Clay Talks: Reflections by American Master Ceramists
Colors of the World: The Geography of Color
Built
by Hand: Vernacular Buildings around the World
Bringing
Modernism Home: Ohio Decorative Arts, 1890-1960
Modernist
Jewelry 1930-1960: The Wearable Art Movement
Matisse, His Art and His Textiles: The Fabric of Dreams
Jack Lenor Larsen: Creator and Collector
Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance
Batik: Design, Style & History
Textile:
The Journal of Cloth & Culture
The
Art of Beadwork: Historic Inspiration, Contemporary Design
Archive
Clay Talks: Reflections by American Master Ceramists
edited by Emily Galusha and Mary Ann Nord, 2004, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN, 612-339-8007. 164 pages, illustrated, $30 ($25 members) paperback.
In 1997 the Northern Clay Center initiated the Regis Masters Series, a program of lectures in which major American ceramists (and since 2001 ceramists from other countries as well) are invited to share their “thoughts about the development and impact of their work within the context not only of the ceramics field but also of the larger society.” Between 1997 and 2000, 13 masters were named: Rudy Autio, William Daley, Stephen De Staebler, Ruth Duckworth, Jack Earl, Ken Ferguson, Karen Karnes, Warren MacKenzie, James Melchert, Robert Turner, Peter Voulkos, Betty Woodman and Eva Zeisel. This collection of their lectures, accompanied by images of their work and photographic portraits, provides invaluable oral history. Two reunion roundtable conversations held with some of the masters are also documented. The series is cosponsored by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which hosts the lectures, and funded by the Regis Foundation, based in Minneapolis.
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Colors of the World: The Geography of Color
by Jean-Philippe Lenclos and Dominique Lenclos, 2004, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 800-233-4830. 288 pages, translation from French by Gregory P. Bruhn, illustrated.
$49.95 paperback.
This eye- and mind-opening book features a chromatic journey around the world focused on vernacular architecture. Jean-Philippe Lenclos, a designer-colorist whose Paris atelier specializes in the conception and application of color in the environment, architecture and industrial products, and his wife, Dominique, a scholar, examine the palettes of diverse habitats through vibrant photographs supplemented by their watercolor sketches and color synthesis charts. The places, represented in more than 600 photographs, include the streets of Greenwich Village, New York City, and San Francisco, towns in Guatemala and Brazil, Ndebele dwellings in South Africa, peasant houses in Russia, towns and cities in the Middle East, India and Japan, and much more.
Built by Hand: Vernacular Buildings around
the World
by Bill Steen, Athena Steen and Eiko Komatsu, 2003, Gibbs Smith, Publisher,
Layton, UT, 800-748-5439. 470 pages, photographs by Yoshio Komatsu. $50.
The more than 700 photographs assembled in this book record a disappearing
world of indigenous buildings, constructed of natural materials by ordinary
people, i.e., non-architects. “Their molded curves and softened
lines convey a personal and human beauty,” declare the authors.
“Quietly and almost without notice, they outwit the might of modern
machinery with simple tools and materials that welcome, encourage and
amplify use of the human hand.” The first half of the book presents
dwellings made of earth, stone, wood, bamboo and other plants, and includes
cave homes, houses on water and movable shelter. The second half focuses
on communities, villages and towns, places of worship and streets, and
such details as entryways, windows, sculptural features and painted embellishment.
Bringing Modernism Home: Ohio Decorative Arts, 1890-1960
by Carol Boram-Hays, 2005, Columbus Museum of Art and Ohio University
Press, Athens, 740-593-1154. 242 pages, illustrated.
$40 hardcover, $26 paperback.
