Video and Books Made By Hand: Art and Craft in the Heartland of New England Jim Partridge, Carol McNicoll, Richard Slee, Michael Rowe, Ann Sutton Portfolio Collection Artists at Work: New Technology in Textile and Fibre Art Threads of Faith: Recent Works from the Women of Color Quilters Network Weaving Tradition: Carol Cassidy and Woven Silks of Laos Sari to Sarong: Five Hundred Years of Indian and Indonesian Textile Exchange Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz Modern Glas in Nederland (Modern Glass in the Netherlands) 1880-1940 Bernhard Schobinger: Jewels Now! American Shino: The Glaze of a Thousand Faces Ceramic Trees of Life: Popular Art from Mexico Rookwood Pottery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Gerald and Virginia Gordon Collection The Craft and Art of Clay (Fourth Edition) Archive
	Made By Hand: Art and Craft in the Heartland of New England by Jeanne Braham, 2004, Commonwealth Editions, Beverly, MA, 978-921-0747. 170 pages, photographs by Mary Schjeldahl. $27.95. The Pioneer Valley in central Massachusetts, along the Connecticut River, has a notable concentration of craftspeople, of whom 10 are profiled here: Barry Moser and Carol J. Blinn in the book arts, the furniture makers Ken Salem and Tai Hazard, the wood turner Walter Goodridge, the potter Mark Shapiro, the glassblower Josh Simpson, the quilt makers Susan Boss and Mark Brown, and Sally Dillon, who makes wearable art and quilts. The author, a poet and nonfiction writer, captures her subjects’ appearance, influences, motivations and working methods, often in their own words. Complemented by photos of the artists in their studios, the profiles end with an image of a favorite work and the artist’s comment on it. TOP
	Jim Partridge by Alison Britton and Katherine Swift; Carol McNicoll by Tanya Harrod and RoseLee Goldberg; Richard Slee by Garth Clark and Cathy Courtney; Michael Rowe by Martina Margetts and Richard Hill; Ann Sutton by Diane Sheehan and Susan Tebby. All 2003, Lund Humphries, Burlington, VT, 800-535-9544. Each 128 pages, illustrated $50. This series of monographs of leading craft artists in Britain is a joint project, “Show5,” initiated by the British Crafts Council with Manchester City Galleries; the City Gallery, Leicester; the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; and the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. These artists, who have shaped and influenced the modern craft movement over the last 30 years, have in common “a desire to expand the boundaries of their craft and take it beyond the conventional and expected.” Jim Partridge’s oeuvre encompasses turned wood objects and rough-hewn carved furniture and landscape works, including many site-specific commissions. Derived from the tradition of eccentric British domestic knick-knacks, Carol McNicoll’s functional earthenware works are zany assemblages, hand built from cast elements and found objects, then highly decorated. Influenced by the Americans Ken Price and Ron Nagle, Richard Slee creates thought-provoking ceramics noted for their Pop references, slick polished surfaces and sly commentary. Michael Rowe’s challenging vessels in various metals, with their off-kilter forms and distinctive use of color and patination, combine purity and complexity. The weaver Ann Sutton has embraced new technology and a variety of materials to create a colorful, wide-ranging oeuvre that includes miniature textiles, furniture, rugs, yardage, wall hangings and sculptural pieces. TOP
	Portfolio Collection each 48 pages, illustrated, Telos Art Publishing, Winchester, England, Fax +44-1962-864727 or sales@telos.net. $18 paperback. Since 2000, Telos, the British publishing venture dedicated to documenting contemporary fiber art, has produced, among other series, 34 well-photographed, elegantly designed monographs on prominent textile artists around the world. They are an invaluable resource, conveying the remarkable variety of the textile medium—fiber and fabric of every sort, a range of techniques and of scale from the miniature to the monumental. The authors are professors, critics, curators and arts administrators. This is a sampling from the Collection. 