16th Century Germany.
 Ann Veronica (1909) by H. G. Wells is based in the real relationship between H. G.
Wells and Amber Reeves.
 The Moon and Sixpence (1919) by William Somerset Maugham follows the life of Paul
Gauguin, especially his time in Tahiti.
 Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923) and Those Barren Leaves (1925) by Aldous
Huxley are all satires of contemporary events.
 Nigger Heaven (1926) by Carl Van Vechten is set during the Harlem Renaissance in the
United States in the 1920s.
 The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway is a disguised account of Hemingway's
literary life in Paris and his 1925 trip to Spain with several known personalities.
 The Benson Murder Case (1926), the best-selling first entry in the series of detective
novels by S. S. Van Dine featuring detective Philo Vance, is based on the unsolved murder of
bridge expert Joseph Elwell, who was found shot to death in a room locked from the inside, minus
his toupee, physical circumstances which are duplicated in the novel.
 Point Counter Point (1928) by Aldous Huxley includes easily detected portraits of Huxley's
friends D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murry.
 Roman à clef is one of the many dimensions of Orlando: A Biography (1928) by Virginia
Woolf.
 All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) by Erich Maria Remarque is based on his experiences
as a soldier during World War I.
 Look Homeward, Angel (1929) by Thomas Wolfe
 The Novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957)
 Tender Is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts acquaintances of Gerald and Sara
Murphy in the 1920s.
 Entirely Surrounded (1934) by Charles Brackett observes several thinly disguised members of
the Algonquin Round Table coterie while they are guests of a thinly disguised Alexander
Woollcott at his thinly disguised Neshobe Island retreat in Vermont.
 Mephisto (1936) by Klaus Mann. Mann's brother-in-law, the actor Gustaf Gründgens, was so
offended by the main character Hendrik Höfgen (based on Gründgens himself) that the novel was
banned after a libel case.
 Power Without Glory (1950) by Frank Hardy is an unveiled and highly critical account of the
life of Australian business man and political figure John Wren (referred to by Hardy as John West).
Hardy, a socialist, blamed Wren for what he saw as the corruption of the Australian Labor
Party during the early 20th century. Hardy was sued for criminal libel for having depicted Wren's
wife having an affair.
 In her novel Broderie Anglaise (1953), Violet Trefusis represents her lesbian affair with Vita
Sackville-West and Vita's with Virginia Woolf in the form of a heterosexual romance. She also
weaves the affairs of her mother, Alice Keppel, with Edward VII into the book.
 The novels of Jack Kerouac, including On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958).
 The Ugly American (1958) by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, a book that criticized
American foreign policy in Southeast Asia prior to the Vietnam War. The book uses the fictional
country of Sarkhan in Southeast Asia that closely resembles Burma, but is meant to allude
to Vietnam, as the setting and includes several real people, most of whose names have been
changed.
 The Carpetbaggers (1961) by Harold Robbins is a fictionalized version of the early Hollywood
exploits of Howard Hughes and actress Jean Harlow.
 The Idle Warriors (1962), Kerry Wendell Thornley's novel based on his old acquaintance from
the Marine Corps, Lee Harvey Oswald.
 The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath, her semi-autobiographical novel, detailing a young girl's
attempts at suicides and her mental breakdown.
 Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life is a fictional biography of William
Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess first published in 1964.
 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) by Hunter S. Thompson, a fictionalized account of
Thompson's trip to Las Vegas in a drug-induced haze.
 The Company (1976) by John Ehrlichman, a fictionalized account of Nixon
administration involvement in events leading to the Watergate scandal.
 A Scanner Darkly (1977) by Philip K. Dick, a fictionalized account of Dick's experiences in the
1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw."[5]
 The Lords of Discipline (1980) by Pat Conroy, supposedly about the integration of the first
black cadets into The Citadel. The accuracy of the events depicted within is vehemently denied by
other alumni who attended at the time.
 Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981)
 Vasily Aksyonov's Say Cheese (1983) recounts in a fictionalized form the story of
the Metropol anthology by Soviet writers, the first project of its kind not subject to censorship.
 Queenie (1985) by Michael Korda, nephew of Alexander Korda and the actress Merle Oberon.
In the novel, Queenie Kelley, a girl of Indian and Irish descent, is based on Oberon, who went to
great lengths to disguise her mixed-race background.
 Dominick Dunne's novels depict various upheavals in high society, with many thinly veiled
prominent persons among the casts of characters. Among the novels and respective cases
alluded to are The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1985) (the shooting of Belair Stud owner William
Woodward, Jr. by his wife, Ann Arden Woodward); An Inconvenient Woman (1990) (the Alfred S.
Bloomingdale/Vicki Morgan affair and ensuing scandal); and A Season in Purgatory (1993)
(the Michael Skakel/Martha Moxley murder case). Dunne's last work, "Too Much Money",
published posthumously (2009), is a quasi-autobiographical thinly veiled roman à clef. He became
reluctant to use real names after he was sued for defamation in the Chandra Levy matter.
Interestingly, Dunne comes out of the closet through the protagonist in this book.
 Postcards from the Edge (1987) by Carrie Fisher describes her substance abuse and often-
strained relationship with her mother, Debbie Reynolds.
 Story of My Life (1988) by Jay McInerney implies that the cause of protagonist Alison Poole's
"cocaine-addled, sexually voracious" behavior is her father's abuse, including the murder of her
prize jumping horse. McInerney has stated in interviews that Poole was based on his former
girlfriend, Lisa Druck, later known as Rielle Hunter.
 The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O'Brien is considered a truthful if knowingly distorted
account of O'Brien's experiences in theVietnam War and subsequent methods of coping with war's
aftermath.
 Stephen Fry's The Liar (1991)
 Part 1 of PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (1991) by Dr. Alexander and Ann Shulgin is a
fictionalized autobiography of the couple (Part 2 is non-fiction).
 Primary Colors (1996) about Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, published anonymously but
later confirmed to have been written by Joe Klein.
 Mona Simpson's A Regular Guy (1996) is a fictionalized version of the life of her biological
brother, Apple Computers co-founder Steve Jobs.[6]
 Part 1 of TiHKAL: The Continuation (1997) by Dr. Alexander and Ann Shulgin continues the
fictionalized autobiography begun in PiHKAL(Part 2 is non-fiction).
 Ravelstein (2000) by Saul Bellow is a thinly disguised memoir of his friendship with Allan
Bloom. His Humboldt's Gift (1975), is about his friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz.
 The Devil Wears Prada (2003) about a woman constantly bullied by her boss while working as
an assistant at a fashion magazine. Although author Lauren Weisberger worked as an assistant
at Vogue magazine, she denies that the book's antagonist, Miranda Priestly, is modeled after the
magazine's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
 2666 (2004) by Roberto Bolaño, which places the hundreds of real rape/murders in Juárez,
Mexico in a fictional border-town in the State of Sonora (west of Juárez).
 Lunar Park (2005) by Bret Easton Ellis is partly a ghost story and an autobiographical novel
describing his early years of fame and difficult relationship with his father.
 The Washingtonienne (2005) based on author Jessica Cutler's affairs with various men while
a congressional intern in Washington, D.C.
 Empress Bianca (2005) by Lady Colin Campbell was pulped after objections by Lily Safra's
lawyer; it was republished in a revised version.
 The Ghost (2007) written by novelist Robert Harris in which the character of Adam Lang is
loosely based on Harris' friend, former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Director Roman Polanski turned
the book into the movie The Ghost Writer, in which the character is played by Pierce Brosnan
 The Society of Judas: A Novel by Charles T. Murr (2009)

[edit]Verse and drama

This section requires expansion.

 The Rape of the Lock (1714) by Alexander Pope, inspired by a story recounted by his friend
involving stolen hair.

 Le Roi s'amuse, by Victor Hugo

 Rigoletto
 Betrayal, by Harold Pinter, is closely based on his affair with Joan Bakewell
 Dreamgirls, a musical based on the career of The Supremes
 Mozart Was a Red, a morality play inspired by author Murray Rothbard's meetings with Ayn
Rand.

[edit]See also
Novels portal

 Allegory

 Autobiographical novel
 Film à clef
 Literary technique
 Semi-fiction

[edit]References

1. ^ "The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature" By Steven R. Serafin, Alfred

Bendixen, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, ISBN 0-8264-1777-9,

9780826417770, pg. 525

2. ^ "Cambridge paperback guide to literature in English" by Ian Ousby, Cambridge

University Press, 1996

3. ^ The Modernist roman à clef and Cultural Secrets, or I Know That You Know That I Know

That You Know" by M. Boyde, University of Wollongong, 2009

4. ^ The Modernist roman à clef and Cultural Secrets, or I Know That You Know That I Know

That You Know" by M. Boyde, University of Wollongong, 2009

5. ^ So I Don't Write About Heroes: An Interview with Philip K. Dick Uwe Anton, Werner

Fuchs, Frank C. Bertrand, SF EYE #14, Spring 1996, pp. 37-46

6. ^ "Prospero’s Tempestuous Family," by Maureen Dowd. In The New York Times, 11

October 2011.

 Amos, William (1985) The Originals: Who's Really Who in Fiction. London: Cape ISBN 0-
7221-1069-3
 Busby, Brian (2003) Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit. Toronto: Knopf
Canada ISBN 0-676-97579-8

Cloisonné
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ming Dynasty cloisonné enamel bowl, using nine colors of enamel.

Chinese cloisonné enamel incenseburner, 17th-18th centuries

Cloisonné is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects, in recent centuries usingvitreous
enamel, and in older periods also inlays of cut gemstones, glass, and other materials. The resulting
objects can also be called cloisonné. The decoration is formed by first adding compartments
(cloisons in French[1]) to the metal object by soldering or adhering silver or gold wires or thin strips
placed on their edges. These remain visible in the finished piece, separating the different
compartments of the enamel or inlays, which are often of several colors. Cloisonné enamel objects are
worked on with enamel powder made into a paste, which then needs to be fired in a kiln.

The technique was in ancient times mostly used for jewellery and small fittings for clothes, weapons or
similar small objects decorated with geometric or schematic designs, with thick cloison walls. In
the Byzantine Empire techniques
using thinner wires were developed to allow more pictorial
images to be produced, mostly used for religious images and jewellery, and now always
using enamel. By the 14th century this enamel technique had spread to China, where it
was soon used for much larger vessels such as bowls and vases; the technique remains
common in China to the present day, and cloisonné enamel objects using Chinese-derived
styles were produced in the West from the 18th century.
 Contents
[hide]

1 History

o 1.1 Early cloisonné techniques

o 1.2 Cloisonné enamel

2 Modern cloisonné enamel process

3 Examples of cloisonné work

o 3.1 Enamel

o 3.2 Gems, glass

4 Gallery

5 Notes

6 References

7 External links

[edit]History

8th (?) century Anglo-Saxon sword hilt fitting, gold with gemstone inlay of garnet. From the Staffordshire Hoard,
found in 2009, and not fully cleaned.
Byzantine cloisonné enamel plaque of St. Demetrios, c. 1100, using the new thin-wire technique. The lettering
uses champlevétechnique.

[edit]Early cloisonné techniques

Cloisonné first developed in the jewellery of the ancient Near East, typically in very small pieces such
as rings, with thin wire forming the cloisons. In the jewellery of Ancient Egypt, including thepectoral
jewels of the Pharaohs, thicker strips form the cloisons, which remain small.[2] In Egypt gemstones and
enamel-like materials sometimes called "glass-paste" were both used. [3]Cloisonné spread to
surrounding cultures and a particular type, often known as garnet cloisonnéis widely found in
the Migration Period art of the "barbarian" peoples of Europe, who used gemstones, especially red
garnets, as well as glass and enamel, with small thick-walled cloisons. Red garnets and gold made an
attractive contrast of colours, and for Christians the garnet was a symbol of Christ. This type is now
thought to have originated in the Late Antique Eastern Roman Empire and to have initially reached the
Migration peoples as diplomatic gifts of objects probably made in Constantinople, then copied by their
own goldsmiths.[4] Glass-paste cloisonné was made in the same periods with similar results - compare
the gold Anglo-Saxon fitting with garnets (right) and the Visigothic brooch with glass-paste in the
gallery.[5] Thick ribbons of gold were soldered to the base of the sunken area to be decorated to make
the compartments, before adding the stones or paste. [6][7] Sometimes compartments filled with the
different materials of cut stones or glass and enamel are mixed to ornament the same object, as in the
purse-lid from Sutton Hoo.[8] In the Byzantine world the technique was developed into the thin-wire
style suitable only for enamel described below, which was imitated in Europe from
about Carolingian period onwards.

