Body of Clay, Soul of Fire: Richard Bresnahan and the Saint John’s Pottery
Global Art Glass Triennial: Live Summer 2002
Irvin Tepper: When Cups Speak . . . Life with the Cup
Susie Cooper: A Pioneer of Modern Design
Yoichi Ohira: A Phenomenon in Glass
Reflections on Glass: 20th Century Stained Glass in American Art and Architecture
Kazari: Decoration and Display in Japan, 15th-19th Centuries
Matsuri! Japanese Festival Arts
Schmuck • Jewellery: Gerd Rothmann
United in Beauty: The Jewelry and Collectors of Linda MacNeil
Damián Garrido: Un orfebre del siglo XX /A Silversmith of the 20th Century
Natural Surfaces: Visual Research for Artists, Architects, and Designers
Body
of Clay, Soul of Fire: Richard Bresnahan and the Saint John’s Pottery
by Matthew Welch, 2001, Afton Historical Society Press, Afton, MN,
651-436-8443. 232 pages, foreword by Gerry Williams, illustrated. $75
hardcover, $39 paperback.
Richard Bresnahan was introduced to ceramics as a student in the 1970s at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, part of a Benedictine monastery. In his senior year he traveled to Japan to study with Nakazato Takashi, a 13th-generation potter and in a three-and-a-half year apprenticeship there acquired a knowledge of throwing techniques, kiln construction and firing methods that earned him the title of master potter. Returning to the university as artist-in-residence in 1979, he set up Saint John’s Pottery and since then has produced prodigious numbers of pots using local clay and firing according to environmentally sound methods, trained numerous apprentices and welcomed visiting artists. The pottery’s current kiln, an 87-foot-long noborigama with three chambers, is, with more than 1,600 cubic feet of interior space, the largest wood-burning kiln in North America. Matthew Welch, curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, tells Bresnahan’s personal and professional story. Fine color photographs present his ceramics and work by apprentices and visiting artists; black-and-white images document his life and activity in the pottery. Diagrams of the kilns and the firing schedules are included.
Global
Art Glass Triennial: Live Summer 2002
2002, Vida Museum, Borgholm, Sweden, 0-46-485-77440 or info@vidamuseum.com.
72 pages, text by Dan Klein in English and Swedish, illustrated. $11 paperback.
For the second “Global Art Glass Triennial,” an invitational exhibition held last summer in Borgholm, Sweden, installations by 31 leading glass artists from 14 countries—among them Howard Ben Tré, Dale Chihuly, Lino Tagliapietra, Bertil Vallien and Dana Zamecnikova—were deployed inside and outside Borgholm Castle, an imposing, romantic ruin. The dramatic effect of modern glass against crumbling stone is captured in this catalog, which also contains informal photographs of the participants. King Carl XVI Gustaf officially opened the proceedings, which included a symposium.
Irvin
Tepper: When Cups Speak . . . Life with the Cup
by Jo Farb Hernández, 2002, San José State University,
CA. D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, New York, NY, 800-338-2665. 135
pages, 9 contributors, illustrated. $40.
For Irvin Tepper, an artist who teaches fine arts and industrial design at Pratt Institute in New York City and began his career as a ceramist who had studied with Ken Ferguson and Howard Kottler, the utilitarian coffee cup of the kind encountered in diners is an object worthy of infinite, even obsessive, attention. In lively essays and intriguing images, this book documents a 25-year survey exhibition of Tepper’s exploration of the physical and conceptual idea of the coffee cup, including ceramic and bronze examples, drawings and photographs of cups, and texts. Organized last year by the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery, School of Art and Design, San José State University, the exhibition is at the Station Museum, Houston, TX, through April 17. “For Tepper,” writes Jo Farb Hernández, director of the gallery, “the cup is the recipient of our stories and personal histories: a responsive albeit mute confidant as we pour out our emotions and feelings, plan our days, and maintain our friendships and business relationships over our cups of coffee.”
Susie
Cooper: A Pioneer of Modern Design
edited by Andrew Casey and Ann Eatwell, 2002, Antique Collectors’
Club, Wappingers Falls, NY, 845-297-0003. 232 pages, 12 contributors,
illustrated. $59.50.
