Coral Something Rich and Strange

Coral: Something Rich and Strange examines the enduring fascination with coral as a material, symbol and inspiration for artists, cultures and societies across the centuries. Published to coincide with the eponymous exhibition at Manchester Museum, but exceeding it in scope and content, this richly illustrated book assembles essays and concrete object stories by art historians, artists, biologists and historians of science, who provide a comprehensive exploration of coral's mythical and metamorphic qualities; its longstanding resistance to classification; its geological and architectural significance; its religious iconography; its magical and medical properties; its decorative appeal; and its sensitivity to climate change and pollution.

Marion Endt-Jones is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manchester.

Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introductory Essay
Marion Endt-Jones A monstrous transformation: coral in art and culture
Interview
Marion Endt-Jones Shared forms in nature: an interview with Gemma Anderson
Something Rich and Strange
1 Dmitri Logunov What are corals?
2 Dmitri Logunov Manchester Museum's coral collection
3 David Gelsthorpe Fossil corals in the UK
4 Bryan Sitch and Keith Sugden Perseus, Medusa and the birth of coral
5 Campbell Price Coral jewellery from Egypt
6 Melanie Giles The Danes Graves wheel-headed pin (The Yorkshire Museum)
7 Stephen Terence Welsh Red coral beads, Benin City (nineteenth century)
8 Henry McGhie The Challenger expedition
9 Henry McGhie Sydney Hickson (1859-1940)
10 Marion Endt-Jones Coral shrine from Trapani (c. 1650)
11 Gerhard Theewen Mark Dion, Blood-Coral (2011) The experiment: a recollection
12 Susannah Gibson Living rocks: the mystery of coral in the eighteenth century
13 James Delbourgo Expiscatus!
14 Alistair Sponsel Darwin's theory of coral reef formation
15 Katharine Anderson Victorian coral jewellery
16 Pandora Syperek The Blaschka glass models of marine invertebrates (c. 1860-1890)
17 Carol Mavor The ceaseless seas of magical, miraculous, marvellous coral
18 Patricia Allmer Eileen Agar, Coral, Seahorse (1935)
19 Donna Roberts David Gascoyne, Perseus and Andromeda (1936)
20 David Lomas Max Ernst, Antediluvian Landscape (1967)
21 David Lomas Pipilotti Rist, Sip My Ocean (1996)
22 Clare O'Dowd Mike Nelson, The Coral Reef (2000)
23 Marion Endt-Jones Hubert Duprat, Costa Brava Coral (1994-1998)
24 Marion Endt-Jones Mark Dion, Bone Coral (Phantom Museum) (2011)
25 Marion Endt-Jones Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic (2001-present)
26 Karen Casper Karen Casper, Underwater Love Meets Primal Futurism: Miss Coral (2012)
27 Marion Endt-Jones The Institute for Figuring's Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (2005-present)
Epilogue
Mark Dion Oceanophilia - Oceanocide
Contributors
Index