[edit]Cloisonné enamel
The earliest surviving cloisonné pieces are rings in graves from 12th century BC Cyprus, using very
thin wire.[9] Subsequently enamel was just one of the fillings used for the small thick-walled small
cloisons of the Late Antique and Migration Period style described above. From about the 8th
century, Byzantine art began again to use much thinner wire more freely to allow much more complex
designs to be used, with larger and less geometric compartments, which was only possible using
enamel.[10] These were still on relatively small objects, although numbers of plaques could be set into
larger objects, such as the Pala d'Oro, the altarpiece in Saint Mark's Cathedral, Venice. Some objects
combined thick and thin cloisons for varied effect. [11] The designs often (as at right) contained a
generous background of plain gold, as in contemporaryByzantine mosaics. The area to be enamelled
was stamped to create the main depression, pricked to help the enamel adhere, and the cloisons
added.[12]
From Byzantium or the Islamic world the technique reached China in the 13-14th centuries; the first
written reference is in a book of 1388, where it is called "Dashi ('Muslim') ware". No Chinese pieces
clearly from the 14th century are known, the earliest datable pieces being from the reign of the Xuande
Emperor (1425–35), which however show a full use of Chinese styles suggesting considerable
experience in the technique.[13] It was initially regarded with suspicion by Chinese connoisseurs, firstly
as being foreign, and secondly as appealing to feminine taste. However by the beginning of the 18th
century the Kangxi Emperor had a cloisonné workshop among the many Imperial factories. The most
elaborate and highly-valued Chinese pieces are from the early Ming Dynasty, especially the reigns of
the Xuande Emperor and Jingtai Emperor (1450–57), although 19th century or modern pieces are far
more common. The Chinese industry seems to have benefited from a number of skilled Byzantine
refugees fleeing the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. In much Chinese cloisonné blue is usually the
predominant colour, and the Chinese name for the technique, jingtailan ("Jingtai blue ware"), refers to
this, and the Jingtai Emperor. Quality began to decline in the 19th century. Initially
heavy bronze or brass bodies were used, and the wires soldered, but later much
lighter copper vessels were used, and the wire glued on before firing.[14][15] The enamels compositions
and the pigments change with time.

In Byzantine pieces, and even more in Chinese work, the wire by no means always encloses a
separate color of enamel. Sometime a wire is used just for decorative effect, stopping in the middle of
a field of enamel, and sometimes the boundary between two enamel colors is not marked by a wire. In
the Byzantine plaque at right the first feature may be seen in the top wire on the saint's black sleeve,
and the second in the white of his eyes and collar. Both are also seen in the Chinese bowl illustrated at
top right.

Chinese cloisonné is the best known enamel cloisonné, though the Japanese produced large
quantities from the mid-19th century, of very high technical quality. [16] In Japan cloisonné enamels are
known as 'Shippo'. Russian cloisonné from the Tsarist era is also highly prized by collectors, especially
from the House of Fabergé or Khlebnikov, and the French and other nations have produced small
quantities. Chinese cloisonné is sometimes confused with Canton enamel, a similar type of enamel
work that is painted on freehand and does not utilize partitions to hold the colors separate.

In medieval Western Europe cloisonné enamel technique was gradually overtaken by the rise
of champlevé enamel, where the spaces for the enamel to fill are created by making recesses (using
various methods) into the base object, rather than building up compartments from it, as in cloisonné.
Later techniques were evolved that allowed the enamel to be painted onto a flat background without
running. Plique-à-jour is a related enameling technique which uses clear enamels and no metal
backplate, producing an object that has the appearance of a miniature stained glass object - in effect
cloisonné with no backing. Plique-a'-jour is usually created on a base of mica or thin copper which is
subsequently peeled off (mica) or etched away with acid (copper).

Other ways of using the technique have been developed, but are of minor importance. In 19th century
Japan it was used on pottery vessels with ceramic glazes, and it has been used with lacquer and
modern acrylic fillings for the cloisons.[17] A version of cloisonné technique is often used for lapel
badges, logo badges for many objects such as cars, including BMW models, and other applications,
though in these the metal base is normally cast with the compartments in place, so the use of the term
cloisonne', though common, is questionable. That technique is correctly referred by goldsmiths,
metalsmiths and enamellists as champlevé.

A large collection of 150 Chinese cloisonné pieces is at the G.W. Vincent Smith Art
Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts.

[edit]Modern cloisonné enamel process

Adding cloisons according to the pattern previously transferred to the workpiece

Adding frit with dropper after sintering cloisons. Upon completion the piece will be fired, then ground (repeating as
necessary) then polished and electroplated

First the object to be decorated is made or obtained; this will normally be made by different
craftspeople. The metal usually used for making the body is copper, since it is cheap, light and easily
hammered and stretched, but bronze, silver or other metals may be used. Cloisonné wire is made from
pure silver or gold and is usually about .010 x .040 inches in cross section; brass and occasionally
copper can also be used. It is bent into shapes that define the colored areas. The bends are all done at
right angles, so that the wire does not curve up. This is done with small pliers, tweezers, and custom-
made jigs. The cloisonné wire pattern may consist of several intricately constructed wire patterns that
fit together into a larger design. Solder can be used to join the wires, but this causes the enamel to
discolor and form bubbles later on. Most existing Byzantine enamels have soldered cloisons, however
the use of solder to adhere the cloison wires has fallen out of favor due to its difficulty, with the
exception of some "purist contemporary enamellists" who create fine watch faces and high quality very
expensive jewelry. Instead of soldering the cloisons to the base metal, the base metal is fired with a
thin layer of clear enamel. The cloisonné wire is glued to the enamel surface with gum tragacanth.
When the gum has dried, the piece is fired again to fuse the cloisonné wire to the clear enamel. The
gum burns off, leaving no residue.

Vitreous enamels in the different colors are ground to fine powders in an agate or porcelain mortar and
pestle, then washed to remove the impurities that would discolor the fired enamel. Each color of
enamel is prepared this way before it is used and then mixed with a very dilute solution of gum
tragacanth. The vitreous compound consists of silica nitre and lead oxide to which metallic oxide is
added for coloring. Using fine spatulas, brushes or droppers, the enameler places the fine colored
powder into each cloison. The piece is left to dry completely before firing, which is done by putting the
article, with its enamel fillings, in a kiln. The enamel in the cloisons will sink down a lot after firing, due
to melting and shrinkage of the granular nature of the glass powder, much as sugar melting in an oven.
This process is repeated until all cloisons are filled to the top of the wire edge.

Three styles of cloisonné are most often seen: concave, convex, and flat. The finishing method
determines this final appearance.[18] With concave cloisonné the cloisons are not completely filled.
Capillary action causes the enamel surface to curve up against the cloisonné wire when the enamel is
molten, producing a concave appearance. Convex cloissoné is produced by overfilling each cloison, at
the last firing. This gives each color area the appearance of slightly rounded mounds. Flat cloisonné is
the most common. After all the cloisons are filled the enamel is ground down to a smooth surface with
lapidary equipment, using the same techniques as are used for polishing cabochon stones. The top of
the cloisonné wire is polished so it is flush with the enamel and has a bright lustre. Some cloisonné
enamel is electroplated with a thin film of gold, which will not tarnish as silver does.

[edit]Examples of cloisonné work

[edit]Enamel

 The 8th century Irish Ardagh Chalice

 The Alfred Jewel, a 9th-century Anglo-Saxon ornament

 The Holy Crown of Hungary with Byzantine plaques, mostly 11th century.
 The Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire with Byzantine plaques
 The Khakhuli triptych, a large gold altarpiece with over 100 Georgian and Byzantine plaques,
dating from the 8th to 12th centuries, said to be the largest enamelled work of art in the world.
 the eyes of the 10th century Golden Madonna of Essen
 The 12th century Mosan Stavelot Triptych, combining cloisonné and champlevé work.

[edit]Gems, glass

 The Pectoral of Tutankhamun, (image), and several others.

 The 5th century grave goods of Childeric I, last pagan king of the Franks, died c.481
 The 5th century Germanic Treasure of Pouan
 The 6th century Merovingian Treasure of Gourdon

[edit]Gallery

Pectoral of Senusret II, from his daughter's grave. Cloisonné inlays on gold of carnelian, feldspar,

garnet, turquoise, lapis lazuli.

Visigothic 6th c. eagle-fibula, from Spain with glass-paste inlay.

 

Qing Dynasty cloisonné dish

A Chinese cloisonnestupa dated to the reign of the Qianlong Emperor(1735-1796)

Chinese enameled and gilt candlestick from the 18th or 19th century, Qing Dynasty

St George slaying the Dragon, 15th century cloisonné enamel on gold. (National Art Museum of Georgia).
 

Detail showing pattern and partially completed cloisons

Modern cloisonné enamel beads

Harley-Davidson "100th Anniversary" fuel tank cloisonné on a 2003 Dyna Low Rider

[edit]Notes

1. ^ In French "cloison" is a general word for "compartment" or "partition" or "cell", in English

the word is normally only used in the specialized context of cloisonné work, and apparently

dentistry (OED, "Cloison")

2. ^ Clark, 67-8. For an example see Pectoral and Necklace of Sithathoryunet Metropolitan

Museum

3. ^ Egyptian Paste article from Ceramics Today;. See alsoEgyptian faience. There are

disputes as to whether, or when, such materials were fired with the object, or fired separately first

and then cut into pieces to be inlaid like gems. It seems both methods may have been used. See

Day, Enamelling, 7-10

4. ^ Late Antiquity, 464. See here for scientific materials analysis

5. ^ Harden 72-3
 6. ^ Youngs, 173

7. ^ Green, 87-88

8. ^ Gardner. British Museum, Sutton Hoo purse-lid

9. ^ Michaelides, Panicos, The Earliest Cloisonne Enamels from Cyprus, article from Glass

on Metal, the Enamellist's Magazine, April 1989, online, see also

10. ^ The date of the change is uncertain, partly because Early Byzantine enamels were

much forged in 19th century Russia, rather confusing historians.

11. ^ Ross, 217

12. ^ Ross 99, describing what appear to be trainee pieces in bronze, never completed.

13. ^ Sullivan, 239. See also Dillon ref below.

14. ^ Dillon, 58-59

15. ^ Orange Coast, 95

16. ^ V&A

17. ^ Carpenter

18. ^ Enamels Enameling Enamelists G.L. Matthews pp 146-147

[edit]References

 Carpenter, Woodrow, Cloisonné Primer, from Glass on Metal, the Enamellist's Magazine,
June 1995, online

 Clark, Grahame, Symbols of Excellence: Precious Materials as Expressions of Status,

Cambridge University Press, 1986, ISBN 0521302641, 9780521302647, google books
 Cosgrove, Maynard Giles, The enamels of China and Japan, champlevé and cloisonné,
London, Hale, 1974.
 Dillon, Michael, China: a historical and cultural dictionary, Routledge, 1998, ISBN
0700704396, 9780700704392, Google books
 Gardner's Art Through the Ages, [1]
 Green: Charles Green, Barbara Green, Sutton Hoo: the excavation of a royal ship-burial, 2nd
Edition, Seafarer Books, 1988, ISBN 0850362415, 9780850362411, Google books
 Harden, Donald B., Dark-age Britain, Taylor & Francis, 1956
 Late antiquity: a guide to the postclassical world, various authors, Harvard University Press
reference library, Harvard University Press, 1999, ISBN 0674511735, 9780674511736,Google
books
 Kırmızı Burcu, Colomban Philippe, Béatrice Quette, On-site Analysis of Chinese Cloisonné
Enamels from 15th to 19th century, Journal of Raman Spectroscopy 41 (2010) 780-
790. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jrs.2516/abstract
 Orange Coast Magazine September 1982
 Ross, Marvin C., Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Medieval Antiquities: Jeweelry,
Enamels, and art of the Migration Period,Dumbarton Oaks, 2006, ISBN 088402301X,
9780884023012, Google books
 Sullivan, Michael, The arts of China, 4th edn, University of California Press, 1999, ISBN
0520218779, 9780520218772, Google books
 Susan Youngs (ed), "The Work of Angels", Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork, 6th-9th
centuries AD, 1989, British Museum Press, London, ISBN 0714105546
 "Japanese Cloisonné: the Seven Treasures". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2009-08-
30.

 Chinese Cloisonné, Department of Asian Art, in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–2004
 An Interview with Contemporary Enamel Artist Laura Zell Demonstrating Basic Cloisonné
Techniques

Rorschach test
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Rorschach Test" redirects here. For the band, see Rorschach Test (band).

Rorschach test

Diagnostics

The first of the ten cards in the Rorschach test, with the occurrence of the most
statistically frequent details indicated.[1][2] The images themselves are only one
component of the test, whose focus is the analysis of the perception of the images.
29% 18% 6%

MeSH D012392

The Rorschach test (German pronunciation: [ˈʁoːɐʃax]; also known as the Rorschach inkblot test,the

Rorschach technique, or simply the inkblot test) is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions
of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both.

Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional

functioning. It has been employed to detect underlyingthought disorder, especially in cases where patients

are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly.[3] The test is named after its creator, Swiss

psychologist Hermann Rorschach.