This illuminating catalog of a recent exhibition at the Columbus Museum
of Art documents the prominent role of Ohio artists and companies in bringing
the latest artistic movements and design trends—Arts and Crafts,
Art Nouveau, Art Deco, among them—to a broad section of American
society over a 70-year period. Carol Boram-Hays, an art historian and
the guest curator, presents chronologically an array of ceramics, glass,
furniture and metalwork and introduces the more than 120 artists and companies
that produced them. Among those profiled are Viktor Schreckengost, Paul
Bogotay, Eva Zeisel and Toshiko Takaezu in ceramics, Edris Eckhardt in
glass, Kenneth Bates and Helen Worrall in enameling and John Paul Miller
in jewelry. The many companies discussed include the Rookwood and Cowan
potteries, Hall China, Cambridge and Libbey glass companies and General
Fireproofing and Troy Sunshade, makers of office furniture. “Whether
devising their own stylistic innovations or responding to and adapting
styles developed in Europe and elsewhere,” Boram-Hays writes, “Ohio
artists and companies managed to stay at the forefront of modern design.
Creating individually crafted, unique works of art as well as designs
for items that were mass-produced by the hundreds of thousands, Ohio artists
and companies truly brought modernism home.”
Modernist
Jewelry 1930-1960: The Wearable Art Movement
by Marbeth Schon, 2004, Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 610-593-1777.
272 pages, illustrated. $69.95.
This compendium of 175 jewelry artists may induce nostalgia in those for
whom the mention of New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1940s and
50s brings to mind biomorphic silver necklaces, earrings and brooches
by figures like Sam Kramer, Ed Wiener and Art Smith. These jewelers as
well as Harry Bertoia, Irena Brynner, Margaret DePatta, Stanley Lechtzin,
Ed Levin, John Paul Miller, John Prip, Ron Pearson, and Ruth and Svetozar
Radakovich are among the well- and lesser-known metalsmiths whose stories
and works are presented here. Marbeth Schon, a dealer in modernist jewelry,
discusses the influence on jewelry of Surrealism, Cubism, Constructivism
and the Bauhaus and the Federal Arts Projects of the Depression era. No
doubt with collectors in mind, the author has included makers’ marks
and for many of the works has given price estimates.
Matisse, His Art and His Textiles: The Fabric
of Dreams
by Kathleen Brunner, Ann Dumas, Jack Flam, Rémi Labrusse, Hilary
Spurling and Dominique Szymusiak, 2004, Royal Academy of Arts, London,
and Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY, 800-345-1359. 212 pages, illustrated.
$65.
From his early days to the end of his life, textiles were fundamental
to the artistic vision of Henri Matisse and a wellspring of his imagination.
His father’s family had been weavers and the town in northern France
where he grew up was once a center of luxury textile production. The exposure
to fabric design had a lasting influence in contrast to the moribund Beaux-Arts
system he encountered in art school. It is the intent of this companion
book to an exhibition originating last fall at the Musée Matisse,
Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, now at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York City, through September 25, to examine how the fabrics Matisse
collected became an “experimental laboratory” for his art
and how he used textiles to break through to a new level of pictorial
reality in his pioneering works. “Matisse’s fabric collection
served him as a combined archive and tool-store all his life,” writes
Hilary Spurling. He drew on it “to furnish, order and, on a deep,
instinctual level, to compose his paintings.” This collection included
toile de Jouy, Romanian peasant blouses, embroidered Arab and Ottoman
robes, couture dresses, Islamic hangings and African Kuba cloth, which
inspired his late cut-paper art. More than 100 works by Matisse are pictured
along with fabrics that inspired him. Among the book’s pleasures
are photographs of the artist in his cloth-bedecked studio by the likes
of Robert Capa, Man Ray and Henri Cartier-Bresson .
Jack
Lenor Larsen: Creator and Collector
2004, Merrell Publishers, New York, NY, 212-929-8344. 192 pages, texts
by David Revere McFadden, Mildred Friedman, Lotus Stack and Jack Lenor
Larsen, illustrated. $49.95.
The interaction between Jack Lenor Larsen’s innovative textile designs
and his lifelong passion for collecting objects from many different cultures
as well as works by contemporary artists is examined in this handsome
companion book to the traveling exhibition originating at the Museum of
Arts & Design, New York City, last year and at the Montreal Museum
of Fine Arts through August 21. A collaboration between MAD and the David
M. Stewart Program for Modern Design, Montreal, the exhibition and book
feature more than 40 Larsen textiles juxtaposed with the objects that
may have inspired them or with which they have affinities. As David Revere
McFadden, chief curator at MAD, explains in his account of the designer’s
career, the works are arranged according to such categories as light and
translucency, surface and texture, pattern and color, form and structure,
and presented in serenely harmonious spreads—inspired groupings
of clay, metal, wood, fiber and glass pieces juxtaposed with Larsen fabrics.
