Time & Place

The Muromachi period (1333-1568) was established by Ashikaga Takauji, who set up his headquarters in the Muromachi section of Kyoto.

The Arctic coasts of Alaska and Canada are part of the Arctic, or North Pacific Rim, culture area.

The Southwest culture area encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah and includes parts of Colorado, Nevada, and California, in the United States, and northern Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico.

Lower Central America (eastern Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama) together with Colombia and Ecuador are often classified roughly together as the “intermediate area” between the larger culture areas of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Although the cultures that developed in this area were interrelated and experienced influences from both north and south, this occurred most significantly during the Inca Empire, or Late Horizon (1400-1532 CE).

In South America, the greatest concentration of cultural development occurred along the western edge of the continent. This geographic area is often referred to as the Andes, and distinctive cultural characteristics include: 1) the preservation of fragile materials—textiles, wood, and feathers

For 19th-century Americans it seemed everywhere one looked, from the tropics to the Arctic, from the Far East to the far west, to the heavens overhead, the perspective of the earth and the Universe was widening.In the plethora of names from many countries, one heroic leftover from the age of the Enlightenment loomed largest: Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the German naturalist, explorer, encyclopedist, thinker

In the second half of the 19th century, American silver manufacturers became regarded as among the best in the world. This marked a surprising shift in international recognition, as most American silverware produced before the 1840s was made in small shops for a local market, usually imitating fashionable European styles.