In the 1960s, the Rorschach was the most widely used projective test.[4] In a national survey in the U.S., the

Rorschach was ranked eighth among psychological tests used in outpatient mental health facilities.[5] It is the

second most widely used test by members of the Society for Personality Assessment, and it is requested by

psychiatrists in 25% of forensic assessmentcases,[5] usually in a battery of tests that often include the MMPI-

2 and the MCMI-III.[6] In surveys, the use of Rorschach ranges from a low of 20% by correctional

psychologists[7] to a high of 80% by clinical psychologists engaged in assessment services, and 80%

of psychologygraduate programs surveyed teach it.[8]

Although the Exner Scoring System (developed since the 1960s) claims to have addressed and often

refuted many criticisms of the original testing system with an extensive body of research,[9]some researchers

continue to raise questions. The areas of dispute include the objectivity of testers, inter-rater reliability, the

verifiability and general validity of the test, bias of the test's pathology scales towards greater numbers of

responses, the limited number of psychological conditions which it accurately diagnoses, the inability to

replicate the test's norms, its use in court-ordered evaluations, and the proliferation of the ten inkblot

images, potentially invalidating the test for those who have been exposed to them.[10]
 Contents

[hide]

1 History

2 Method

o 2.1 Features or categories

o 2.2 Exner scoring system

o 2.3 Cultural differences

o 2.4 Neurology

3 The ten inkblots

4 Prevalence

o 4.1 United States

5 Controversy

o 5.1 Test materials

o 5.2 Illusory and invisible correlations

o 5.3 Tester projection

o 5.4 Validity

o 5.5 Reliability

o 5.6 Population norms

o 5.7 Applications

o 5.8 Protection of test items and ethics

6 See also

7 Notes

8 References

9 External links

History
Hermann Rorschach created the Rorschach inkblot test in 1921.

Using interpretation of "ambiguous designs" to assess an individual's personality is an idea that goes back

to Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. Interpretation of inkblots was central to a game from the late 19th

century. Rorschach's, however, was the first systematic approach of this kind.[11]

It has been suggested that Rorschach's use of inkblots may have been inspired by German doctorJustinus

Kerner who, in 1857, had published a popular book of poems, each of which was inspired by an accidental

inkblot.[12] French psychologist Alfred Binet had also experimented with inkblots as a creativity test,[13] and,

after the turn of the century, psychological experiments where inkblots were utilized multiplied, with aims

such as studying imagination and consciousness.[14]

After studying 300 mental patients and 100 control subjects, in 1921 Rorschach wrote his
bookPsychodiagnostik, which was to form the basis of the inkblot test (after experimenting with several

hundred inkblots, he selected a set of ten for their diagnostic value),[15] but he died the following year.

Although he had served as Vice President of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society, Rorschach had difficulty in

publishing the book and it attracted little attention when it first appeared.[16]

In 1927, the newly-founded Hans Huber publishing house purchased Rorschach's

book Psychodiagnostik from the inventory of Ernst Bircher.[17] Huber has remained the publisher of the test

and related book, with Rorschach a registered trademark of Swiss publisher Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe

AG.[18] The work has been described as "a densely written piece couched in dry, scientific terminology".[19]

After Rorschach's death, the original test scoring system was improved by Samuel Beck, Bruno Klopfer and

others.[20] John E. Exnersummarized some of these later developments in the comprehensive system, at the

same time trying to make the scoring more statistically rigorous. Some systems are based on the

psychoanalytic concept of object relations. The Exner system remains very popular in the United States,

while in Europe other methods sometimes dominate,[21][22] such as that described in the textbook by Evald

Bohm, which is closer to the original Rorschach system and rooted more deeply in the

original psychoanalysis principles.[citation needed]

Method

The tester and subject typically sit next to each other at a table, with the tester slightly behind the subject.
[23]
This is to facilitate a "relaxed but controlled atmosphere". There are ten official inkblots, each printed on a

separate white card, approximately 18x24 cm in size.[24] Each of the blots has near perfect bilateral

symmetry. Five inkblots are of black ink, two are of black and red ink and three are multicolored, on a white

background.[25][26][27] After the test subject has seen and responded to all of the inkblots (free

association phase), the tester then presents them again one at a time in a set sequence for the subject to

study: the subject is asked to note where he sees what he originally saw and what makes it look like that
(inquiry phase). The subject is usually asked to hold the cards and may rotate them. Whether the cards are

rotated, and other related factors such as whether permission to rotate them is asked, may expose

personality traits and normally contributes to the assessment.[28] As the subject is examining the inkblots, the

psychologist writes down everything the subject says or does, no matter how trivial. Analysis of responses is

recorded by the test administrator using a tabulation and scoring sheet and, if required, a separate location

chart.[23]

The general goal of the test is to provide data about cognition and personality variables such as motivations,

response tendencies, cognitive operations, affectivity, and personal/interpersonal perceptions. The

underlying assumption is that an individual will class external stimuli based on person-specific perceptual

sets, and including needs, base motives, conflicts, and that this clustering process is representative of the

process used in real-life situations.[29] Methods of interpretation differ. Rorschach scoring systems have been

described as a system of pegs on which to hang one's knowledge of personality.[30] The most widely used

method in the United States is based on the work of Exner.

Administration of the test to a group of subjects, by means of projected images, has also occasionally been

performed, but mainly for research rather than diagnostic purposes.[23]

Test administration is not to be confused with test interpretation:

"The interpretation of a Rorschach record is a complex process. It requires a wealth of knowledge

concerning personality dynamics generally as well as considerable experience with the Rorschach method

specifically. Proficiency as a Rorschachadministrator can be gained within a few months. However, even

those who are able and qualified to become Rorschachinterpreters usually remain in a "learning stage" for a

number of years."[23]

Features or categories

The interpretation of the Rorschach test is not based primarily on the contents of the response, i.e., what the

individual sees in the inkblot (the content). In fact, the contents of the response are only a comparatively

small portion of a broader cluster of variables that are used to interpret the Rorschach data: for instance,

information is provided by the time taken before providing a response for a card can be significant (taking a

long time can indicate "shock" on the card).[31] as well as by any comments the subject may make in addition

to providing a direct response.[32]

In particular, information about determinants (the aspects of the inkblots that triggered the response, such as

form and color) and location(which details of the inkblots triggered the response) is often considered more

important than content, although there is contrasting evidence.[33][34] "Popularity" and "originality" of

responses [35] can also be considered as basic dimensions in the analysis.[36]

Content

This section requires expansion.

Content is classified in terms of "human", "nature", "animal", "abstract", etc., as well as for statistical

popularity (or, conversely, originality).[37]

More than any other feature in the test, content response can be controlled consciously by the subject, and

may be elicited by very disparate factors, which makes it difficult to use content alone to draw any

conclusions about the subject's personality; with certain individuals, content responses may potentially be

interpreted directly, and some information can at times be obtained by analyzing thematic trends in the

whole set of content responses (which is only feasible when several responses are available), but in general

content cannot be analyzed outside of the context of the entire test record.[38]

Location

This section requires expansion.

The basis for the response is usually the whole inkblot, a detail (either a commonly or an uncommonly

selected one), or the negative spacearound or within the inkblot.[24]

Determinants

Systems for Rorschach scoring generally include a concept of "determinants": these are the factors that

contribute to establish the similarity between the inkblot and the subject's content response about it, and

they can represent certain basic experiential-perceptual attitudes, showing aspects of the way a subject

perceives the world. Rorschach's original work used only form, color and movement; currently, another

major determinant considered is shading,[39] which was inadvertently introduced by poor printing of the

inkblots (which originally featured uniform saturation), and subsequently recognized as significant by

Rorschach himself.[40][41][42]

Form is the most common determinant, and is related to intellectual processes; color responses often

provide direct insight into emotional life. Shading and movement have been considered more ambiguously,

both in definition and interpretation: Rorschach originally disregarded shading (which was originally not even

present on the cards, being a result of the print process),[43] and he considered movement as only actual

experiencing of motion, while others have widened the scope of this determinant, taking it to mean that the

subject sees something "going on".[44]

More than one determinant can contribute to the formation of the subject's percept, and fusion of two

determinants is taken into account, while also assessing which of the two constituted the primary contributor

(e.g. "form-color" implies a more refined control of impulse than "color-form"). It is, indeed, from the relation

and balance among determinants that personality can be most readily inferred.[44]
Exner scoring system

The Exner scoring system, also known as the Rorschach Comprehensive System (RCS),[45] is the standard

method for interpreting the Rorschach test. It was developed in the 1960s by Dr. John E. Exner, as a more

rigorous system of analysis. It has been extensively validated and shows high inter-rater reliability.[9][46] In

1969, Exner published The Rorschach Systems, a concise description of what would be later called "the

Exner system". He later published a study in multiple volumes called The Rorschach: A Comprehensive

system, the most accepted full description of his system.

Creation of the new system was prompted by the realization that at least five related, but ultimately different

methods were in common use at the time, with a sizeable minority of examiners not employing any

recognized method at all, basing instead their judgment on subjective assessment, or arbitrarily mixing

characteristics of the various standardized systems.[47]

The key components of the Exner system are the clusterization of Rorschach variables and a sequential

search strategy to determine the order in which to analyze them,[48] framed in the context of standardized

administration, objective, reliable coding and a representative normative database.[49] The system places a

lot of emphasis on a cognitive triad of information processing, related to how the subject processes input

data, cognitive mediation, referring to the way information is transformed and identified, and ideation.[50]

In the system, responses are scored with reference to their level of vagueness or synthesis of multiple

images in the blot, the location of the response, which of a variety of determinants is used to produce the

response (i.e., what makes the inkblot look like what it is said to resemble), the form quality of the response

(to what extent a response is faithful to how the actual inkblot looks), the contents of the response (what the

respondent actually sees in the blot), the degree of mental organizing activity that is involved in producing

the response, and any illogical, incongruous, or incoherent aspects of responses. It has been reported that

popular responses on the first card include bat, badge and coat of arms.[30]

Using the scores for these categories, the examiner then performs a series of calculations producing a

structural summary of the test data. The results of the structural summary are interpreted using existing

research data on personality characteristics that have been demonstrated to be associated with different

kinds of responses.

With the Rorschach plates (the ten inkblots), the area of each blot which is distinguished by the client is

noted and coded – typically as "commonly selected" or "uncommonly selected". There were many different

methods for coding the areas of the blots. Exner settled upon the area coding system promoted by S. J.

Beck (1944 and 1961). This system was in turn based upon Klopfer's (1942) work.

As pertains to response form, a concept of "form quality" was present from the earliest of Rorschach's

works, as a subjective judgment of how well the form of the subject's response matched the inkblots
(Rorschach would give a higher form score to more "original" yet good form responses), and this concept

was followed by other methods, especially in Europe; in contrast, the Exner system solely defines "good

form" as a matter of word occurrence frequency, reducing it to a measure of the subject's distance to the

population average.[51]

Cultural differences

Comparing North American Exner normative data with data from European and South American subjects

showed marked differences in some features, some of which impact important variables, while others (such

as the average number of responses) coincide.[52] For instance, texture response is typically zero in

European subjects (if interpreted as a need for closeness, in accordance with the system, a European would

seem to express it only when it reaches the level of a craving for closeness),[53] and there are fewer "good

form" responses, to the point where schizophrenia may be suspected if data were correlated to the North

American norms.[54] Form is also often the only determinant expressed by European subjects;[55] while color

is less frequent than in American subjects, color-form responses are comparatively frequent in opposition to

form-color responses; since the latter tend to be interpreted as indicators of a defensive attitude in

processing affect, this difference could stem from a higher value attributed to spontaneous expression of

emotions.[53]

The differences in form quality are attributable to purely cultural aspects: different cultures will exhibit

different "common" objects (French subjects often identify a chameleon in card VIII, which is normally

classed as an "unusual" response, as opposed to other animals like cats and dogs; in Scandinavia,

"Christmas elves" (nisser) is a popular response for card II, and "musical instrument" on card VI is popular

for Japanese people),[56] and different languages will exhibit semantic differences in naming the same object

(the figure of card IV is often called a troll by Scandinavians and an ogre by French people).[57] Many of

Exner's "popular" responses (those given by at least one third of the North American sample used) seem to

be universally popular, as shown by samples in Europe, Japan and South America, while specifically card

IX's "human" response, the crab or spider in card X and one of either the butterfly or the bat in card I appear

to be characteristic of North America.[57][58]

Form quality, popular content responses and locations are the only coded variables in the Exner systems

that are based on frequency of occurrence, and thus immediately subject to cultural influences; therefore,

cultural-dependent interpretation of test data may not necessarily need to extend beyond these components.
[59]

The cited language differences mean that it's imperative for the test to be administered in the subject's

native language or a very well mastered second language, and, conversely, the examiner should master the

language used in the test. Test responses should also not be translated into another language prior to

analysis except possibly by a clinician mastering both languages. For example, a bow tie is a frequent
response for the center detail of card III, but since the equivalent term in French translates to "butterfly tie",

an examiner not appreciating this language nuance may code the response differently from what is

expected.[60]

