Video and Books February 2004/March 2004
Eva Zeisel, George Nelson, Gaetano Pesce, Ingo Maurer
The Workshop: Celebrating the Place Where Craftsmanship Begins
Bent Ply: The Art of Plywood Furniture
Peter M. Pringle: Master Decoy Maker
World Textiles: A Concise History
Wild by Design: Two Hundred Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts
Blanket Weaving in the Southwest
The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and The Collecting of American Indian Art
The Bamboo Basket Art of Higashi Takesonosai
Glass and Glamour: Steuben’s Modern Moment 1930-1960
Throwing
Curves: Eva Zeisel
Video, 2002, 60 minutes. Director/producer Jyll Johnstone, producer/editor
Kate Stilley, Canobie Films, San Francisco, CA, 415-206-1880. $90.
Eva Zeisel by Lucie Young, 96 pages; George Nelson by Michael Webb, 96 pages; Gaetano Pesce by Marisa Bartolucci, 96 pages; Ingo Maurer by Michael Webb, 104 pages, all 2003. Edited by Marisa Bartolucci and Raul Cabra, illustrated. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 800-722-6657. $12.95 each. Reviewed by Robert Silberman.
Eva Zeisel is a wonder. At 97, she shows no signs of slowing down. She remains (hyper)active, bringing her old ceramic and furniture designs back into production and creating new ones.
Throwing Curves begins with a lame sequence at a gallery opening, presumably meant to provide a little spectacle and spontaneity. But after that hiccup, everything proceeds admirably, with an excellent use of historical footage and stills, unusually candid interviews with family members and friends, strong contributions from experts and an extraordinary sequence of images behind the closing credits. Zeisel herself has a striking screen presence, with a shock of white hair and a direct, articulate speaking style. After briefly tracing her early days in Hungary and Germany, the narrative really takes off when it recounts her 1932 excursion to see firsthand what was happening in the Soviet Union. Zeisel wound up being appointed an artistic director in the ceramics and glass industry, only to be arrested on the ridiculous charge of plotting to assassinate Stalin. Released after more than a year in prison, she fled to the United States in 1938. She worked for Hall China, Red Wing, and other companies, receiving instructions such as "Make it Greenwich Village-y"; in recognition of her work as an industrial designer she was "anointed" (her word) when New York’s Museum of Modern Art gave her an exhibition in 1946. Throwing Curves leaves no doubt about Zeisel’s adventurousness, energy, willpower and, above all, talent.
Eva Zeisel by Lucie Young is the latest in the Compact Design Portfolio series (each book is five and three-quarter inches square), apparently intended as impulse buys for the design-erati. Tapas-like introductions to design celebrities, these books feature brief texts and lots of illustrations, although the quotations pulled out for special typographic treatment are the kind of gush best left to movie ads and fashion magazines. Neither this book nor the film offers a complete sense of Zeisel's formal development, though both touch upon the move from severe geometric modernism to a lyrical use of curves. When asked about the work in Throwing Curves, Zeisel falls back on rote responses including her aesthetic slogan, "the playful search for beauty." Maybe at her age she is entitled.
The trio of other volumes in the series all feature well-written texts, jazzy layouts, small pictures that make clear the outsize talent of the subjects and the same use of ad-copy-style excerpts from the text to accompany the illustrations. The three subjects do offer a good mix: George Nelson (d. 1986), less a designer than an impresario at Herman Miller, where he brought in Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard and Isamu Noguchi, and became identified with such classics of midcentury modernism as the Marshmallow love seat; Gaetano Pesce, whose wild and crazy designs such as a love seat in the shape of a giant fist won me over with their fearlessness and radical use of plastic and polyurethane; and master of light Ingo Maurer, best known for using tiny halogen lamps on wires, whose playful, poetic vision goes way beyond that now-universal idea. These books offer a wide-ranging reminder of how exciting innovative design can be.
Robert Silberman teaches art history and film at the University of Minnesota.
The
Workshop: Celebrating the Place Where Craftsmanship Begins
by Scott Gibson, 2003, Taunton Press, Newtown, CT, 800-926-8776. 208
pages, photographs by Randy O’Rourke. $34.95.
Those who work with wood, whether amateur or professional, are likely to find this tour of more than 30 workshops across North America absorbing, if not envy-inducing. With the help of Randy O’Rourke’s excellent photographs, Scott Gibson, a journalist, woodworker and a former editor at Fine Woodworking and other magazines, introduces the reader to the makers and their work spaces, focusing on how the design of their shops—their arrangement of tools and equipment—answers to their creative needs. The emphasis is on furniture makers, among them Jon Brooks, Mira Nakashima-Yarnall and Jere Osgood, but there are turners, carvers, a luthier and a canoe maker, as well. Also included are the North Bennet Street School in Boston, training ground of many fine furniture makers, and the cabinet shop at Colonial Williamsburg, which, in 18th-century style, functions with no electricity.
Bent
Ply: The Art of Plywood Furniture
by Dung Ngo and Eric Pfeiffer, 2003, Princeton Architectural Press,
New York, NY, 212-995-9620. 160 pages, illustrated. $45.
“Plywood, unlike synthetic plastics, is a modern material with a past,” write Dung Ngo and Eric Pfeiffer in their introduction to this survey. Although the two woodworking processes involved in plywood production—veneering and cross-grain lamination—date to ancient times, the crucial processes of modern plywood making depended on the mechanical and scientific revolutions of the Industrial Age. The authors cover furniture history, material development and advances from other industrial sectors to demonstrate plywood furniture’s uniquely modern character. The book offers an annotated visual journal of the making of a bent-ply desk, from the logging to the final assembly for shipment, and ends with a “compendium” of furniture (mostly chairs) by Charles and Ray Eames, Gerald Summers, Peter Danko, Marcel Breuer, Frank Gehry and others. With its plywood covers and rounded corners, Bent Ply is a pleasing object in its own right.
