Tone Vigeland: Jewellery and Sculpture / Movements in Silver
North Carolina Pottery: The Collection of the Mint Museums
Artisans of Haiti / Artisanat díHaiti
Josef and Anni Albers: Designs for Living
Tone
Vigeland: Jewellery and Sculpture / Movements in Silver
by Cecilie Malm Brundtland, 2003, Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart,
Germany. Antique Collectors’ Club, Easthampton, MA, 800-252-5231.
183 pages. English and German, contributions by Helen W. Drutt English
and Cornelie Holzach, illustrated. $75.
For more than 20 years in a career that began in the late 1950s, the Norwegian
artist Tone Vigeland has achieved international renown for her dramatic
jewelry—necklaces and bracelets of silver, steel and other ductile
metals that show the influences of Viking ornament and contemporary art.
“Through a system of repetitive forms, writes Helen W. Drutt English
in the introduction, “she has developed a principle in the way she
assembles and connects similar elements which create a whole. The resulting
volumes in the surfaces undulate and deny their rigid construction.”
In recent years Vigeland has added sculpture and wall pieces to her creative
domain. This monograph surveys Vigeland’s background—she was
born into one of Norway’s foremost artistic families—training,
techniques and impeccable craftsmanship, and offers a critical appreciation
of her jewelry and the impulses behind her turn toward sculpture. The
photographs emphasize the graphic power of Vigeland’s work, its
remarkable textures and her brooding but rich gray and black palette.
A biographical chronology and lists of exhibitions and museum collections
with her work are included.
Georg Jensen: Silver
by Thomas C. Thulstrup, G.E.C. Gads Forlag, Copenhagen, Denmark. Avail
& Desiable
through Georg Jensen, New York, NY, 800-546-5253. 216 pages, illustrated.
$99.
established a modest silversmithy in Copenhagen to produce jewelry and
In April 1904, Georg Jensen (1866-1935), a Danish artist from humble circumstances,
fashion accessories for women and men. The work was weighty and full-bodied,
unlike the paper-thin manufactured jewelry of the day, and stood out for
its meticulousness as well as for its artistic style, the most distinctive
characteristic being a hammered surface. Jensen was an immediate success,
and soon branched into hollowware and flatware. By the late 1920s his
enterprise had become a large international decorative arts business with
a staff of more than 250. The company changed with the times, thriving
even after the founder's death, and today is a global brand signifying
luxury and quality. This handsome centenary volume, by an economist/art
historian, offers a brief biography of the founder, analyzes the elements
of the Jensen Style, explores the role of the company;s most influential
designers and explains how the company remained in the forefront of Danish
design while holding its own on the world stage.
by Oliver Watson, 2004, Thames & Hudson, New York, NY, 212-354-3763. The al-Sabah Collection, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Kuwait National Museum. 512 pages, photography by Fraser Marr and Muhammad Ali. $65.
Drawing on the al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait, comprising more than 1,200 items, this scholarly, profusely illustrated catalog surveys Islamic pottery over its thousand-year history, from the fine unglazed wares made in eighth-century Syria and Egypt to the refined works in 16th and 17th-century Turkey and Iran, to inferior works in 19th-century Iran suggesting the destructive impact of European industrialization. There are detailed descriptions of more than 400 objects grouped in geographical and chronological sequence and accompanied by over 900 color photographs. Oliver Watson, chief curator at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, discusses the study and serious collecting of Islamic pottery over the past hundred years and a chapter by Kirsty Norman deals with the restoration and faking of Islamic ceramics. An extensive bibliography and a glossary are included.
TOP
North
Carolina Pottery: The Collection of the Mint Museums
edited by Barbara Stone Perry, 2004, University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill, 800-848-6244, and the Mint Museums, Charlotte, NC, 704-337-2061.