2002: Vol. 8, Helen Lancaster (Australia), by Carolynne Skinner; Vol. 9, Kay Lawrence (Australia) by Diana Wood Conroy; Vol. 11, Marian Smit (Netherlands) by Marjolein van der Stoep; Vol. 12, Chiyoko Tanaka (Japan) by Lesley Millar; Vol. 14, Lia Cook (U.S.A.) by Meredith Tromble and Jenni Sorkin; Vol. 15, Jane Lackey (U.S.A.) by Helga Pakasaar; Vol. 16, Gerhardt Knodel (U.S.A.) by Marsha Miro. 2003: Vol. 17, Kyoung Ae Cho (Korea/U.S.A.) by H. L. Hix; Vol. 19, Barbara Layne (U.S.A.) by Cheryl Simon; Vol. 22, Gyöngy Laky (U.S.A.) by Janet Koplos; Vol. 23, Virginia Davis (U.S.A.) by Laurel Reuter; Vol. 24, Piper Shepard (U.S.A.) by William Easton; Vol. 25, Valerie Kirk (Australia) by Grace Cochrane and Anne Brennan; Vol. 26, Annet Couwenberg (Netherlands) by Elissa Auther and Adam Lerner; Vol. 27, Susan Lordi Marker (U.S.A.) by Hildreth York; Vol. 28, Agano Machiko (Japan) by Laurel Reuter; Vol. 29, Fukumoto Shihoko (Japan) by Marianne Erikson and Uchiyama Takeo; Vol. 30, Cynthia Schira (U.S.A.) by Joan Simon; Vol. 31, Kyoko Kumai (Japan) by Ryoko Kuroda; Vol. 33, Darrel Morris (U.S.A.) by Ann Wiens. 2004: Vol. 34, Pauline Burbidge (GB) by Judith Duffey Harding. TOP
	Artists at Work: New Technology in Textile and Fibre Art 2003, Museo del Tessuto, Prato, Italy, Fax +39-0574-444585. 112 pages, texts in English and Italian by Guido Pugi, Patricia Kinsella, Beatrijs Sterk, Stefania Gori and Miranda MacPhail, and Frances Geesin, illustrated. $32 paperback. Technological experimentation is central to the expression of the 38 artists from 14 European countries featured in this catalog of an exhibit at the new Museo del Tessuto (Textile Museum), Prato, last fall. The curator of the show, a joint project of the museum and the European Textile Network, held in conjunction with the network’s 12th conference, was the California-born artist Patricia Kinsella, who lives in Prato, a center of textile manufacturing and home for 50 years to the textile trade show “PratoExpo.” Each artist is represented by a work, a statement and a brief biography. Also included is a chapter on the contemporary section of the museum, focused on the fabrics manufactured in Prato from the postwar period to the present. TOP
	Threads of Faith: Recent Works from the Women of Color Quilters Network by Carolyn Mazloomi and Patricia C. Pongracz, 2004, Gallery at the American Bible Society, New York, NY, 800-322-4253. Antique Collectors’ Club, Wappingers Falls, NY, 800-252-5231. 175 pages, illustrated. $45. The 53 quilts with religious themes by 32 African American women (and one man) in this attractive catalog of an exhibit at the American Bible Society Gallery (January 23-April 17) are sophisticated creations by trained artists consciously drawing on African American quilt traditions. The essay by Carolyn Mazloomi, founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network, explores the role of faith in the African American community from the time of slavery and the importance of quilt making as an expression of that faith. Each work is accompanied by the artist’s interpretation and a brief biography. TOP
	Weaving Tradition: Carol Cassidy and Woven Silks of Laos by Dorothy Twining Globus and Mary F. Connors, 2004, Lao Textiles, Ventiane, Laos, www.laotextiles.com. Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco, CA, 415-775-0991. 160 pages, illustrated. $39.95 paperback. Since 1990 the American weaver and development advisor Carol Cassidy has lived in Vientiane, Laos, where she operates Lao Textiles, a studio/business devoted to preserving and continuing the rich local tradition of silk handweaving, producing a range of textiles from intricate brocade and tapestry wall hangings to ikat scarves and shawls and custom upholstery. In this companion book to a recent exhibit at San Francisco’s Museum of Craft & Folk Art, the texts describe the place of woven textiles in Laotian culture and the role that Cassidy’s enterprise has played in bringing international visibility to these textiles and hence economic benefits to the weavers. The excellent, abundant photographs depict the complex weaving processes, antique examples and contemporary pieces produced by Cassidy’s studio. TOP
	Sari to Sarong: Five Hundred Years of Indian and Indonesian Textile Exchange by Robyn Maxwell, 2003, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 224 pages, illustrated. $45 paperback. For centuries, two of the world’s richest and most varied textile cultures—those of India and Indonesia—sustained a dynamic exchange of ideas, materials, designs and imagery, much of it driven by a vigorous trade in cloth and spices. The magnificent examples in this catalog—silks, cottons, batiks, brocades, tie-dyes and embroideries—drawn from the rich Asian textiles collection of the National Gallery of Australia, were on exhibit there in 2003. Robyn Maxwell, the gallery’s senior curator of Asian art, discusses the maritime silk routes, the impact of Indian religious and philosophical imagery and the role of textiles in the Indonesian royal courts. She also analyzes the Indian textiles—“the fabric of trade”—and the Indonesian responses to them. TOP
	Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind by Apinan Poshyananda, 2003, Asia Society, New York, NY, Asia Ink, London. D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, New York, NY, 800-338-2665. 152 pages, illustrated. $45 paperback. Inspired by Buddhism, Montien Boonma (1953-2000), Thailand’s best-known artist, created contemplative, interactive mixed-media installations that incorporated Western ideas into a Thai aesthetic vocabulary. Certain images, like the alms bowls carried by monks, stacked bells and boxes, recur in many of his works. Handsomely illustrated by Boonma’s drawings and by dramatic photographs of the installations, this book accompanies a posthumous traveling exhibition that opened in 2003 at the Asia Society Museum, New York City, and is at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, through September. The tour ends at the National Gallery of Art, Bangkok (2004-5). TOP
	Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz by Ashley Callahan, 2003, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, 706-542-0482. 162 pages, illustrated, $25 paperback. In a versatile career that began in the 1910s and spanned five decades, Hungarian-born Ilonka Karasz (1896-1981) designed textiles, furniture and silver hollowware and found equal renown as a painter and graphic artist, producing more than 180 covers for The New Yorker magazine. Her style, notable for its urbane, whimsical charm, melded the influences of the Wiener Werkstätte and Hungarian folk art, to which she had been exposed in her youth, with modernism and Art Deco. This monograph accompanied an exhibition of Karasz’s work at the Georgia Museum of Art early this year. TOP
	Modern Glas in Nederland (Modern Glass in the Netherlands) 1880-1940 by Titus M. Eliëns, 2002, Waanders Publishers, Zwolle, Netherlands. 2004, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 164 pages, in Dutch and English, illustrated. $50 paperback. In the years between the two World Wars, utilitarian and decorative glassware was an important area of Dutch design. The glass industry in the Netherlands produced pared-down, elegant designs that now might be called classically modern. This survey by the Head of Collections at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag focuses on the leading producers, such as Leerdam, the United Glassworks of Maastricht and Glashuis Muller in Amsterdam, and on the artists who designed for them such as A.D. Copier, H. D. Berlage and W.J. Rozendaal. The works presented in excellent photographs are from the museum’s collection. TOP
	Bernhard Schobinger: Jewels Now! edited by Roger Fayet and Florian Hufnagl, 2003, Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany. Antique Collectors’ Club, Wappingers Falls, NY, 800-252-5231. 184 pages, in German and English, seven contributors, photographs by Annelies Štrba. $75. While hardly the first contemporary jeweler to create with found objects, the noted Swiss artist Bernhard Schobinger is remarkable for the range of his gathered objects—rusty screws, glass and pottery shards, wood splinters, fragments of toys, keys—which he often combine with materials such as platinum or black diamonds. This monograph is unusual in the way Schobinger’s unconventional pieces are presented. His wife, the photographer Annelies Štrba, uses unsharp focus and the manipulation of color in the processing to achieve slightly eerie effects in the images, many of them depicting the couple’s daughters wearing the jewelry. The essays are by critics and art historians. TOP