Photographs of the designer’s home complete the picture of his refined
aesthetic. A detailed narrative chronology, comment by Lotus Stack on
the Larsen Archives in Minnesota and Montreal, and a glossary of textile
terms are included.
Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance
by Matilda McQuaid, 2005, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum,
New York, NY, and Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 212-995-9620.
224 pages, eight contributors, illustrated. $45.
“Stronger,” “faster,” “lighter,” “safer”
and “smarter” are the relevant categories in this companion
book to an exhibition of the highly engineered textiles used in aerospace,
medicine, sports, industry and the military, at the Cooper-Hewitt National
Design Museum (through October 30). The more than 140 objects assembled
by Matilda McQuaid, the museum’s exhibitions curator and head of
the textiles department, highlight collaborations between design, industry
and science in creating fabrics, or products fashioned with textile techniques,
that can lift hundreds of tons, weigh a fraction of their counterparts
in other materials and protect against extreme environments. An embroidered
bioimplantable device for reconstructive shoulder surgery, polyester ropes
used to moor oil rigs, a sleek glass fiber racing shell, a prosthetic
“foot” made of plain-woven carbon-fiber composite for an amputee
runner and a plethora of spacesuits, many of historic interest, are some
of what is unveiled here, accompanied by much technical information.
Batik: Design, Style & History
by Fiona Kerlogue, 2004, Thames & Hudson, New York, NY, 212-354-3763.192
pages. $29.95 paperback.
Practiced in many cultures in Asia and Africa, batik, the wax-resist technique
of creating pattern on textiles, finds its supreme expression in Indonesia,
where it is suffused with symbolic meaning. This in-depth study by a textile
specialist at the Horniman Museum in London explores the origins of batik
in Indonesia, regional differences, symbolism and motifs, batik as costume
and modern influences, and considers contemporary uses of batik in art.
Most of the textiles presented are from the collection of Rudolf G. Smend,
a German dealer.
Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture
Berg Publishers, Oxford, England, +44 (0) 1865-245104, www.bergpublishers.com. One-year subscription $78 (individual) $205 (institution).
Inaugurated in 2003, this publication states its “aims and scope” as bringing together “research in textiles in an innovative and distinctive academic forum for all those who share a multifaceted view of textiles within an expanded field.” Further, “it provides a platform for points of departure between art and craft; gender and identity; cloth, body and architecture; labor and technology; techno-design and practice—all situated within the broader contexts of material and visual culture.” Edited by Pennina Barnett and Janis Jefferies, both of the visual arts department, University of London, and Doran Ross of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in California, Textile is published three times a year, with the November number a special issue on a single topic (“Digital Dialogues 1: Textiles and Technology.” in November 2004, for example). The North Americans on the 14-person international advisory board are Ingrid Bachmann (Canada), Elizabeth Barber, Dilys Blum, Mary Schoeser, Lotus Stack and Anne Wilson (U.S.).
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The Art of Beadwork: Historic Inspiration, Contemporary
Design
by Valerie Hector, 2005, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, NY, 732-363-4511.
160 pages, foreword by Lois Sherr Dubin, illustrated. $24.95 paperback.
The beadwork jeweler Valerie Hector came to her vocation full-time in
1988, after several years of collecting beadwork from around the world
and amassing what she calls her “study collection.” For this
volume, she invited 24 artists to create a piece inspired by an example
from another time or culture. The richly illustrated result combines a
survey of beading traditions in Asian, African, Middle Eastern, European
and American cultures, with contemporary works, artist profiles and elaborate
projects aimed at a highly motivated participatory reader. Joyce Scott,
Jacqueline Lillie, Don Pierce and David Chatt are among the contributing
artists.
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