212 pages, essays by Perry, Daisy Wade Bridges, Charles G. Zug III, Charlotte
V. Brown and Mark Hewitt, illustrated. $39.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback.
The rich pottery heritage of North Carolina is represented in the collection
of the Mint Museums with holdings of more than 1,600 pieces. This handsomely
illustrated book presents some 400 examples, including works from the
four major pottery-producing areas of the state—Moravian settlements,
Seagrove, the Catawba Valley and the mountains—and ranging from
the 18th-century to the present. Cynthia Bringle, Mark Hewitt (see page
42), Ben Owen III and Michael Sherrill are a few of the many contemporary
potters included. The essays offer history and aesthetic appreciation.
The book accompanies “North Carolina Pottery: A Restless Tradition,”
an exhibition of 50 works, at the Mint Museum of Art, through February
27.
Kate Malone: A Book of Pots
by Lesley Jackson and Kate Malone, 2003, Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY,
845-679-6838. 208 pages, illustrated. $50.
In a career beginning in the late 1980s, the British ceramist Kate Malone
has won recognition for exuberant press-molded or coil-built pots notable
for their bulbous shapes depicting fruits and vegetables and their embellishment
with brilliant colors and lush glazes. Her oeuvre includes many large-scale
commissions and a modestly priced production line. Dramatic photographs
of the works accompany an account of Malone’s career by the design
historian Lesley Jackson and the artist’s discussion of her commissions,
materials, techniques and glaze research.
Brick:
A World History
by James W. P. Campbell, 2003, Thames & Hudson, New York, NY, 212-354-3763.
320 pages, photography by Will Pryce. $70.
“Brick is at once the simplest and the most versatile of materials,
the most ubiquitous and the least regarded, all too familiar yet strangely
neglected,” declares James W. P. Campbell, after noting that the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China, the Hagia Sophia,
the great medieval castle of Malbork, Poland, the 2,000 temples in Pagan,
Burma, Brunelleschi’s Dome in Florence, the structure of the Taj
Mahal, the 1,200 miles of sewers the Victorians built under London and
the Chrysler Building in New York City were all built of brick. So begins
an architectural journey—achieved through lively text and Will Pryce’s
excellent photographs—around the world and from 5000 BC to the present,
in homage to this building material. At once a technical survey and an
essay in architectural and cultural history, the book provides an overview
of the development of brickmaking and bricklaying as trades, but is mainly
focused on the structures—buildings, walls, bridges—made from
this basic unit, whose main ingredient is clay. The author suggests that
even in periods when brick was supposedly relegated to second place—such
as with Italian Renaissance architecture or 20th-century modernist skyscrapers—it
was often there under the skin of buildings clad in other materials.
Artisans of Haiti / Artisanat d’Haiti
Chantal Regnault and Karla Hostetler, 2003, Aid to Artisans,
Hartford, CT, 860-947-3344. 167 pages, English and French, illustrated,
photography by Regnault. $29.95 paperback.
For more than four years, Aid to Artisans, a 28-year-old nonprofit organization
that offers practical assistance to craft makers worldwide, has, with
grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development operated SHAPE
(Supporting Haitian Artisans in Private Enterprise) with the goal of bolstering
the economy by nurturing the irrepressible creativity of Haitian craftspeople.
Through the engaging photographs of Chantal Regnault, this paperback brings
to life talent in basketry, stone sculpture, ironwork, turned wood, textiles,
horn and bone objects, papier-mâché, and bead and sequin
work. Also meant as a tourist guide, with a directory of the artists pictured,
the book, the authors hope, will “serve as a doorway for buyers
and collectors into Haiti’s unique craft sector, as a record of
their accomplishments for Haiti’s artisans, and a closer look at
a small country whose big visual arts story has been astounding the world
for many decades.”
African
Textiles
by John Gillow, 2003, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 800-722-6657.
240 pages, illustrated. $60.
Arranged by region, this sweeping survey of the traditional, handmade
textiles of the African continent is a study in diversity: the stripweaves
of Ghana and Sierre Leone in West Africa, tie and dye cloth of Nigeria
and Ivory Coast, Algerian Berber weaves, Ethiopian embroidery, Shoowa
cut-pile embroidery from the Congo and Ndebele and Zulu beadwork are but
a sampling of the techniques described. An authority on textile design,
John Gillow also explores the influence on textile production of religion,
trade, fashion and the changing role of women within these societies.