Susie Cooper (1902-1995), the distinguished, innovative ceramic designer, enjoyed a remarkable career as a factory owner and manager in Stoke-on-Trent, the center of British pottery manufacturing. She learned her métier at A. E. Gray & Co., a firm specializing in the hand decoration of pots, and in 1929 she founded the Susie Cooper Pottery, ultimately taken over by Wedgewood in 1966. Whether she was producing earthenware or bone china, her distinctive wares combined modernist-influenced streamlined shapes with the restrained patterning typical of the British tradition, and they were affordable. This book marking Cooper’s centenary illuminates her design ideas, managerial skills, business and marketing acumen and success as a woman in a male-dominated field.
Yoichi
Ohira: A Phenomenon in Glass
edited by Barry Friedman, 2002, Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, NY,
212-794-8950. Rizzoli International Publications, New York, NY, 212-387-3622.
396 pages, essays by Susanne K. Frantz, William Warmus, Jean Luc Olivié
et al., illustrated. $75.
In 1973, the Tokyo-born artist/designer Yoichi Ohira, who had been trained in glassblowing in Japan, moved to Venice, attracted by the Murano glass tradition. He immersed himself in that tradition through study and hands-on work. Since the early 1990s, Ohira has been producing vessels at Anfora Glassworks, in collaboration with the glassblower Livio Serena and the master carver Giacomo Barbini, whose signatures are to be found with Ohira’s on the works. This publication, with exceptional photographs by Eva Heyd and others, coincided with Ohira’s exhibition last fall at the Friedman gallery, and includes a conversation between the artist and Friedman, interviews with Ohira’s collaborators and appreciations of his work by glass specialists. Susanne Frantz writes, “Ohira is a lifelong student of the material who, in his passion and devotion, produces the highest form of beauty—one that radiates feeling, integrity and intelligence.”
Reflections
on Glass: 20th Century Stained Glass in American Art and Architecture
by Virginia Chieffo Raguin, 2002, American Bible Society, New York,
NY, 212-408-8682. 176 pages, essay by Patricia C. Pongracz, illustrated.
$35 paperback.
Companion to an exhibition at the Gallery at the American Bible Society
(December 13-March 16), this handsome catalog surveys the technical and
aesthetic innovations in architectural stained glass over the last century,
with ecclesiastical and secular examples. The chapter on the last 50 years,
which includes such figures as Robert Sowers, Albinas Elskus, Robert Kehlmann,
Ed Carpenter and James Carpenter, emphasizes the international influences
on American stained glass. The final section is devoted to recent architectural
commissions by seven artists who represent the continuing development
of the field.
Found
Object Art
by Dorothy Spencer, 2002, Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 610-593-1777.
240 pages, illustrated. $49.95.
“They are all strong believers in the commonplace and its ability to be made uncommon,” writes Dorothy Spencer, the owner of a home furnishings business utilizing recycled materials, in her introduction to this compilation of contemporary makers for whom found objects are an essential component. Among the 85 artists, each represented by five or six works and a statement, are Boris Bally, Nick Cave, Robert Ebendorf, John Garrett, Bobby Hansson, Tina Fung Holder, Gyongy Laky, Ed Rossbach, Karyl Sisson, Kiff Slemmons, Stephen Whittlesey and J. Fred Woell, suggesting that the use of found materials is no mere byway, but a significant and widely varied current in art and craft today. Regrettably, crowded design and some photographs of mediocre quality mar the aesthetic impact of the works.
Kazari:
Decoration and Display in Japan, 15th-19th Centuries
edited by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, 2002, Japan Society, New York,
NY, and British Museum Press, London, England. Harry N. Abrams, New York,
NY, 800-345-1359. 305 pages, foreword by Tsuji Nobuo, 7 contributors,
illustrated. $45.
The Japanese term kazari refers both to objects used for decoration and to their display in specific settings and contexts and implies a dynamic, sometimes multi-sensory process that invites the viewer’s active participation. Organized chronologically and thematically, this magnificently illustrated, scholarly catalog of an exhibition premiered last fall at Japan Society, New York City, and now at the British Museum, London (through April 13), presents examples from three epochs—Muromachi (1392-1573), Momoyama (1573-1615) and Edo (1615-1868)—that show how decoration and display were consistently integral to Japanese culture. Drawn from public and private collections in Britain, Japan and the United States, the 200 remarkable objects include painting (scrolls and folding screens), ceramics (stoneware vases and teabowls, porcelain dishes), lacquerware (boxes and netsuke), textiles (kimonos, Kabuki costumes, embroidered sashes), glass (hair ornaments) and metalwork (military helmets, bronze vessels).
Matsuri!
