Daniel Jackson: Dovetailing History
Inside Design Now: National Design Triennial
Quiet Beauty: Fifty Centuries of Japanese Folk Ceramics from the Montgomery Collection
Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth
The Legacy of Maria Poveka Martinez
Art and Design in Modern Custom Folding Knives
Quilt Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East
Art Deco Textiles: The French Designers
Daniel
Jackson: Dovetailing History
2003, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 215-717-6481. 64 pages,
foreword by Stephen Tarantal, texts by Helen W. Drutt English and Edward
S. Cooke, Jr., illustrated. $25 paperback.
The contributions of Daniel Jackson (1938-1995) as a furniture maker of great skill and originality and a charismatic teacher are the subject of this catalog accompanying an exhibition of his work at the University of the Arts Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery (May 20-June 20). Jackson founded the wood program at the school (then the Philadelphia College of Art) in 1964. He was known for sensuous, sculptural furniture sometimes suggesting animal imagery, that combined his passion for wood and love of joinery and carving. His career was cut short by a debilitating illness in the mid-1970s, but not before he had helped set up the wood shop at the newly formed Program in Artisanry at Boston University. His teaching influenced Alphonse Mattia, Ed Zucca and James Schriber, among others. Helen W. Drutt English places Jackson in the lively craft scene that developed in Philadelphia in the 1960s. Edward S. Cooke, Jr. provides a portrait of the artist and an assessment of his work. “[His] inspirational teaching at PCA and his critical role in shaping the character of the Program in Artisanry,” writes Cooke, “set the foundation for how furniture design and making were taught at the university level throughout the United States in the last quarter of the 20th century. His work also blazed the trail for sculptural furniture that inspired thoughts of beauty while honoring the purpose of furniture.”
Lotte
Reimers and Ceramic Art
by Ingrid Vetter and Marlene Jochem, 2002, Arnoldsche, Stuttgart,
Germany. Antique Collectors’ Club, Wappingers Falls, NY, 800-252-5231.
167 pages, 4 contributors, text in English and German, illustrated. $60.
Before she turned to making ceramics, in 1965 at age 33, the German artist Lotte Reimers had committed herself to the field through her association with Jakob Wilhelm Hinder. The latter traveled around Germany collecting, exhibiting and promoting handmade ceramics, though unlike Bernard Leach, to whom he has been compared, he was not a ceramist himself. The Hinder-Reimers collection became the core of the Museum for Modern Ceramics they founded in 1961 in Deidesheim, and of which she is the director. This monograph on Reimers’s oeuvre—primarily rugged, handbuilt vessels with intense, painterly glazes—surveys her dual career as ceramist and advocate.
Inside
Design Now: National Design Triennial
by Ellen Lupton, Donald Albrecht, Susan Yelavich, Mitchell Owens,
2003, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 800-722-6657. 208 pages,
illustrated. $50 hardcover, $29.95 paperback.
Is design in 21st-century American culture inescapable in its ubiquity or liberating in its provocativeness? Perhaps both, judging from the catalog accompanying the second “National Design Triennial,” organized by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York City (through January 25, 2004). The exhibition and book cut an interdisciplinary swath across contemporary design practice—architecture, interiors, landscape design, window display, product design, graphic design, fashion, film and new media—to survey “cutting-edge trends and future horizons.” Presenting 80 emerging and established designers and firms operating today, the Triennial “pays special attention to the realm of the interior, both at home and in the workplace,” writes Paul Warwick Thompson, Cooper-Hewitt’s director, in the catalog preface. “Many of the works selected,” he continues, “reveal a fascination with beauty and decoration, expressed from a distinctly contemporary point of view. Sensuous materials, lush patterns, and exquisite production details come together with new technologies, pop culture imagery, and fresh approaches to scale, color, and construction.” Among the designs bearing out this theme are Critz Campbell’s nostalgic Eudora Chair, a flowered armchair of fiberglass, cotton fabric and polyester resin lit from within by fluorescent tubes, Kelly Christy’s fanciful hats incorporating miniature vignettes, Ted Muehling’s romantic/modern collections of jewelry and porcelain, Michele Oka Doner’s jewelry and household works cast from natural objects, and Mark Pollack’s office and residential fabrics woven from reflective threads. The essays by the four curators exploring the role of the designer in our culture are followed by spreads of each designer’s work that include a description of the work by the curator who chose it.
Quiet
Beauty: Fifty Centuries of Japanese Folk Ceramics from the Montgomery
Collection
by Robert Moes, 2003, Art Services International, Alexandria, VA,
703-548-4554. 255 pages, essay by Rupert Faulkner, primary photography
by Stefano Ember. $39.95 paperback.
Pottery produced for farmers, artisans and merchants rather than for feudal lords or the court is the focus of this catalog of a traveling show featuring 100 examples made in Japan between 3000 B.C. and A.D. 1985. These cooking beakers, wine jars, tomb vessels, storage jars, dishes and bowls in stoneware and porcelain, sake bottles and flower-arranging vases by generations of anonymous potters or by 20th-century artist/craftsmen influenced by the Mingei, or folk craft movement were selected from the collection of Jeffrey Montgomery, an American living in Switzerland. In his essay tracing the development of folk ceramics from prehistory to the present, guest curator Robert Moes discusses the importance of ceramics in the cultural history of Japan, attributing the special reverence for pottery to developments in the tea ceremony in the 16th century. Rupert Faulkner explores some of the forces that have shaped the development of studio ceramics in modern Japan. Maps of the major ceramic production centers, kiln drawings, a bibliography and an illustrated index of works are included. The exhibit opened at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York City (March 27-June 15), and is at the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI (August 23-January 4, 2004).