Photographs of the textiles are augmented by vintage and contemporary
images of people wearing and making them. A glossary, map, bibliography
and guide to museum collections complete this reference.
Josef and Anni Albers: Designs for Living
by Nicholas Fox Weber and Martin Filler, 2004, Cooper-Hewitt National
Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Merrell Publishers, New York,
NY, 800-343-4499. 160 pages, illustrated. $39.95.
Josef and Anni Albers, who met and married at the Bauhaus, were among
the most influential artists to come out of the renowned German design
school—Josef (1888-1976) as a painter, printmaker, designer and
teacher, Anni (1899-1994) as a weaver and textile designer. In Germany
in the 1920s and early 30s and throughout their careers in America, where
they emigrated in 1933, they also produced innovative designs for the
home, the focus of this companion book to an exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt
(through February 27). These include Josef’s furniture, table wares
and graphic designs, and Anni’s wall hangings, fabric samples, designs
for tablecloths, wallpaper and drapery, and jewelry made from common objects
like bobby pins and paperclips. Though the couple did not collaborate,
“in every aesthetic choice they were allies,” writes Nicholas
Fox Weber, executive director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.
“They believed that the accouterments of life embodied intelligence,
even wisdom, and impart fabulous charm in a world where so much else was
uncertain.” Of their own living spaces, the architecture critic
Martin Filler writes, “As members of the first generation of Modernist
pioneers, the Alberses were compelled to invent much of their personal
environment in order for it to accord with the reductivist aesthetic of
the new movement.” Indeed, the rigor of the couple’s “less
is more” approach is evident in the photographs of their pared-down
homes. Their philosophy is offered in the sampling of their writings that
concludes the book. “Design is often regarded as the form imposed
on the material by the designer,” wrote Anni, in 1947. “The
less we, as designers, exhibit in our work our personal traits, our likes
and dislikes, our peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, in short, our individuality,
the more balanced the form we arrive at will be. It is better that the
material speaks than that we speak ourselves.”
Objects of Design from
the Museum of Modern Art
by Paola Antonelli, 2003, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. D.A.P. /
Distributed Art Publishers, New York, NY, 800-338-2665. 288 pages, eight
contributors, illustrated. $45.
A helicopter, hi-tech appliances, humble kitchen utensils by unknown designers,
a Swiss officer’s knife, home computers and iconic furniture by
noted figures spanning the 20th century—these are among the more
than 340 objects pictured in this second book in the Museum of Modern
Art’s three-volume series on the holdings of the Department of Architecture
and Design. The introductory essay, by Paola Antonelli, MoMA’s curator
of design, traces the history of the works in tandem with that of the
department. Arranged in nine groupings including “Machine Art,”
“Useful Objects,” “Modern Nature,” and “Good
Design,” these works reveal the variety of aesthetic and conceptual
viewpoints in design since the late 19th century. “The ideals of
beauty have evolved in the nearly seventy-five years since the inception
of the collection, and the machine has evolved to attain capabilities
once unthinkable,” writes Antonelli. “Yet in the equation
that results in modern, pure aesthetics may have become a variable, but
the ethical aspects have remained constant.”
The
Design Encyclopedia
by Mel Byars, 2004, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, and Laurence King
Publishing, London, England. D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, New York,
NY, 800-338-2665. 832 pages, foreword by Terence Riley, illustrated. $65.
This doorstop of a book by the design historian Mel Byars offers a comprehensive
overview of the history of design over the past 130 years that supersedes
his 1994 version. Byars considers design in its concrete application to
functional objects, embracing within his parameters craft, decorative
arts and industrial design, but not fine art and theory. The 3,600 entries
encompass furniture, lighting, fabrics, ceramics, glassware, metalware,
objects in other materials, mechanical, electrical and electronic devices,
as well as automobiles and other inventions. Most of the more than 700
color illustrations are drawn from the Museum of Modern Art’s design
collection.
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