Neurology

Research using card III have found that ‘‘unique responses’’ are found in people with larger amygdalas. The

researchers note, "Since previous reports have indicated that unique responses were observed at higher

frequency in the artistic population than in the non-artistic normal population, this positive correlation

suggests that amygdalar enlargement in the normal population might be related to creative mental

activity."[61]

The ten inkblots

Below are the ten inkblots of the Rorschach test printed in Rorschach's Rorschach Test – Psychodiagnostic
Plates,[62] together
with the most frequent responses for either the whole image or the most
prominent details according to various authors.
Card Popular responses[63][64][65] Comments[66][67]
When
seeing card I,
subjects often
inquire on how
they should
proceed, and
questions on
what they are
allowed to do
with the card
(e.g. turning it)
are not very
Beck: bat, butterfly, moth significant.
Piotrowski: bat (53%), butterfly (29%) Being the first
Dana (France): butterfly (39%) card, it can
provide clues
about how
subjects tackle a
new and stressful
task. It is not,
however, a card
that is usually
difficult for the
subject to handle,
having readily
available popular
responses.
Beck: two humans The red details
Piotrowski: four-legged animal (34%, gray parts) of card II are
Dana (France): animal: dog, elephant, bear (50%, gray) often seen as
blood, and are
the most
distinctive
features.
Responses to
 them can provide
indications about
how a subject is
likely to manage
feelings of anger
or physical harm.
This card can
induce a variety
of sexual
responses.
Card III is
typically
perceived to
contain two
humans involved
in some
interaction, and
Beck: two humans (gray) may provide
Piotrowski: human figures (72%, gray) information
Dana (France): human (76%, gray) about how the
subject relates
with other people
(specifically,
response latency
may reveal
struggling social
interactions).
Card IV is
notable for its
dark color and its
shading (posing
difficulties for
depressed
subjects), and is
generally
perceived as a
big and
sometimes
threatening
figure;
compounded
with the common
impression of the
Beck: animal hide, skin, rug subject being in
Piotrowski: animal skin, skin rug(41%) an inferior
Dana (France): animal skin (46%) position
("looking up") to
it, this serves to
elicit a sense of
authority. The
human or animal
content seen in
the card is almost
invariably
classified as male
rather than
female, and the
qualities
expressed by the
subject may
indicate attitudes
toward men and
 authority.
Because of this
Card IV is often
called "The
Father Card".[68]
Card V is an
easily elaborated
card that is not
usually perceived
as threatening,
and typically
instigates a
"change of pace"
in the test, after
Beck: bat, butterfly, moth the previous
Piotrowski: butterfly (48%), bat (40%) more challenging
Dana (France): butterfly (48%), bat (46%) cards. Containing
few features that
generate
concerns or
complicate the
elaboration, it is
the easiest blot to
generate a good
quality response
about.
Texture is the
dominant
characteristic
of card VI,
which often
elicits association
related to
interpersonal
closeness; it is
Beck: animal hide, skin, rug specifically a
"sex card", its
Piotrowski: animal skin, skin rug(41%)
likely sexual
Dana (France): animal skin (46%) percepts being
reported more
frequently than
in any other card,
even though
other cards have
a greater variety
of commonly
seen sexual
contents.
Beck: human heads or faces(top) Card VII can be
Piotrowski: heads of women or children (27%, top) associated with
Dana (France): human head (46%, top) femininity (the
human figures
commonly seeing
in it being
described as
women or
children), and
function as a
"mother card",
where difficulties
in responding
may be related to
 concerns with the
female figures in
the subject's life.
The center detail
is relatively often
(though not
popularly)
identified as a
vagina, which
make this card
also relate to
feminine
sexuality in
particular.
People often
express relief
about card VIII,
which lets them
relax and
respond
effectively.
Similar to card V,
it represents a
"change of
pace"; however,
the card
introduces new
Beck: animal: not cat or dog(pink) elaboration
Piotrowski: four-legged animal (94%, pink) difficulties, being
Dana (France): four-legged animal (93%, pink) complex and the
first multi-
colored card in
the set.
Therefore,
people who find
processing
complex
situations or
emotional stimuli
distressing or
difficult may be
uncomfortable
with this card.
Beck: human (orange) Characteristic
Piotrowski: none of card IX is
Dana (France): none indistinct form
and diffuse,
muted chromatic
features, creating
a general
vagueness. There
is only one
popular response,
and it is the least
frequent of all
cards. Having
difficulty with
processing this
card may
indicate trouble
dealing with
unstructured
 data, but aside
from this there
are few particular
"pulls" typical of
this card.
Card X is
structurally
similar to card
VIII, but its
uncertainty and
complexity are
reminiscent of
card IX: people
who find it
difficult to deal
with many
Beck: crab, lobster, spider(blue)
concurrent
crab, spider (37%, blue), stimuli may not
Piotrowski: rabbit head (31%, light green), particularly like
caterpillars, worms, snakes (28%, deep this otherwise
green)
pleasant card.
Dana (France): none
Being the last
card, it may
provide an
opportunity for
the subject to
"sign out" by
indicating what
they feel their
situation is like,
or what they
desire to know.
Prevalence

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (September 2010)

United States

The Rorschach test is used almost exclusively by psychologists. In a survey done in the year 2000, 20% of

correctional psychologists used the Rorschach while 80% used the MMPI.[7] Forensic psychologists use the

Rorschach 36% of the time.[69] In custody cases, 23% of psychologists use the Rorschach to examine a

child.[70] Another survey found that 124 out of 161 (77%) of clinical psychologists engaging in assessment

services utilize the Rorschach,[71] and 80% of psychology graduate programs teach its use.[8] Another study

found that its use by clinical psychologists was only 43%, while it was used less than 24% of the time by

school psychologists.[69]

Controversy

Some skeptics consider the Rorschach inkblot test pseudoscience,[10][72] as several studies suggested that

conclusions reached by test administrators since the 1950s were akin to cold reading.[73] In the 1959 edition

of Mental Measurement Yearbook, Lee Cronbach (former President of the Psychometric Society and
American Psychological Association)[74] is quoted in a review: "The test has repeatedly failed as a prediction

of practical criteria. There is nothing in the literature to encourage reliance on Rorschach interpretations." In

addition, major reviewer Raymond J. McCall writes (p. 154): "Though tens of thousands of Rorschach tests

have been administered by hundreds of trained professionals since that time (of a previous review), and

while many relationships to personality dynamics and behavior have been hypothesized, the vast majority of

these relationships have never been validated empirically [sic], despite the appearance of more than 2,000

publications about the test."[75] A moratorium on its use was called for in 1999.[76]

A 2003 report by Wood and colleagues had more mixed views: "More than 50 years of research have

confirmed Lee J. Cronbach's (1970) final verdict: that some Rorschach scores, though falling woefully short

of the claims made by proponents, nevertheless possess "validity greater than chance" (p. 636). [...] "Its

value as a measure of thought disorder in schizophrenia research is well accepted. It is also used regularly

in research on dependency, and, less often, in studies on hostility and anxiety. Furthermore, substantial

evidence justifies the use of the Rorschach as a clinical measure of intelligence and thought disorder."[77]

Test materials

The basic premise of the test is that objective meaning can be extracted from responses to blots of ink which

are supposedly meaningless. Supporters of the Rorschach inkblot test believe that the subject's response to

an ambiguous and meaningless stimulus can provide insight into their thought processes, but it is not

clear how this occurs. Also, recent research shows that the blots are not entirely meaningless, and that a

patient typically responds to meaningful as well as ambiguous aspects of the blots.[9] Reber (1985) describes

the blots as merely ".. the vehicle for the interaction .." between client and therapist, concluding: ".. the

usefulness of the Rorschach will depend upon the sensitivity, empathy and insightfulness of the tester totally

independently of the Rorschach itself. An intense dialogue about the wallpaper or the rug would do as well

provided that both parties believe."[78]

Illusory and invisible correlations

In the 1960s, research by psychologists Loren and Jean Chapman showed that at least some of the

apparent validity of the Rorschach was due to an illusion.[79][80] At that time, the five signs most often

interpreted as diagnostic of homosexuality were 1) buttocks and anuses; 2) feminine clothing; 3) male or

female sex organs; 4) human figures without male or female features; and 5) human figures with both male

and female features.[80][81] The Chapmans surveyed 32 experienced testers about their use of the Rorschach

to diagnose homosexuality. At this time homosexuality was regarded as a psychopathology, and the

Rorschach was the most popular projective test.[4] The testers reported that homosexual men had shown the

five signs more frequently than heterosexuals.[80][82] Despite these beliefs, analysis of the results showed that

heterosexual men are just as likely to report these signs, so they are totally ineffective for identifying
homosexuals.[79][81][82] The five signs did, however, match the guesses students made about which imagery

would be associated with homosexuality.[81]

The Chapmans investigated the source of the testers' false confidence. In one experiment, students read

through a stack of cards, each with a Rorschach blot, a sign and a pair of "conditions" (which might include

homosexuality). The information on the cards was fictional, although subjects were told it came from case

studies of real patients.[79] The students reported that the five invalid signs were associated with

homosexuality, even though the cards had been constructed so there was no association at all.[81][82] The

Chapmans repeated this experiment with another set of cards, in which the association was negative; the

five signs were never reported by homosexuals. The students still reported seeing a strong positive

correlation.[4][82] These experiments showed that the testers' prejudices could result in them "seeing" non-

existent relationships in the data. The Chapmans called this phenomenon "illusory correlation" and it has

since been demonstrated in many other contexts.[79][80]

A related phenomenon called "invisible correlation" applies when people fail to see a strong association

between two events because it does not match their expectations.[80] This was also found in clinicians'

interpretations of the Rorschach. Homosexual men are more likely to see a monster on Card IV or a part-

animal, part-human figure in Card V.[4][81] Almost all of the experienced clinicians in the Chapmans' survey

missed these valid signs.[4][79] The Chapmans ran an experiment with fake Rorschach responses in which

these valid signs were always associated with homosexuality. The subjects missed these perfect

associations and instead reported that invalid signs, such as buttocks or feminine clothing, were better

indicators.[79]

In 1992, the psychologist Stuart Sutherland argued that these artificial experiments are easier than the real-

world use of the Rorschach, and hence they probably underestimated the errors that testers were

susceptible to. He described the continuing popularity of the Rorschach after the Chapmans' research as a

"glaring example of irrationality among psychologists".[79]

Tester projection

Some critics argue that the testing psychologist must also project onto the patterns. A possible example

sometimes attributed to the psychologist's subjective judgement is that responses are coded (among many

other things), for "Form Quality": in essence, whether the subject's response fits with how the blot actually

looks. Superficially this might be considered a subjective judgment, depending on how the examiner has

internalized the categories involved. But with the Exner system of scoring, much of the subjectivity is

eliminated or reduced by use of frequency tables that indicate how often a particular response is given by

the population in general.[9] Another example is that the response "bra" was considered a "sex" response by

male psychologists, but a "clothing" response by females.[83] In Exner's system, however, such a response is

always coded as "clothing" unless there is a clear sexual reference in the response.[9]
Third parties could be used to avoid this problem, but the Rorschach's inter-rater reliability has been

questioned. That is, in some studies the scores obtained by two independent scorers do not match with

great consistency.[84] This conclusion was challenged in studies using large samples reported in 2002.[85]

Validity

When interpreted as a projective test, results are poorly verifiable. The Exner system of scoring (also known

as the "Comprehensive System") is meant to address this, and has all but displaced many earlier (and less

consistent) scoring systems. It makes heavy use of what factor (shading, color, outline, etc.) of the inkblot

leads to each of the tested person's comments. Disagreements about test validity remain: while the Exner

proposed a rigorous scoring system, latitude remained in the actual interpretation, and the clinician's write-

up of the test record is still partly subjective.[86] Reber (1985) comments ".. there is essentially no evidence

whatsoever that the test has even a shred of validity."[78]

Nevertheless, there is substantial research indicating the utility of the measure for a few scores. Several

scores correlate well with generalintelligence. Interestingly, one such scale is R, the total number of

responses; this reveals the questionable side-effect that more intelligent people tend to be elevated on many

pathology scales, since many scales do not correct for high R: if a subject gives twice as many responses

overall, it is more likely that some of these will seem "pathological". Also correlated with intelligence are the

scales for Organizational Activity, Complexity, Form Quality, and Human Figure responses.[87] The same

source reports that validity has also been shown for detecting such conditions as schizophrenia and

other psychotic disorders; thought disorders; and personality disorders (includingborderline personality

disorder). There is some evidence that the Deviant Verbalizations scale relates to bipolar disorder. The

authors conclude that "Otherwise, the Comprehensive System doesn't appear to bear a consistent

relationship to psychological disorders or symptoms, personality characteristics, potential for violence, or

such health problems as cancer".[88] (Cancer is mentioned because a small minority of Rorschach

enthusiasts have claimed the test can predict cancer.)[89]

Reliability

It is also thought that the test's reliability can depend substantially on details of the testing procedure, such

as where the tester and subject are seated, any introductory words, verbal and nonverbal responses to

subjects' questions or comments, and how responses are recorded. Exner has published detailed

instructions, but Wood et al.[83] cites many court cases where these had not been followed. Similarly, the

procedures for coding responses are fairly well specified but extremely time-consuming leaving them very

subject to the author's style and the publisher to the quality of the instructions (such as was noted with one

of Bohm's textbooks in the 1950s[90]) as well as clinic workers (which would include examiners) being

encouraged to cut corners[91][92]

US Courts have challenged the Rorschach as well. Jones v Apfel (1997) stated (quoting from Attorney's

Textbook of Medicine) that Rorschach "results do not meet the requirements of standardization, reliability, or

validity of clinical diagnostic tests, and interpretation thus is often controversial".[93] In State ex rel

H.H. (1999) where under cross examination Dr. Bogacki stated under oath "many psychologists do not

believe much in the validity or effectiveness of the Rorschach test"[93] and US v Battle (2001) ruled that the

Rorschach "does not have an objective scoring system." [93]

Population norms
This section may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve this article
to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. The talk page may
contain suggestions. (September 2010)

Another controversial aspect of the test is its statistical norms. Exner's system was thought to possess

normative scores for various populations. But, beginning in the mid-1990s others began to try to replicate or

update these norms and failed. In particular, discrepancies seemed to focus on indices

measuring narcissism, disordered thinking, and discomfort in close relationships.[94] Lillenfeld and

colleagues, who are critical of the Rorschach, have stated that this proves that the Rorschach tends to

"overpathologise normals".[94] Although Rorschach proponents, such as Hibbard,[95] suggest that high rates of

pathology detected by the Rorschach accurately reflect increasing psychopathology in society, the

Rorschach also identifies half of all test-takers as possessing "distorted thinking",[96] a false positive rate

unexplained by current research.