Japanese Festival Arts
by Gloria Granz Gonick, 2002, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History,
Los Angeles, CA. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115.
256 pages, 3 contributors, illustrated. $75 hardcover, $40 paperback.
Matsuri (literally “to offer worship”) are elaborate Japanese Shinto-Buddhist festivals noted historically for extraordinary costumes, joyous dancing and singing, and religious observances. “This volume seeks to identify and describe the exuberant textiles and costumes of matsuri and to consider their significance within their cultural context,” writes Gloria Granz Gonick, a specialist in East Asian art and curator of the recent exhibition of matsuri regalia at the Fowler Museum. Though the focus is on ceremonial attire—fireman’s and fisherman’s coats, Kabuki costumes, summer kimonos, etc., many of them from the museum’s textile collection—there are masks, shrines, screens and banners as well. Enlivening the scholarly presentation are abundant images of the festivities as they are carried on today.
Schmuck
• Jewellery: Gerd Rothmann
2002, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany. D.A.P./Distributed
Art Publishers, 800-338-2665. 192 pages, essays in English and German
by 5 contributors, illustrated. $45.
Since the 1970s, the German gold- and silversmith Gerd Rothmann, who has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and London’s Royal College of Art, has been creating conceptual jewelry by taking body impressions—noses, heels, fingers, collarbones and parts unmentionable—from clients and their dear ones and casting them in gold, silver or pewter as elegantly wrought bracelets, rings, brooches and other forms of adornment, often to surreal effect. This monograph documents a touring retrospective in Europe last year of Rothmann’s witty, sometimes ribald work.
United
in Beauty: The Jewelry and Collectors of Linda MacNeil
by Suzanne Ramljak, 2002, Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 610-593-1777.
208 pages, foreword by Helen W. Drutt English, illustrated. $59.95.
The 81 women pictured in this book are members of an exclusive club: all own jewelry, usually a necklace and sometimes earrings or a brooch, by Linda MacNeil. Her bold designs appear to great advantage in the “real people” style portrait photographs by John Carlano. MacNeil, noted for combining glass and other non-precious materials and metal, is compared, by essayist Suzanne Ramljak, to the turn-of-the-20th-century French artist René Lalique, in her experimental attitude and her ingenuity and finesse.
Damián
Garrido: Un orfebre del siglo XX /A Silversmith of the 20th Century
2002, Damián Garrido Orfebre, S.L., Madrid, Spain. Barry Friedman
Ltd., New York, NY, 212-794-8950. 210 pages, texts in English and Spanish
by José Manuel Cruz Valdovinos and Francisco Javier Montalvo Martin,
illustrated. $60.
Damián Garrido (1931-2002), a Madrid-born silversmith, began his training at age 12 and spent much of his career creating rather ornate, masterfully executed tabletop forms that derived from his extensive knowledge of European silver hollowware. During the 1980s Garrido radically changed course and developed a pared-down simplified style characterized by smooth polished surfaces, geometrically defined elements and the absence of ornamentation. The second half of this monograph features 29 sterling limited edition pieces, made since 1996, which were recently exhibited at the Friedman gallery. Garrido’s son, Juan, and daughter, Paloma, continue to produce his designs.
Natural
Surfaces: Visual Research for Artists, Architects, and Designers
by Judy A. Juracek, 2002, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY,
800-233-4830. 352 pages, introduction by Gordon Hayward, illustrated,
CD-ROM. $89.95.
Artists of all kinds who draw on nature for imagery will likely find abundant inspiration in the more than 1,200 high-quality color photographs—both details and long shots—assembled here in the categories trees and shrubs, flowers, foliage, grass, fruits and vegetables, stone and sand, water, ice and snow, and sky and clouds. Interviews with a landscape designer, an exhibition designer and a botanical illustrator convey how such professionals use visual sources in their work.
SNAG/3M:
Innovative Tools
2002, Society of North American Goldsmiths, Lisle, IL, 630-852-6385.
56 pages, texts by Suzanne Ramljak and Edward S. Cooke, Jr., illustrated,
CD-ROM. $15 paperback.
This black-and-white catalog documents the first competition/exhibition cosponsored by the Society and 3M Inc., the tool manufacturer, held last June in Denver, Colorado, in conjunction with the 2002 SNAG conference. Among the works, by 48 artists, are Frankie Flood’s tape dispenser bracelet, Sergey Jivetin’s spherical multi-tipped ballpoint pen and Mi-Sook Hur’s measuring spoon ring.
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