Isamu
Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth
by Louise Allison Cort and Bert Winther-Tamaki, 2003, Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. University of California
Press, Berkeley, 800-777-4726. 220 pages, contributions by Bruce Altshuler
and Niimi Ryu, illustrated. $44.95.
Companion to a traveling exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (through September 7), this book reveals a less familiar side of the Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), noted for his stone and bronze sculpture, public installations and furniture and lighting designs—his work in clay. Primarily sculptural and often informal, spontaneous and humorous, his ceramics were executed in intensive sessions, during sojourns in Japan in 1931, 1950 and 1952. In addition to presenting the story behind their creation—in part Noguchi’s longing to reconnect to his Japanese heritage—the book introduces the work of major post-World War II Japanese ceramists with whom he collaborated or interacted. The four linked scholarly essays address the personal and artistic issues behind Noguchi’s engagement with Japanese earth, the complex milieu of Japanese ceramics in the immediate postwar period and the reception of Noguchi’s ceramic work in the United States. The next exhibition venue is Japan Society, New York City (October 16-January 11, 2004).
The
Legacy of Maria Poveka Martinez
by Richard L. Spivey, 2003, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe,
800-249-7737. 208 pages, foreword by Duane Anderson, photographs by Herbert
Lotz. $60.
This is an expanded and redesigned edition of the author’s previously published monograph, Maria (1979 and 1989) on the renowned ceramist Maria Poveka Martinez (1887-1980) of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, known in particular for her black-on-black pottery. Two hundred examples of her pottery are reproduced along with works (ceramics and paintings) by other members of her family—husband Julian Martinez, their son Popovi Da, daughter-in-law Santana Martinez and grandson Tony Da. The author’s portrait of Maria and her kin is based on extensive interviews and his long association with the family.
Art
and Design in Modern Custom Folding Knives
by David Darom, 2003, Tipografia Edizioni Saviolo, Vercelli, Italy,
paolo@tipografiaedizionisaviolo.191.it.
256 pages, edited by Bud Lang, illustrated. $65.
This volume, assembled by David Darom, a marine biologist and photographer in Israel, looks at the decorativeness and ingenuity of unique or limited edition folding knives, a subdivision of custom knifemaking. Works by 33 makers from around the world are presented in full-page photographs accompanied by the artists’ technical explanations of the materials and mechanisms.
Quilt
Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East
by Yoshiko Jinzenji, 2003, Kodansha International, New York, NY, Oxford
University Press, New York, NY, 800-451-7556. 128 pages, foreword by Jun’ichi
Arai, illustrated. $35.
The Japanese artist Yoshiko Jinzenji began quilting in the 1970s, inspired by Mennonite and Amish quilts she discovered while living in Canada. Over more than 30 years, during which she returned to Japan, she has created minimalist quilts that are a fusion of western patterns and Asian textiles—kimono fabric and Buddhist temple altar cloths as well as innovative synthetics by such designers as Jun’ichi Arai. Experimenting with natural dyes, Jinzenji established a studio in Bali, in the late 1980s, where she learned to dye silk and other cloth with bamboo to achieve a rich white. Her varied quilts, pillows and small decorative objects are presented in photographed settings, accompanied by the artist’s narrative of her development and presentation of 90 projects.
Woodturning
Design
by Mike Darlow, 2003, Fox Chapel Publishing Co., East Petersburg,
PA, 717-560-4703. 271 pages, illustrated. $34.95 paperback.
In this volume, the fourth in a series, Mike Darlow, an Australian turner and writer, takes an approach that is by turns philosophical, historical, aesthetic and practical. He addresses the topics of perception, design concepts and issues—such as the art market for woodturning, and the problem of plagiarism—ornament, the detailed design of form and decoration. The abundant illustrations encompass drawings, process photographs and a gallery of works by an international roster of contemporary turners.
Art
Deco Textiles: The French Designers
by Alain-René Hardy, 2003, Thames & Hudson, New York, NY,
W.W. Norton, New York, NY, 800-233-4830. 256 pages, illustrated. $45.
Textile designs for fashion and home furnishings were significant in the Art Deco movement that flourished in France (and elsewhere) in the 1920s and 30s, and whose signal event was the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925. More than 300 hand- and machine-made, woven and printed fabrics from museums, manufacturers’ archives and private collections are presented, some by noted artists like Sonia Delaunay and Raoul Dufy, in this survey. The book is organized by designs, the major categories being “Floral Art Deco” and “Modernism and Geometry.” The author, a specialist in 20th-century decorative arts, succinctly chronicles the birth, rise and decline of Art Deco textiles between 1910 and 1940, touching on technological developments, artistic influences and economic and social conditions.
New
Material as New Media: The Fabric Workshop and Museum
by Marion Boulton Stroud, 2002, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia,
PA. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 617-253-5643. 328 pages, foreword by Anne
d’Harnoncourt, introduction by Mark Rosenthal, illustrated. $50.
Since it was founded in 1977, the Fabric Workshop (now the Fabric Workshop and Museum), an experimental arts laboratory in Philadelphia, has invited over 450 artists from over 30 countries as residents to explore the artistic potentialities of fabric. It has also run apprentice programs for urban high school students. This book, which accompanied a 25-year retrospective drawn from its permanent collection (February 10-April 19), highlights more than 50 projects by artists, designers and architects, including Louise Bourgeois, Chris Burden, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Faith Ringgold, Kiki Smith, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and Carrie Mae Weems. In addition to Ruth Fine’s interview with Marion Stroud, the workshop’s founder, there are essays by Francesco Bonami, Arthur C. Danto, Larry Rinder and Robert Storr.
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