Books August/September 2001 Aluminum by Design A View by Two: Contemporary Jewelry Color on Metal: 50 Artists Share Insights and Techniques Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia Woven Worlds: Basketry from the Clark Field Collection at the Philbrook Museum of Art Icebreakers: Alaska's Most Innovative Artists On the Surface: Late Nineteenth-Century Decorative Arts Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Architect's Other Passion
	Aluminum by Design by Sara Nichols, assisted by Elisabeth Agro and Elizabeth Teller, 2000, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, distributed by Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY, 800-345-1359; 300 pages, essays by six contributors, illustrated. $75. Reviewed by Grace Jeffers Aluminum by Design is a mammoth homage to the metal that has become so impressed upon our psyche that we consider it both a material and a color. This comprehensive history, recounting the journey from once-precious metal to essential component of everyday life, is a worthy addition to the Abrams roster of excellent books on art, design and architecture. It accompanies the traveling exhibition* organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the home, appropriately, of the American aluminum industry. Not only is the subject worthy, but Nichols, chief curator and curator of decorative arts at the museum, has assembled an impressive array of scholars to write on its many aspects. Solidly researched and chock-a-block with splendid photography, the book is also eminently readable. Nichols's opening chapter, "Aluminum by Design: Jewelry to Jets," offers a concise multidisciplinary overview. She introduces readers to the paradox that aluminum, today a ubiquitous metal that many consider mundane and relatively valueless, was, in its youth, during the mid-19th century, a rare commodity. Most material innovations are created to solve a specific design problem-for example, early plastic replaced ivory for billiard balls and tortoise shell for combs. By contrast, aluminum, the most common metal on earth as an ingredient in bauxite, a claylike ore, emerged as the result of a metallurgical experiment for which a use had to be found. Nichols delineates the struggle of a new material to become appreciated for its intrinsic qualities. We now prize aluminum, for its color, finish, strength, light weight and "alloyability" with other metals, but we once painted it in mimicry of wood! In his chapter, "A New Metal! Aluminum in Its 19th-Century Context," Robert Friedel, a scholar of technology, chronicles the scientific and industrial development of aluminum as a solution that mediates between "noble" and "common" metals, a product that provides the best of all possible solutions. Among others, he discusses the contributions of the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler, who isolated aluminum in 1845, and the American scientist Charles Martin Hall, who in 1886 discovered the electrolytic method of producing the metal that is still in use today. Dennis P. Doordan, a professor of design at Notre Dame's School of Architecture, explores the enormous impact of the material, in its many ingenious applications, on modern architecture. Penny Sparke, dean of the design faculty, Kingston University, London, and one of the first writers to take up the cause of plastics, focuses "Cookware to Cocktail Shakers" on a discussion of aluminum as the material face of the new domestic landscape. Sparke describes how aluminum first entered the home as a gift from science-tried, tested and proven to provide, in objects such as cookware, the greatest functionality and durability in a lightweight and stylish manner. By the late 1920s, with the help of industrial designers and the development of consumer culture, aluminum wares were transformed by aesthetic appeal into objects of desire. "A Competitive Material of Choice" by Craig Vogel, associate professor in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, describes the role of aluminum in industrial design, from the pop-top can to tennis rackets to walkers. And in "Aluminum and the New Materialism," Paola Antonelli, curator in architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, explains how materiality has become a driving force in contemporary design, not only dictating form and function but also conveying new messages. Two things struck me about the book. The first is how incredibly modern an object looks when fashioned out of aluminum. Even such High Victorian bric-a-brac as fans and jewelry seem almost contemporary when translated into this cool, dusty gray metal. The second is how few contemporary craft objects were presented in the book-works by Arline Fisch, Gijs Bakker, Marcia Lewis, Shiang-shin Yeh and Jane Adam are included under the rubric "the new jewelry," while furniture by Boris Bally and Clare Graham represents recycling. This cannot be an oversight on the authors' part, but rather a reflection of reality. Which raises an intriguing question. Why has a material celebrated for its ductility and malleability and having such a great influence on design, been largely ignored by craftspeople? *Shown at the Carnegie Museum of Art (October 28, 2000-February 11) and Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York City (March 20-July 15), the exhibition tours to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (August 23-November 4) and other venues through 2002. Grace Jeffers is a design historian based in New York City. TOP
	A View by Two: Contemporary Jewelry 2001, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 401-454-6510; 47 pages, artists' biographies, interview by Jayne Stokes with Louis Mueller, exhibition checklist, illustrated. $19.95 paperback. This catalog accompanies a recent exhibition (February 2-April 15) of work by 14 leading international jewelers, a collaboration between the RISD Museum of Art and the school's faculty—Louis Mueller, head of the jewelry and metalsmithing department, and his colleague Barbara Seidenath. The artists were represented in the show by around a dozen objects each and one work by each was purchased for the museum's collection. Responding to questions posed by Jayne Stokes, associate curator of decorative arts at the museum, Mueller discusses his career as an artist and educator and his reasons for selecting the invited artists. TOP