	American Shino: The Glaze of a Thousand Faces by Lester Richter, 2001, Babcock Galleries, New York, NY, 212-767-1852. 124 pages, 9 contributors, illustrated. $40 paperback. “American Shino is at the same time one of the most stable and the most unpredictable glazes in a potter’s repertoire,” writes Lester Richter, a potter, in his lively introduction to this beautifully photographed catalog documenting a 2001 exhibition he curated, of work by 46 ceramists who have made Shino glazing a distinguishing characteristic of their work. American Shino glazes are defined by Richter as “very stable soda-driven glazes with unusually high alumina-to-silica ratios.” An ancient glaze, Shino was recreated in Japan in the 1940s; subsequently, the potter Warren MacKenzie, teaching at the University of Minnesota, initiated the search for American Shino. A number of the artists, among them MacKenzie, Dan Anderson, Randy Johnston and Malcolm Davis describe their love affair with the versatile glaze. In her brief “confessions,” ceramics scholar and collector Judith S. Schwartz notes the seductive allure of the Shino surface and comments on the complex processes involved in applying and firing the glazes. The book ends with a “cookbook” of Shino recipes, many from the included artists. TOP
	Ceramic Trees of Life: Popular Art from Mexico by Leonore Hoag Mulryan, 2003, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Los Angeles, CA, and University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115 or 206-543-4050. 168 pages, 4 contributors, illustrated. $35 paperback. One learns from this charming catalog of a 2003 show at the UCLA Fowler that ceramic Trees of Life, the candelabra-like, elaborately decorated, gravity-defying constructions, though they have historical sources deep in Mexican culture, flourished in the second half of the 20th century, with efforts by the government to promote folk art. In the 1970s they were placed in Mexican embassies throughout the world, becoming the quintessential symbol of Mexico. Dating from the 1950s to the 1990s, the trees shown here in splendid photographs come from the three primary pottery villages: Izucar de Matamoros and Actlan de Osorio, both in the state of Puebla, and Metepec in the state of Mexico. Some are anonymous, but most are the creations of renowned artists of the genre. The essays offer the history of the trees in Mexican culture and examine the styles and methods of the finest contemporary makers. Most of the trees were donated by the Gerald Daniel family to the Fowler as part of a larger gift of Mexican folk art. TOP
	Rookwood Pottery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Gerald and Virginia Gordon Collection by Nancy E. Owen, 2003, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA. Antique Collectors’ Club, Wappingers Falls, NY, 800-252-5231. 136 pages, texts by Gerald and Virginia Gordon and Jack L. Lindsey, illustrated. $45. Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati, one of the most famous and long-lived American companies making art wares (1880-1967), was noted for its fine glazes and experimental designs. This companion volume to “Elegant Innovations: American Rookwood Pottery, 1880-1960,” an exhibit this year at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showcases the outstanding Rookwood collection of Gerald and Virginia Gordon, a recent gift to the museum. All aspects of Rookwood production are represented—along with the more familiar styles of the Arts and Crafts era, there are works made between 1928 and 1967, most notably Art Deco examples. The Rookwood scholar Nancy E. Owen recounts the company’s history and its quest for artistic creativity. A checklist of the 152 items, a bibliography and an index of makers and decorators are included. TOP
	The Craft and Art of Clay (Fourth Edition) by Susan Peterson and Jan Peterson, 2003, Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY, 845-679-6838. 432 pages, illustrated. $65. In print for more than a decade, this comprehensive guide to modern ceramics by the distinguished ceramist, educator and author Susan Peterson includes technical information on clays, glazes, kilns, the entire range of hand, wheel and plasterwork techniques, more than 1,200 illustrations, a historical overview and a portfolio of more than 100 artists, each represented by one work and a statement. The new features of this fourth edition, a collaboration with Peterson’s daughter Jan, include “Trailblazer” profiles of Juan Quezada, Peter Voulkos, Luo Xiao-Ping, Toshiko Takaezu, Huey Beckham, Otto Heino and Janet Mansfield; a chapter on marketing and computers; information on using gold glazes and paperclays, 150 new color illustrations, safety icons warning beginners of potential hazards and a revised compendium.
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