The accusation of "over-pathologising" has also been considered by Meyer et al. (2007). They presented an

international collaborative study of 4704 Rorschach protocols, obtained in 21 different samples, across 17

different countries, with only 2% showing significant elevations on the index of perceptual and thinking

disorder, 12% elevated on indices of depression and hyper-vigilance and 13% elevated on persistent stress

overload—all in line with expected frequencies among nonpatient populations.[97]

Applications

The test is also controversial because of its common use in court-ordered evaluations.[citation needed] This

controversy stems, in part, from the limitations of the Rorschach, with no additional data, in making official

diagnoses from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).[98] Irving B. Weiner (co-

developer with John Exner of the Comprehensive system) has stated that the Rorschach "is a measure of

personality functioning, and it provides information concerning aspects of personality structure and dynamics

that make people the kind of people they are. Sometimes such information about personality characteristics

is helpful in arriving at a differential diagnosis, if the alternative diagnoses being considered have been well

conceptualized with respect to specific or defining personality characteristics".[99] In the vast majority of

cases, anyway, the Rorschach test wasn't singled out but used as one of several in a battery of tests,[6] and

despite the criticism of usage of the Rorschach in the courts, out of 8,000 cases in which forensic
psychologists used Rorschach-based testimony, the appropriateness of the instrument was challenged only

six times, and the testimony was ruled inadmissible in only one of those cases.[8]One study has found that

use of the test in courts has increased by three times in the decade between 1996 and 2005, compared to

the previous fifty years.[6] Others however have found that its usage by forensic psychologists has

decreased.[100]

Protection of test items and ethics

Psychologists object to the publication of psychological test material out of concerns that a patient's test

responses will be influenced ("primed") by previous exposure. The Canadian Psychological

Association takes the position that, "Publishing the questions and answers to any psychological test

compromises its usefulness" and calls for "keeping psychological tests out of the public domain."[101] The

same statement quotes their president as saying, "The CPA's concern is not with the publication of the cards

and responses to the Rorschach test per se, for which there is some controversy in the psychological

literature and disagreement among experts, but with the larger issue of the publication and dissemination of

psychological test content".

However, from a legal standpoint, the Rorschach test images have in fact been in the public domain for

many years in most countries, particularly those with a copyright term of up to 70 years post mortem

auctoris. They have been in the public domain in Hermann Rorschach's native Switzerland since at least

1992 (70 years after the author's death, or 50 years after the cut-off date of 1942), according to Swiss

copyright law.[102][103] They are also in the public domain under United States copyright law [104][105] where all

works published before 1923 are considered to be in the public domain.[106]

This means that the Rorschach images may be used by anyone for any purpose. William Poundstone was,

perhaps, first to make them public in his 1983 book Big Secrets, where he also described the method of

administering the test.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has a code of ethics that supports "freedom of inquiry and

expression" and helping "the public in developing informed judgments".[107] It claims that its goals include

"the welfare and protection of the individuals and groups with whom psychologists work", and it requires that

psychologists "make reasonable efforts to maintain the integrity and security of test materials". The APA has

also raised concerns that the dissemination of test materials might impose "very concrete harm to the

general public". It has not taken a position on publication of the Rorschach plates but noted "there are a

limited number of standardized psychological tests considered appropriate for a given purpose".[108] Exner

and others have claimed that the Rorschach test is capable of detectingsuicidality.[109][110][111] A public

statement by the British Psychological Society expresses similar concerns about psychological tests (without

mentioning any test by name) and considers the "release of [test] materials to unqualified individuals" to be

misuse if it is against the wishes of the test publisher.[112] In his book Ethics in psychology, Koocher (1998)
notes that some believe "reprinting copies of the Rorschach plates ... and listing common responses

represents a serious unethical act" for psychologists and is indicative of "questionable professional

judgment".[113] Other professional associations, such as the Italian Association of Strategic Psychotherapy,

recommend that even information about the purpose of the test or any detail of its administration should be

kept from the public, even though "cheating" the test is held to be practically impossible.[114]

On September 9, 2008, Hogrefe attempted to claim copyright over the Rorschach ink blots during fillings of a

complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization against the Brazilian psychologist Ney Limonge.

These complaints were denied.[115] Further complaints were sent to two other websites that contained

information similar to the Rorschach test in May 2009 by legal firm Schluep and Degen of Switzerland.[116][117]

Psychologists have sometimes refused to disclose tests and test data to courts when asked to do so by the

parties citing ethical reasons; it is argued that such refusals may hinder full understanding of the process by

the attorneys, and impede cross-examination of the experts. APA ethical standard 1.23(b) states that the

psychologist has a responsibility to document processes in detail and of adequate quality to allow

reasonable scrutiny by the court.[118]

Controversy ensued in the psychological community in 2009 when the original Rorschach plates and

research results on interpretations were published in the "Rorschach test" article on Wikipedia.[119] Hogrefe &

Huber Publishing, a German company that sells editions of the plates, called the publication "unbelievably

reckless and even cynical of Wikipedia" and said it was investigating the possibility of legal action.[119]Due to

this controversy an edit filter was temporarily established on Wikipedia to prevent the removal of the plates.
[120]

Dr. James Heilman, a Canadian emergency room physician involved in the debate, compared it to the

publication of the eye test chart: though people are likewise free to memorize the eye chart before an eye

test, its general usefulness as a diagnostic tool for eyesight has not diminished.[119] For those opposed to

exposure, publication of the inkblots is described as a "particularly painful development", given the tens of

thousands of research papers which have, over many years, "tried to link a patient’s responses to certain

psychological conditions."[119]Controversy over Wikipedia's publication of the inkblots has resulted in the blots

being published in other locations, such as The Guardian[121] and The Globe And Mail.[122]

Publication of the Rorschach images is also welcomed by critics who consider the test to

be pseudoscience. Benjamin Radford, editor ofSkeptical Inquirer magazine, stated that the Rorschach "has

remained in use more out of tradition than good evidence" and was hopeful that publication of the test might

finally hasten its demise.[123]

See also

 Holtzman Inkblot Test – a similar inkblot test designed to correct the limitations of the Rorschach
 Pareidolia

 Picture Arrangement Test

 Thematic Apperception Test

Notes

1. ^ Santo Di Nuovo, Maurizio Cuffaro (2004). Il Rorschach in pratica : strumenti per la psicologia clinica

e l'ambito giuridico. Milano: F. Angeli. p. 147. ISBN 9788846454751.

2. ^ Fátima Miralles Sangro (1996). Rorschach : tablas de localización y calidad formal en una muestra

española de 470 sujetos. Madrid: Universidad Pontifícia Comillas. p. 71.ISBN 9788487840920.

3. ^ Gacano & J. Reid Meloy 1994[page needed]

4. ^ a b c d e Chapman, Loren J.; Chapman, Jean (1982). "Test results are what you think they are". In

Kahneman, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; Tversky, Amos. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 238–248. ISBN 0-521-28414-7

5. ^ a b Gacano & J. Reid Meloy 1994, p. 4

6. ^ a b c edited by Carl B. Gacono, F. Barton Evans ; with Lynne A. Gacono, Nancy Kaser-Boyd.

(2007). The handbook of forensic Rorschach psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

p. 80.ISBN 9780805858235.

7. ^ a b Raynor, Peter; McIvor, Gill (2008). Developments in Social Work Offenders (Research Highlights

in Social Work). London:Jessica Kingsley Publishers. p. 138. ISBN 1-84310-538-1.

8. ^ a b c Weiner & Greene 2007, p. 402

9. ^ a b c d e Exner, John E. (2002). The Rorschach: Basic Foundations and Principles of Interpretation:

Volume 1. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471386723.[page needed]

10. ^ a b Scott O. Lilienfeld, James M- Wood and Howard N. Garb:What's wrong with this

picture? Scientific American, May 2001

11. ^ Groth-Marnat 2003, p. 408

12. ^ Pichot P (1984). "Centenary of the birth of Hermann Rorschach. (S. Rosenzweig & E. Schriber,

Trans.)". Journal of Personality Assessment 48: 591–596.

13. ^ Herman Rorschach, M.D at mhhe.com

14. ^ Gerald Goldstein & Michel Hersen, ed (2000). Handbook of psychological assessment.

Amsterdam: Pergamon Press. p. 437.ISBN 9780080436456.

15. ^ Kumar N, Verma, Romesh. Textbook Of Statistics, Psychology & Education..

p. 225. ISBN 9788126114115.

16. ^ April 2, 1922: Rorschach Dies, Leaving a Blot on His Name at wired.com

17. ^ "About the Test". The International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods. Retrieved

2009-07-01.
18. ^ "Psychodiagnostics: A Diagnostic Test Based on Perception". Hogrefe, Cambridge. MA, ISBN 978-

3-456-83024-7. 1998. Retrieved 2009-07-07.[dead link]

19. ^ Acklin M. W., Oliveira-Berry J. (1996). "Return to the source: Rorschach's

Psychodiagnostics". Journal of Personality Assessment 67: 427–433.

20. ^ Exner Jr., John E.: "Obituary: Samuel J. Beck (1896–1980)", "American Psychologist", 36(9)

21. ^ a cura di Franco Del Corno, Margherita Lang (1989). Psicologia clinica. Milano: F. Angeli.

p. 302. ISBN 9788820498764. "Nonostante il Sistema Comprensivo di J.E. Exner rappresenti ai nostri giorni il

Metodo Rorschach più diffuso a livello mondiale, in Italia è ancora non molto utilizzato. Although J. E. Exner's

Comprehensive Systems nowadays represents the most widely adopted method worldwide, it is not yet very

widespread in Italy."

22. ^ Dana 2000, p. 329 "Although it has enormously expanded throughout Europe [...] use of the RCS

remains, as it where, somewhat confidential in many countries."

23. ^ a b c d Klopfer & Davidson 1962

24. ^ a b Goldman 2000, p. 158

25. ^ Harry Bakwin, Ruth Mae Morris Bakwin (1960). Clinical management of behavior disorders in

children. Saunders. p. 249. "The Rorschach Test consists of 10 inkblots, printed on a white background and

mounted on cardboard 7 by 9% inches"

26. ^ Alfred M. Freedman, Harold I. Kaplan, Benjamin J. Sadock (1972). Modern synopsis of

Comprehensive textbook of psychiatry.Williams & Wilkins. p. 168. "The Rorschach test [...] consists of 10

symmetrical inkblots printed on a white background"

27. ^ Gardner Murphy, Lois Barclay Murphy, Theodore Mead Newcomb (1931). Experimental social

psychology: an interpretation of research upon the socialization of the individual. Harper & Brothers. "It consists

of ten irregular but symmetrical ink blots, five of them in blacks and grays, and five partially in colors, on a white

background."

28. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 214

29. ^ Groth-Marnat 2003, p. 407

30. ^ a b Mons, W. (1950). Principles and Practice Of the Rorschach Personality Test (2nd ed.). Faber.

pp. 30–31.

31. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 232

32. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 224.

33. ^ Eysenck, Michael W. (2004). Psychology : an international perspective. Hove: Psychology Press.

p. 458.ISBN 9781841693606.

34. ^ Eysenck, Michael W. (1998). Individual differences : normal and abnormal. Hove: Psychology

Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780863772573.