	Color on Metal: 50 Artists Share Insights and Techniques by Tim McCreight and Nicole Bsullak, 2001, Guild Publishing, Madison, WI, distributed by North Light Books, Cincinnati, OH, 800-289-0963; 126 pages, illustrated. $30. By "color on metal" the authors do not mean gemstones, but rather the techniques used by contemporary jewelers and metalsmiths to add color to their materials. They present 50 works-each accompanied by a description of the artist's approach to color and process-organized into four sections: patinas, enamels, applied color such as paints and resins, and avant-garde, a catch-all category that includes the use of recycled pre-printed metal and other found objects, and the application of Prismacolor combined with other processes. TOP
	Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia edited by Mary B. Davis, 1994, Garland Publishing, New York, NY, 800-627-6273; 818 pages, illustrated. $42.95. There's a lot of art covered in this hefty volume that provides an overview of Native American life and issues in the 20th-century United States. Readers seeking information about contemporary Indian pottery, basketry, textiles and jewelry, for example, will find illustrated articles that showcase the vitality and economic importance of the arts in today's Indian communities. Arranged alphabetically from Abenaki to Zuni, the encyclopedia's 383 articles also cover such topics as government policy, languages, health and individual tribes. Written by some 300 subject experts, many of whom are Native American, each entry is followed by a brief bibliography. Winner of the Denali Press Award for the best 1994 multicultural reference book, this volume is extensively indexed. TOP
	Woven Worlds: Basketry from the Clark Field Collection at the Philbrook Museum of Art edited by Lydia L. Wyckoff, 2001, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, distributed by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 800-249-7737; 246 pages, essays by six contributors, illustrated. $75 hardcover, $39.95 paperback. Of the 1,165 baskets at the Philbrook Museum of Art made by native peoples in North America from the late 19th century to the 1960s, 1,070 were acquired and donated by Clark Field (1882-1971), a Tulsa businessman whose lifelong vocation it was to "collect authentic specimens of baskets made for actual use by all basket-making tribes." Complementing a touring exhibition of 250 examples that began at the Philbrook (March 11-May 20), this scholarly book follows Field on his collecting journeys and explores the basketry traditions of eight major cultural regions-California, the Southwest, the Intermontane West (Great Basin and Plateau), the Northwest Coast, Arctic and Subarctic, Prairie and Plains, the Eastern Woodlands and the Southeast. Maps, a glossary, catalog of the Philbrook's Native American basketry collection and a bibliography are included. TOP
	Icebreakers: Alaska's Most Innovative Artists by Julie Decker, 1999, Decker Art Services, Anchorage, AK, distributed by University of Washington Press, Seattle, 206-543-4050; 332 pages, essays by 18 contributors, illustrated. $75. Julie Decker, a gallery owner and arts administrator in Anchorage, has compiled this record of 54 artists in all disciplines who have claimed Alaska as their home, even if temporarily, between 1975-1999, a period which saw the development of the state's oil industry, an economic boom, population buildup and growth of tourism. The artists, among whom are Ronald Senungetuk (metal and wood), Bill Sabo (ceramics and mixed media), Fran Reed (basket forms of gut and fish skins), are represented by several works each and brief biographies. The essayists document 25 years of Alaska's visual arts, offering personal and critical insights. TOP
	On the Surface: Late Nineteenth-Century Decorative Arts by Barbara Stone Perry, 2001, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, 704-337-2037; 111 pages, illustrated. $25 paperback. A passion for the embellished surface was the hallmark of American decorative arts between 1870 and 1900, as presented in an exhibition of 117 objects at the Mint Museum of Art (May 26-August 12) and its companion book. A Herter Brothers chair with gilding and marquetry, an incised porcelain covered jar by Adelaide Alsop Robineau, Rookwood vases adorned with flowers, dragons and birds, a Tiffany electroplated silver tilt-top table, a punch bowl by the Blackmer Cut Glass Company and a William Morris woven wool panel are among the works assembled from public and private collections by curator Barbara Stone Perry, whose catalog essay explores the artistic reawakening-now called the Aesthetic Movement-that was prompted by the impact of the industrial revolution on contemporary design. TOP
	Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Architect's Other Passion by Julia Meech, 2001, Japan Society, New York, NY, and Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY, 800-345-1359; 304 pages, illustrated. $49.50. "If Japanese prints were to be deducted from my education," wrote the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in his 1932 autobiography, "I don't know what direction the whole might have taken." The powerful influence of Japanese aesthetics on Wright's work and thought, as suggested by this remark, and his role in the world of Asian art for much of his life are explored in this fascinating companion book to a recent exhibition (March 28-July 15) at Japan Society of 115 objects-screen paintings, textiles and especially woodblock prints-collected by the architect during his sojourns in Japan. Guest curator Julia Meech, an art historian, narrates in vivid detail Wright's obsessive acquisition of Japanese prints-there were approximately 6,000 in his collection when he died-and his activity as a print dealer, which at one time rivaled his architectural practice in the attention he devoted to it and in financial gain. The illustrations include archival photographs of Wright and other players in the story and views of his projects.
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