35. ^ edited by Cecil R. Reynolds and Randy W. Kamphaus (2003).Handbook of psychological and

educational assessment of children personality, behavior, and context. New York: Guilford Press.

p. 61. ISBN 9781572308848.

36. ^ Groth-Marnat 2003, pp. 423

37. ^ Pertti J. Pelto; Gretel H. Pelto (1996). Anthropological research : the structure of inquiry.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 90. ISBN 9780521292283.

38. ^ Schachtel 2001, pp. 258–261

39. ^ Schachtel 2001, pp. 76–78

40. ^ Schachtel 2001, p. 243

41. ^ Edward Aronow, Marvin Reznikoff (1976). Rorschach content interpretation. Grune and Stratton.

p. 7. ISBN 9780808909613. "The printer also reduced the blot cards in size and altered their colors. In addition

an imperfect printing process resulted in varieties of shading that were not originally intended by Rorschach

(Ellenberger, 1954)."

42. ^ Leichtman, Martin (1996). The Rorschach: a developmental perspective.

Routledge. ISBN 9780881631388. ""[...] the printing of the cards was more than unsatisfactory. The cards were

reduced in size, the colors changed and the original uniformity of the black areas was reproduced in a variety

of shades, delineating all kinds of vague forms. The printer probably did not expect congratulations for his

slovenly work, but as soon as Rorschach had seen the proofs he was seized by a renewed enthusiasm, and

understood at once the new possibilities the prints offered." (Ellenberger 1954, p. 206) Far from being outraged

that the integrity of his experiment was violated, Rorschach appreciated immediately that shading enriched the

test by further increasing the creative possibilities the cards afforded."

43. ^ Schachtel 2001, pp. 243

44. ^ a b . ISBN 9781406744408.

45. ^ Giuseppe Costantino, Richard H. Dana, Robert G. Malgady. (2007). TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story)

assessment in multicultural societies. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. p. 213.ISBN 9780805844511.

46. ^ Weiner 2003[page needed]

47. ^ Groth-Marnat 2003, pp. 406–407

48. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 61

49. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 59

50. ^ Ravaioli, Laura (2008). "Il test di Rorschach secondo il sistema comprensivo di Exner". Retrieved

2009-08-29.

51. ^ Dana 2000, pp. 337,338

52. ^ Dana 2000, p. 332

53. ^ a b Dana 2000, p. 335

54. ^ Dana 2000, p. 333

55. ^ Dana 2000, p. 334

56. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 53

57. ^ a b Dana 2000, p. 338,339,354

58. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 52

59. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 54

60. ^ Weiner 2003, p. 55

61. ^ Asari T, Konishi S, Jimura K, Chikazoe J, Nakamura N, Miyashita Y. (2010). Amygdalar

enlargement associated with unique perception. Cortex. 46:94–99. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2008.08.001PMID

18922517

62. ^ Rorschach, Hermann (1927). Rorschach Test – Psychodiagnostic Plates. Hogrefe. ISBN 3-456-

82605-2.

63. ^ Alvin G. Burstein, Sandra Loucks (1989). Rorschach's test: scoring and interpretation. New York:

Hemisphere Pub. Corp.. p. 72. ISBN 9780891167808.

64. ^ Piotrowski, Z. A. (1987). Perceptanalysis: The Rorschach Method Fundamentally Reworked,

Expanded and Systematized. Psychology Press. p. 107. ISBN 9780805801026.

65. ^ Dana 2000, p. 338

66. ^ Weiner & Greene 2007, pp. 390–395

67. ^ Weiner 2003, pp. 102–109

68. ^ Hayden, Brian C. (1981). "Rorschach Cards IV and VII Revisited".Journal of Personality

Assessment 45 (3): 226–229.doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa4503_1. PMID 7252752.

69. ^ a b Hughes; Gacono, Carl B.; Owen, Patrick F. (2007). "Current status of Rorschach assessment:

implications for the school psychologist". Psychology in the Schools 44 (3): 281.doi:10.1002/pits.20223.

70. ^ Butcher, James Neal (2009). Oxford Handbook of Personality Assessment (Oxford Library of

Psychology). Oxford University Press, USA. p. 290. ISBN 0-19-536687-5.

71. ^ Camara et al.; Nathan, Julie S.; Puente, Anthony E. (2000). "Psychological Test Usage: Implications

in Professional Psychology". Professional Psychology:Research and Practice 31: 131–154. doi:10.1037/0735-

7028.31.2.141.

72. ^ Pieter J.D., Drenth (2003). "Growing Anti-intellectualism in Europe: A Menace to Science" Annual

Report 2003. ALLEA (All European Academies). PDF

73. ^ James M. Wood, M. Teresa Nezworski, Scott O. Lilienfeld, & Howard N. Garb:The Rorschach

Inkblot Test, Fortune Tellers, and Cold Reading. Skeptical Inquirer magazine, Jul 2003.

74. ^ Alexander, Meredith (October 5, 2001). "Lee Cronbach, dead at 85". Stanford Report (Stanford

University School of Education)

75. ^ Robyn M, Dawes (1991). "Giving up Cherished Ideas: The Rorschach Ink Blot Test". Institute for

Psychological Therapies Journal 3 (4)

76. ^ Garb HN (December 1999). "Call for a moratorium on the use of the Rorschach Inkblot Test in

clinical and forensic settings".Assessment 6 (4): 313–8. doi:10.1177/107319119900600402.PMID 10539978.

77. ^ Wood, James M.; Nezworski, M. Teresa; Garb, Howard N. (2003)."What’s Right with the

Rorschach?". The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice 2 (2)

78. ^ a b Arthur S. Reber (1985). Penguin Dictionary of Psychology.Penguin Books.

p. 653. ISBN 9780140510799.

79. ^ a b c d e f g Sutherland 2007, pp. 117–120

80. ^ a b c d e Plous 1993, pp. 164–166

81. ^ a b c d e Hardman 2009, p. 57

82. ^ a b c d Fine 2006, pp. 66–70

83. ^ a b Wood 2003[page needed]

84. ^ Wood 2003, pp. 227–234

85. ^ Meyer G. J., Hilsenroth M. J., Baxter D., Exner J. E., Fowler J. C., Piers C. C., Resnick J. (2002).

"An examination of interrater reliability for scoring the Rorschach comprehensive system in eight data

sets". Journal of Personality Assessment 78 (2): 219–274.

86. ^ Goldman 2000, p. 159

87. ^ Wood 2003, Table 9.4

88. ^ Wood 2003, pp. 249–250

89. ^ Graves P.L., Thomas C.B., Mead L.A. (1991). "The Rorschach Interaction Scale as a potential

predictor of cancer" (PDF).Psychosomatic Medicine 48: 549–563.

90. ^ (1958) Journal of personality assessment Volumes 22-23; Page 462

91. ^ Lowrey, Lawson Gentry (1946) American journal of orthopsychiatry, Volume 16 American

Orthopsychiatric Association pg 732

92. ^ Buros, Oscar Krisen (1975) Personality tests and reviews: including an index to The mental

measurements yearbooks, Volume 1. Gryphon Press, pg Page 411

93. ^ a b c Gacono, Carl B., F. Barton Evans (2007) "The Handbook of Forensic Rorschach Assessment"

pg 83

94. ^ a b Lillenfeld, S.O., Wood, J.M., Garb, H.N.. The scientific status of projective

techniques, Psychological Science in the Public Interestv. 1, pp. 27–66, 2000.

95. ^ Hibbard, S.. A Critique of Lilienfeld et al.'s (2000) The Scientific status of Projective

Techniques, Journal of Personality Assessment v. 80, pp. 260–271, 2003.

96. ^ Rorschach Test: Discredited But Still Controversial. July 31, 2009

97. ^ Meyer, G.J., Erdberg, P., & Shaffer, T.W.. Toward international normative reference data for the

Comprehensive System, Journal of Personality Assessment v. 89(S1), S201–S206, 2007.

98. ^ American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th

ed.). Washington, DC.

99. ^ Weiner, Irving B. (1999). What the Rorschach Can do for you: Incremental validity in clinical

applications. Assessment 6. pp. 327–338.

100. ^ Garb HN, Wood JM, Lilienfeld SO, Nezworski MT (January 2005). "Roots of the Rorschach

controversy". Clin Psychol Rev 25 (1): 97–118. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2004.09.002. PMID 15596082.

101. ^ "Canadian Psychological Association Position on Publication and Dissemination of Psychological

Tests" (PDF). Canadian Psychological Association. August 4, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-08. "Publishing the

questions and answers to any psychological test compromises its usefulness."[dead link]

102. ^ "Copyright Durations Worldwide - EU Copyright". Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.

Retrieved 2009-08-26.[dead link]

103. ^ "Copyrights – Terms of Protection". Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property. Retrieved 2009-

08-26.

104. ^ Carol Forsloff (30 July 2009). "Rorschach Personality Test: Did Wikipedia Leak a ‘Cheat

Sheet’". Digital Journal.

105. ^ Noam Cohen (28 July 2009). "Has Wikipedia Created a Rorschach Cheat Sheet? Analyze

That". New York Times. "Because the Rorschach plates were created nearly 90 years ago, they have lost their

copyright protection in the United States."

106. ^ "Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States".Cornell Copyright Information Center.

1 January 2009.

107. ^ "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct".American Psychological Association.

2003-06-01. Retrieved 2009-06-23.

108. ^ "Statement on the Disclosure of Test Data". American Psychological Association. February 1996.

Retrieved 2009-08-09.

109. ^ Exner J.E., Wylie J. (1977). "Some Rorschach data concerning suicide". Journal of Personality

Assessment 41 (4): 339–348.

110. ^ Viglione D (1999). "A review of recent research addressing the utility of the

Rorschach". Psychological Assessment 11 (3): 251–265.

111. ^ Fowler, J. C., Piers, C., Hilsenroth, M. J., Holdwick, D. J., & Padawer, J. R. The Rorschach suicide

constellation: Assessing various degrees of lethality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 76 (2), 333–351.

112. ^ "Statement on the Conduct of Psychologists providing Expert Psychometric Evidence to Courts and

Lawyers". The British Psychological Society. 2007-10-15. Retrieved 2009-06-23.

113. ^ Koocher, Gerald P.; Keith-Spielgel, Patricia (1998). Ethics in psychology. New York: Oxford

University Press. pp. 159–160.ISBN 9780195092011.

114. ^ "Rorschach Test". Associazione Italiana di Psicoterapia Strategica Integrata. 21 July 2009.

Retrieved 2009-08-29. "Infatti il Rorschach porta con sé (dovrebbe portare) il riserbo assoluto su come si

somministra, sul suo significato generale e su quello delle tavole in particolare. [...] Tuttavia, al contrario di

quanto si possa credere, "mentire" al Rorschach è praticamente impossibile [...]"

115. ^ "WIPO Domain Name Decision: D2008-1206". Retrieved Oct 15, 2009.

116. ^ "extra.listverse.com".
 117. ^ "Online Rorschach Test: Legal Threats".

118. ^ Paul R. Lees-Haley, John C. Courtney (2000). "Are Psychologists Hiding Evidence? - A Need for

Reform". Claims magazine.

119. ^ a b c d A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?, The New York Times, July 28, 2009

120. ^ Heilman JM, Kemmann E, Bonert M, et al. (2011). "Wikipedia: a key tool for global public health

promotion". J. Med. Internet Res.13 (1): e14. doi:10.2196/jmir.1589. PMID 21282098.

121. ^ Ian Simple (29 July 2009). "Testing times for Wikipedia after doctor posts secrets of the Rorschach

inkblots". The Guardian.

122. ^ Patrick White (31 July 2009). "Rorschach and Wikipedia: The battle of the inkblots". The Globe And

Mail.(registration required)

123. ^ Radford, Benjamin (2009-07-31). "Rorschach Test: Discredited But Still Controversial". Live

Science (Imaginova Corp.). Retrieved 2009-09-01.

References

 Dana, Richard H. (2000). Handbook of cross-cultural and multicultural personality

assessment. Lawrence Erlbaum. ISBN 9780805827897.

 Exner, John E. (1995). The Rorschach: A Comprehensive System. Vol 1: Basic Foundations.

New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-55902-4.

 Fine, Cordelia (2006). A Mind of its Own: how your brain distorts and deceives. Cambridge, UK:

Icon books. ISBN 1840466782.OCLC 60668289.

 Gacano, Carl B.; J. Reid Meloy (1994). The Rorschach Assessment of Aggressive and

Psychopathic Personalities. Hillsdale, New Jersey Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum. ISBN 978-

0805809800.
 Goldman, Howard H. (2000). Review of general psychiatry. New York: Lange Medical

Books/McGraw-Hill, Medical Pub. Division.ISBN 9780838584347.

 Groth-Marnat, Gary (2003). Handbook of psychological assessment. John Wiley &

Sons. ISBN 9780471419792.

 Hardman, David (2009). Judgment and decision making: psychological perspectives. Wiley-

Blackwell. ISBN 9781405123983.

 Klopfer, B.; Davidson, H. H. (1962). The Rorschach Technique: An Introductory Manual. New

York: Harcourt, Brace & World. p. 245.ISBN 0-15-577873-0.

 Plous, Scott (1993). The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making. McGraw-

Hill. ISBN 9780070504776. OCLC 26931106.

 Rorschach, H. (1927). Rorschach Test – Psychodiagnostic Plates. Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe

Publishing Corp.. ISBN 3-456-82605-2.

 Rorschach, H. (1998). Psychodiagnostics: A Diagnostic Test Based on Perception (10th ed.).

Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe Publishing Corp..ISBN 978-3-456-83024-7.

 Schachtel, Ernest G. (2001). Experiential foundations of Rorschach's test. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic

Press. ISBN 9780881633542.

 Sutherland, Stuart (2007). Irrationality (2nd ed.). London: Pinter and

Martin. ISBN 9781905177073. OCLC 72151566.

 Weiner, Irving B. (2003). Principles of Rorschach interpretation. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence

Erlbaum. ISBN 9780805842326.

 Weiner, Irving B.; Greene, R.L. (2007). Handbook of Personality Assessment. John Wiley &

Sons. ISBN 0471228818.

 Wood, Jim; Nezworski, M. Teresa; Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Garb, Howard N. (2003). What's Wrong with

the Rorschach?. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780787960568.

Kemenche
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the village in Hungary, see Kemence.

Kamancheh

String instrument

Other names doksar, ıklık

Classification stringed

Hornbostel–Sachs classification 321.322

(Necked box lute)

Related instruments

lyra, vielle
Young kemenche player in Trabzon, 1910 postcard

The term kemenche or kamāncha (Adyghe: Шык1э пщын, Armenian: քամանչա k’amanča,Laz: Ç'ilili
- ჭილილი, Azerbaijani: kamança, Greek: Ποντιακή λύρα (Pontian Lyra) or Κεμεντζές,Persian:
‫کمانچه‬, Turkish: kemençe), is used to describe two types of three-stringed bowedmusical instruments:

1. a bottle-shaped lute, closely related to the Cappadocian Kemane, found in the Black Sea
region of Turkey, it is also known as the "kementche of Laz",Pontic kemenche or Iklık[1] and

2. a pear-shaped bowl lyre known as Classical kemenche (Turkish: Armudî kemençe), found
mainly in Istanbul and the Eastern regions of Turkey that is closely related[citation needed]to
the Greek: Byzantine lyra, (Turkish: Rum Kemençesi).

Both types of kemenche are played in the downright position, either by resting it on the knee when
sitting, or held in front of the player when standing. It is always played "braccio", that is, with the tuning
head uppermost. The kemenche bow is called the yay (Turkish: Yay) and the doksar (Greek:δοξάρι),
the Greek term for bow.
 Contents
[hide]

1 Etymology

2 Classical Kemenche

3 Kemenche of the Eastern Black Sea Region in Turkey

4 Tuning

5 Related Instruments

6 Notable kemençe virtuosi

7 References

8 See also

9 External links

o 9.1 Video

[edit]Etymology

Its name derives from the Persian Kamancheh, the name is Persian and means merely "small bow".
[2]
The classical kamancheh developed from its folk equivalent–and there’s still a lively tradition of folk
kamancheh in Iran today. The Turkish Karadeniz kemençe is played in theBlack Sea Region of Turkey.
[3]
Al-Kādirī, in his classification of musical instruments, mentioned the kemandje similar to the
Arabic rabab and the Byzantine lyra (Margaret J. Kartomi, 1990). In Greece and the Pontic Greek
diaspora, it is known as the lyra or the "kementzes", it is the main instrument used in Pontic music. The
kemence or Greek Pontian lyra, is very windspread musical instrument in Greece.[citation needed]

[edit]Classical Kemenche

Classical Kemenche (Armudî Kemençe)

side view
Smyrna style trio: K. Lambros,R. Eskenazi, A. Tomboulis (Athens, 1930)

The kemençe of Turkish classical music (Armudî kemençe) is a small instrument closely related [citation
needed]
to the Byzantine lyra (Turkish: Rum kemençe), 40-41 cm in length and 14-15 cm wide. Its pear-
shaped body, elliptical pegbox and neck are fashioned from a single piece of wood. Its sound-board
has two D-shaped soundholes of some 4x3 cm, approximately 25 mm apart, the rounded side facing
outwards. The bridge is placed between, one side resting on the face of the instrument and the other
on the sound post. A small hole 3-4 mm in diameter is bored in the back, directly below the bridge, and
a ‘back channel’ (‘sırt oluğu’) begins from a triangular raised area (‘mihrap’) which is an extension of
the neck, widens in the middle, and ends in a point near the tailpiece (“kuyruk takozu”) to which the gut
or metal strings are attached. There is no nut to equalize the vibrating lengths of the strings.

Kemenche in production

The pegs, which are 14-15 cm long, form a triangle on the head, the middle string being 37-40 mm
longer than the strings to either side of it. The vibrating lengths of the short strings are 25.5-26 cm. All
the strings are of gut but the yegâh string is silver-wound. Today players may use synthetic racquet
strings, aluminium-wound gut, synthetic silk or chromed steel violin strings.

Formerly the head, neck and back channel might be inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl or tortoise shell.
Some kemençes made for the palace or mansions by great makers such as Büyük İzmitli or Baron had
their backs and even the edges of the sound holes completely covered with such inlays with engraved
and inlaid motifs.
[edit]Kemenche of the Eastern Black Sea Region in Turkey

Kemençe in Turkey

The kemenche (Turkish: Kemençe, Karadeniz kemençesi Turkish pronunciation: [ke'mæntʃe]), lately
often called Iklık by Cuman-Kipchak Turks[4],Ç'ilili by Lazes and the Pontic lyre, used by the Greeks of
the Black Sea, is related to the Cappadocian Kemane[5], the European rebec and even the later
dancing master’s kit or pochette fiddle. While many folk fiddles from Southeastern Europe to the Indian
sub-continent, including the Indian sarangi and the Bulgarian gadulka, are fingered by pressure of the
finger nails of the left hand against the strings, there are others whose strings are depressed onto the
neck of the instrument by the player’s finger pads in the way violin strings are pressed, such as the
large Cappadocian kemane (see below and the kemenche. The kemenche may be a development of
an instrument which had an elongated water gourd for its body. The center of Kemenche playing
activity seems to have been the district of Trabzon and the contiguous areas of the districts to the west
and east of it as well as to the south, Giresun, Rize, and Gümüşhane, whose main town had been
called Arghyrόpolis. Also, Görele is a very important centre of kemençe. Every year, kemençe festivals
held in Görele. West past Tirebolu towards Giresun(Ancient name: Kerasounta), the number of
kemençe players begins to decrease and the lute as well as the violin (keman) and tambourine (tef)
begin playing a more important role. Further west into the districts of the Ordu and before reaching the
town of Samsun the kemençe has virtually disappeared. East of Trabzon, after Rize, the kemence
faces competition from the bagpipes (Karadeniz tulum).

[edit]Tuning

Pontian Lyra
# Part Name Meaning Function
1 Tepe, To Kifal Top, Head Peg holder (same as the body)
2 Kulak, Otia Fist, Ears Pegs
3 Boyun, Goula Neck Place for hand (same as the body)
4 Kravat, Spaler Bed, Slabbering bib Fingerboard
5 Kapak Cover Soundboard
6 Ses delikleri, Rothounia Sound holes, Nostrals Soundholes
7 Eşek, Gaidaron Donkey, Rider Bridge (pine)
8 Palikar Stalward Young Man Tailpiece
9 Gövde, Soma Body Body (plum, mulberry, walnut, juniper)
10 Solucan, Stoular Worm Sound post (inside)
11 Teller, Hordes Strings Strings

In classical use the three strings are usually tuned to the tonic, fourth and octave (yegâh (low re), rast
(sol) and neva (high re)). Other common tunings include: tonic-octave-high fourth, low fifth-tonic-fourth
and many others based on perfect fourths. Since the instrument was often played alone, the tuning
was often done according to the preference of the musician and his voice's range.

The musicians usually play two or all three strings at the same time, utilizing the open string(s) as a
drone. Sometimes they play the melody on two strings, giving a harmony in parallel fourths. They tend
to play with many trills and embellishments and with unusual harmonies.

[edit]Related Instruments

Instruments known as Kabak, Cepane, Kemane, Igil,Rabab, the Hegit of Hatay province, the Rubab of
Southeastern Turkey, the Kamancha of Azerbaijan and the Ghaychak, (Gicak, Giccek, Gijek, Gıçek, or
Cicak), as well as the Aylı Kopuz and the Igil, Iklig, Kiyak, Yık, Iyık or Ik among the central Asian Turks
all come from the same origins. The Kobyz is of special interest as it, like the Kemenche, has a body
entirely of wood.

The Kemane is a musical instrument from the area of Ata-Pazar-Poulantzaki-Ortou-Kerasounta in the

Black Sea, played by Kapadokes (the people whose origins are located in Kappadokia (a wide area in
Asia Minor). Its tuning is in fifths and it is without sympathetic strings. Kabak kemane is an instrument
without frets and produces chromatic sounds easily, a bowed Turkish folk instrument that shows
variation according to region.

The body, or tekne, is generally made from a vegetable gourd but wooden ones are also common. The
neck is made from hardwood, and the fingerboard is not fretted. A thin wooden or metal rod extends
from the lower end of the body, and this rests on the player's knee. This enables the player to move
the instrument while playing.

The wooden bow has horse hair attached, which is drawn across the strings to produce sound.
Traditionally, gut strings called kiriş were used, but modern day instruments use steel strings. The
instrument may also be played by plucking the strings.

The Chuniri (Georgian: ჭუნირი) is the Georgian spiked bowed lute with horsehair strings. It consists
of body cut out of a whole piece of fir or pine wood with neck attached, of birch or oak, on which the
head has two or three holes for tuning pegs. Its open side is covered with leather. A Rachian Chianuri
has a boat-like body and two strings a major third apart , while Khevsuretian and Tushetian Chianuris
have round bodies and three strings tuned to the first, second and third. The musician touches the
strings with finger-pads without touching the neck, giving the Chianuri a flageolet sound. The bow
touches all strings simultaneously.

The lyra (Latin: lira) of the Byzantine Empire was pear-shaped bowed string instrument similar
instrument to the Arab rebab, considered as the ancestor of many European bowed instruments such
as the rebec and the fiddle (Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009). The Persiangeographer Ibn
Khurradadhbih (d. 911) was the first to describe the Byzantine lyra as a typical Byzantine instrument
(Margaret J. Kartomi, 1990). Lyra is common until today, in variations, through a vast area of
the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Examples are the BulgarianGadulka, the Calabrian Lira in Italy
and the lyra of Crete, which is closely related to the bowed Byzantine lyra (9th. century-Persian
geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih,d. 911,Margaret J. Kartomi, 1990), and the Dodecanese, constitute of a
terminological survival relating to the performing method of the ancient Greek instrument, lyre.
The Calabrian Lira is an Italian folk fiddle with a short neck, built from one piece of solid wood, with a
pear-shaped back and three bowel chords. A common instrument in southern Italy: in Calabria there
are several different sizes and forms.
Vielle, vihuela, viol and fiddle. The vielle was, like the rebec, one of the most common bowed
instruments in Europe during the later Middle Ages. While the instrument's origins are hard to pinpoint,
the bow appears to have been used in Spain and Italy in the tenth century, based on the practice in
Arab (rebab) and Byzantine countries (lira).

The kamaicha is of special interest as it connects the Indian subcontinent to western Asia. The
kamaicha is a bowed lyre of the Monghniar people of west Rajasthan which borders on the Sind
province, now in Pakistan. The whole instrument is one piece of wood, the spherical bowl extended
into a neck and fingerboard; the resonator is covered with leather and the upper portion with wood.
There are four strings which are the main ones and there are a number of subsidiary ones passing
over a thin bridge.

Lijerica

The Lijerica- A Traditional Musical Instrument of the Croatian Adriatic. Among traditional Croatian
musical instruments, an exceptional place is held by a string instrument know in the Adriatic area as
the lira, lirica or, in the southern, Dubrovnik, area as the lijerica. It is a solo instrument whichmost often
accompanies a dance, less frequently singing. This instrument was user by traditional performers in
north-eastern Istria, on the northAdriatic islands (in particular on Losinj, Rab, Silba, and Olib), on all of
the Dalmatian islands, around Makarska, in the Neretva valley, aroundDubrovnik, on the Peljesac
peninsula, in the Zupa and the Konavli.[6]

The name "Shichepshin" is derived from two words Circassian: shicha - horse tail and pshina - a
musical instrument. It is called a "horse tail", because the strings and bow made of horsehair. In
ancient times this instrument was indispensable part of any kind of Circassian family holiday. It's
unusual sound is gently woven into the pattern of national melodies, giving it a unique flavor.
Shichepshin known in the North Caucasus since ancient times. There are Shichepshins in different
forms: kinzhaloobraznye, lodkoobraznye, oval trapezium. Shichepshin are made of ash or alder body
with a tool they have to be carved out of the wood. Decos, before the end of 18 century, were made
from sheep's skin. Nut was not, instead the string is pulled with a strap, which was changed by moving
Mensur.

[edit]Notable kemençe virtuosi

 Tuzcuoğlu Mehmet Ali (considered the best kemençe player ever. [citation needed])

 Kodalak Halil Agha

 Picoğlu Osman
 Katip Şadi
 Bahattin Çamurali
 Hüseyin Dilaver

[edit]References

 Özhan Öztürk (2005). Karadeniz: Ansiklopedik Sözlük Black Sea Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2
Cilt (2 Volumes). Heyamola Yayıncılık. İstanbul. ISBN 975-6121-00-9

 Margaret J. Kartomi: On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments. Chicago

Studies in Ethnomusicology, University of Chicago Press, 1990
 Petrides, Th. "Traditional Pontic dances accompanied by the Pontic lyra
 Images taken from www.pontian.info "Pontian Music"
(http://www.pontian.info/MUSIC/lyra.htm)
 The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments: Londra, 1984.
 Asuman Onaran: Kemençe Seslerinin Armonik Analizi, İstanbul, 1959.
 M. Nazmi Özalp: Türk Sanat Mûsikîsi Sazlarından Kemençe, Ankara, tarihsiz (1985’ten önce).
 Laurence Picken: Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey, Londra, 1975.
 Rauf Yekta: Türk Musikisi (çev: Orhan Nasuhioğlu), İstanbul, 1986.
 Curt Sachs: The History of Musical Instruments, New York, 1940.
 Hedwig Usbeck: “Türklerde Musıki Aletleri”, Musıki Mecmuası, no. 235 - 243, 1968 - 1969.
 "lira." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 28 Feb. 2009

1. ^ Çiçek, Seyfullah, Piçoğlu Osman, ISBN 994454330-6

 2. ^ {{cite journal|title=Middle East Focus|

url=http://www.thestrad.com/downloads/Kamancheh.pdf Strad|date=July 2007|pages=50–2|

quote=The Persian word for bow is kaman, and kamancheh is the diminutive form.

3. ^ Grand Larousse, Libraire Larousse, Page 6610

4. ^ Kıpçak Türkçesi Sözlüğü ISBN 9789751616743

5. ^ http://books.google.gr/books?

ei=g28sTuSpE4KZ8QOKlsmODA&ct=result&id=qLF24gGOvtcC&dq=Pontian+lyra+Cappadocian&

q=The+Pontic+Lyre+Used+by+the+Greeks+of+the+Black+Sea+and+Cappadocia

%2C+the+Pontic+lyre#search_anchorThe Pontic lyre,used by the Greeks of the Black Sea and

Cappadocia, page 73

6. ^ http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/5970/1/E-Lirica---A-Traditional-Musical-

Instrument.html

[edit]See also

 Byzantine lyra

 Cretan lyra
 Gadulka
 Gudok
 Ghaychak
 Gusle
 Rebab
 Kamancheh
 Kobyz
 Rebec
 igil
 Byzaanchy
 Huqin
 Violin family

[edit]External links

 www.kemenche.com Online News from Southeast Blacksea

 http://images.china.cn/images1/200707/400030.jpg
 William McClure Thomson, (1860): The Land and the Book: Or, Biblical Illustrations Drawn
from the Manners and Customs, the Scenes and Scenery, of the Holy Land Vol II, p. 578.
 An article about Pontic kemenche from famous virtuoso Th. Petrides
 All About the Pontians
 Kemenche Shop
 www.kemence.com
 Hand Made Classical Kemenche
 Kemenche video clips
 About kemenche
 Kabak Kemane
 Listen Kabak kemençe
 About Klassic kemençe (with illustrations)
 http://www.hangebi.ge/chunirien.htm
 http://www.hangebi.ge/afxarcaen.htm
 http://www.liuteriaetnica.com/
 http://www.passiondiscs.co.uk/articles/hungarian_folk_instruments2.htm#lyre
 http://muzmer.sdu.edu.tr/index.php?dosya=ykemanesi&tur=1
 http://muzmer.sdu.edu.tr/index.php?dosya=ykemanesi2&tur=1
 http://muzmer.sdu.edu.tr/index.php?dosya=iklik&tur=1
 http://muzmer.sdu.edu.tr/index.php?dosya=kemane&tur=1
 Shichepshin
 Shichepshin
 http://www.civilization.ca/arts/opus/opus211e.html
 Matthaios Tsahouridis - Kemenche Player
 http://khatylaev.sakhaopenworld.org/kyrympa.html
 Kemenche Components
 http://lh3.ggpht.com/_zZ1SbocnCdw/RyolBOzIGMI/AAAAAAAABhY/9-
AWww04NNM/tkemence.jpg
 Lyra (kemenche) Lessons
 Matthaios Tsahouridis

Champlevé
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
High-quality Mosan 12th century armlet, somewhat damaged, so showing the cast recesses for the enamel

Champlevé is an enamelling technique in the decorative arts, or an object made by that process, in
which troughs or cells are carved or cast into the surface of a metal object, and filled with vitreous
enamel. The piece is then fired until the enamel melts, and when cooled the surface of the object is
polished. The uncarved portions of the original surface remain visible as a frame for the enamel
designs; typically they are gilded in medieval work.[1]The name comes from the French for "raised
field", "field" meaning background, though the technique in practice lowers the area to be enamelled
rather than raising the rest of the surface.

The technique has been used since ancient times, though it is no longer among the most commonly
used enamelling techniques. Champlevé is suited to the covering of relatively large areas, and to
figurative images, although it was first prominently used in Celtic art for geometric designs.
InRomanesque art its potential was fully used, decorating caskets, plaques and vessels.

Champlevé is distinguished from the technique of cloisonné enamel in which the troughs are created
by soldering flat metal strips to the surface of the object. The difference between the techniques is
analogous to the woodworking techniques of intarsia and marquetry. It differs from thebasse-
taille technique, which succeeded it in the highest quality Gothic work, in that the bottoms of the
recesses for the enamel are rough, and so only opaque enamel colours are used. In basse-taille the
recesses are modelled, and translucent enamels are used, for more subtle effects, as in the 14th
century Parisian Royal Gold Cup.[2]
 Contents
[hide]

1 Early champlevé

2 Romanesque

3 Gallery

4 Notes

5 References

6 External links

[edit]Early champlevé

Celtic red enamel on horse-harness, Britain, c. AD 50

Enamel was first used on small pieces of jewellery, and has often disintegrated in ancient pieces that
have been buried. Consistent and frequent use of champlevé technique is first seen in the La Tène
style of early Celtic art in Europe, from the 3rd or 2nd century BC, where the predominant colour was a
red, possibly intended as an imitation of red coral (as used on the Witham Shield), and the base was
usually bronze. The "Insular Celts" of the British Isles made especially common use of the technique,
seen as highlights on the relief decoration of the Battersea Shield and other pieces.[3] However this
was technically not true enamel in the usual sense of the word, as the glass was only heated until it
became a soft paste before being pushed into place. This is sometimes informally known as "sealing-
wax" enamelling, and may be described as "glass inlay" or similar terms. True enamelling technique,
where glass paste is put into place and fired until it liquifies, was learnt from the Romans. [4] The earliest
literary description of enamel is from the Greek sophist Philostratus III, who wrote in his Icones (Bk I,
28), describing polychrome horse-harness: "It is said that the barbarians in the Ocean pour these
colours on heated bronze and that they adhere, become as hard as stone and preserve the designs
that are made on them".[5]
The Staffordshire Moorlands Pan, 2nd century AD Romano-British, with enamel in four colours.

Celtic curvilinear styles were highly effective in enamel, and were used throughout the Roman period
when they largely disappear in other media. The Staffordshire Moorlands Pan is a 2nd
century trulla with large enamel roundels in four colours of enamel, commissioned by or for Draco, a
soldier, possibly a Greek, as a souvenir of his service on Hadrian's Wall. It is one of a group of similar
enamelled vessels found in Britain and northern Gaul. Smaller items from similar contexts
include brooches and other jewellery, and mounts for horse harness as described by Philostratus.
Around the end of the Roman Empire new forms arose: the terminals of the increasingly
fancy penannular brooches of the British Isles become decorated with champlevé, as do other
fasteners and fittings, and the mounts of hanging bowls. These last have long puzzled art historians,
as not only is their purpose unclear, but they are mostly found in Anglo-Saxon and Viking contexts,
including three at Sutton Hoo, but their decoration uses predominantly Celtic motifs. One of the Sutton
Hoo bowls had been repaired, but in a different, Germanic, style. [6] Altogether, production of the
different types of hanging bowls covers the period 400-1100. [7] While the leading expert, Rupert Bruce-
Mitford, sees the bowls as the products of "Celtic" workshops, perhaps often in Ireland, in the same
period the use of large areas of champlevé in the most ornate Celtic brooches reduces, though gem-
like enamel highlights, some in millefiori, are still found. In Anglo-Saxon art, as in that of most of
Europe and the Byzantine world, this was the period when cloisonné technique dominated enamelling.

[edit]Romanesque

Elaborate Limoges ciborium, c. 1200

Champlevé is especially associated with Romanesque art, and many of the finest survivals of the style
feature the technique. There was a great increase in use of the technique in several areas in the late
11th century, just as the Romanesque style matured. The immediate source of the style remains
obscure; various exotic origins have been suggested, but the great expansion in the use of stained
glass at the same period is probably connected. Copper or bronze bases were normally used, which
were soft and easy to work, as well as relatively cheap, but as they discoloured in heat opaque
enamels needed to be used. Blue was now the dominant colour, as in stained glass; the best blues in
painting (whether on wall, panel or manuscript) were very expensive whereas in glass rich blues are
easily obtainable.

Mosan and Limoges enamels are the most famous, and the figures carved in the copper plate display
a superb sense of line. The Stavelot Triptych in New York is an example of the finest Mosan work, and
the Becket Casket in London a fine early piece from Limoges. The names of several Mosan goldsmith-
enamellers are known. Relief and fully modelled figures were also enamelled, and some metal bases
formed by hammering into moulds. The Limoges production increased steadily in quantity, and by the
Gothic period had declined in quality, but provided a fairly cheap product, especially of chasse caskets,
produced on a semi-industrial scale and exported all over Europe. Spanish enamels, not easily
distinguished from Limoges work, were also produced on a large scale. Mosan work was sometimes
on gold or silver-gilt, but in Limoges and Spain gilt-copper is usual, and much Mosan work uses this
too, as in the example illustrated. This example also shows the mixing of different colours and shades
within the same cell, here used throughout the design in a complex manner, whereas in the Limoges
examples below much less, and much simpler, use is made of this difficult technique. [8]

A similar technique was known as "shippou-zogan" in Japan, where it was considered a form
of damascening.

[edit]Gallery

Champlevé gilt-copperreliquary in typical "chasse" shape with scenes from the story ofThomas Beckett.

Made inSpain, also a centre of medieval enamelling.


Crozier, Limoges, 1st half of 13th century, withAnnunciation scene.

Detail from 13th century Limoges chasse, with a projecting modelled head on a flat background.

1554, later champlevé enamel plaque on copper,V&A Museum no. 4358-1857

Gilded silver, silver, champlevé enamel, glass paste (imitation ruby).Reliquary with the Man of Sorrows. The

Walters Art Museum.

[edit]Notes

1. ^ Osbourne, 332

2. ^ Osbourne, 332-333

3. ^ Campbell, 8-10, Osbourne, 332

4. ^ Youngs, 173
 5. ^ Campbell, 10

6. ^ Bruce-Mitford, 29-30

7. ^ Bruce-Mitford, 34, 43-44

8. ^ Osbourne, 332-333

[edit]References

 Bruce-Mitford, Rupert L. S. and Raven, Sheila, The Corpus of Late Celtic Hanging Bowls with
an account of the bowls found in Scandinavia, 2005, OUP

 Campbell, Marian. An Introduction to Medieval Enamels, 1983, HMSO for V&A

Museum, ISBN 0-11-290385-1
 Cosgrove, Maynard Giles, The enamels of China and Japan, champlevé and cloisonné,
London, Hale, 1974.
 Hildburgh, Walter Leo, Medieval Spanish enamels and their relation to the origin and the
development of copper champlevé enamels of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, London,
Oxford university press, 1936.
 Osborne, Harold (ed), The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts, 1975, OUP, ISBN 0-19-
866113-4
 O'Neill, J. P. and Egan T., (eds.), Enamels of Limoges, 1100-1350 (Metropolitan Museum of
Art exhibition catalogue), Yale, 1996.
 Susan Youngs (ed), "The Work of Angels", Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork, 6th-9th
centuries AD, 1989, British Museum Press, London, ISBN 0-7141-0554-6

[edit]External links

 "Champlevé enamelling 1100–1250 (with video of technique)". History, Periods &

Styles. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2011-04-03.