Gustav
Stickley
by David Cathers, 2003, Phaidon Press, New York, NY, 800-159-0190.
240 pages, illustrated. $69.95.
The preeminent figure of the American Arts and Crafts movement, Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) is best-known as a furniture designer but was equally an entrepreneur. Starting at the turn-of-the-century, he wielded influence through his furniture company, Craftsman Workshops and the magazine he founded, The Craftsman. This monograph, writes David Cathers, “is . . . less concerned with placing Stickley in the social, cultural, and political contexts of his era than it is in recreating the more immediate professional contexts—his offices, design studio, retail shops, and factory—in which he spent his working days.” Amply illustrated with newly commissioned photographs of Stickley furniture, textiles and metalwork, period photographs and images drawn from The Craftsman, this handsome volume includes, in addition to the chronology, notes and index, profiles of Stickley’s many creative collaborators and an illustrated sequence tracing the evolution of a single design, the fall-front desk, from 1900 to 1905.
Peter
M. Pringle: Master Decoy Maker
by William C. Reeve, 2002, McGill-Queen’s University Press,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Cornell University Press Services, Ithaca, NY,
800-666-2211. 200 pages, illustrated. $44.95.
Peter Marshall Pringle (1878-1953), an Ontario-born commercial artist and photographer, brought his professional skills and a passion for the outdoors to the making of duck decoys. He began carving in 1898, creating over 200 decoys in his lifetime, and between 1929 and 1946 he produced what many regard as consummate examples of the art. Because he carved and painted exclusively for his own use and that of a small circle of friends, his decoys were unknown until recently, when they began commanding high prices at auction. Meticulously researched, this monograph celebrates Pringle’s varied achievements with enlightening text, black-and-white photographs and color plates of the captivating ducks.
Anne
Wilson: Unfoldings
2002, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, 617-879-7337. 60 pages,
texts by Lisa Tung, Tina Yapelli, Kathryn Hixon, illustrated. $20 paperback.
Working with cloth—usually domestic linens—hair and thread, the artist Anne Wilson creates evocative, often disquieting sculptures or installations that carry myriad associations—with the human body, with loss, with the topology of spatial relationships in nature. Focused on Wilson’s work of the past decade, this catalog, which offers insightful commentary, accompanied an exhibition at the Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art, in 2002, and at the University Art Gallery, San Diego State University, California, in 2003.
World
Textiles: A Concise History
by Mary Schoeser, 2003, Thames & Hudson Inc., New York, NY. W.
W. Norton, New York, NY, 800-233-4830. 224 pages, illustrated. $14.95
paperback.
When one compares prehistoric and present-day textiles, the scholar Mary Schoeser points out, “[m]any of the materials, techniques and forms used in ancient times remain in use today. . . . The fact that their making often involves the creation of ‘ingredients’—unlike working with wood or stone—makes them extremely complex and particularly revealing of human ingenuity. . . . As indicators of cultural mechanisms, textiles offer insights into the greatest range of developments, embracing not only technology, agriculture and trade, but also ritual, tribute, language, art and personal identity.” Surveying textiles chronologically, Schoeser explores dyeing and weaving, Western ideas and styles, Oriental influences, surface patterning, the importance of cotton and linen and new technology. The book is part of the Thames & Hudson World of Art series.
Wild
by Design: Two Hundred Years of Innovation
and Artistry in American Quilts
by Janet Catherine Berlo and Patricia Cox Crews, 2003, International
Quilt Study Center, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. University of Washington
Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 176 pages, contributions by Carolyn Ducey,
Jonathan Holstein, Michael James, illustrated. $35 paperback.
.
This lively book views the American quilt from the vantage point of several
developments occurring since the seminal American quilt show at the Whitney
Museum of American Art in 1971: the deepening interest in historical quilts,
the proliferating scholarship in the field and the growth of the contemporary
studio quilt. “Many people think of quilts primarily as exercises
in rigorously geometric repeat patterning, writes the art historian Janet
Catherine Berlo, explaining the book’s title. “Yet a great
freewheeling tradition exists in quiltmaking in which improvisation, asymmetry,
and experimentation are the norm. . . .[T]his creative and original artistic
impulse can be documented back to the early years of quiltmaking in this
country.” Seeking to dispel some myths surrounding the craft, she
places such famous historical quilts as the appliqué masterpieces
by the ex-slave Harriet Powers within an American context, disputing the
Afrocentric lineage that some scholars have claimed for them. The entries
for the 48 quilts presented, all drawn from the collections of the Quilt
Study Center and shown last year at the university’s Sheldon Memorial
Art Gallery, are conversations between the authors and contributors, sharing
insights and information.
Blanket
Weaving in the Southwest
by Joe Ben Wheat, edited by Ann Lane Hedlund, 2003, University of
Arizona Press, Tucson, 520-621-1441. 444 pages, illustrated. $75.
Joe Ben Wheat (1916-1997), an anthropologist, devoted many years to creating a textile identification key based on the traits distinguishing the Pueblo, Navajo and Spanish American weaving traditions. He studied more than 1,500 textiles, conducting chemical tests of dyes and researching the production of the handwoven blankets, sarapes and ponchos so widely admired and collected. His efforts resulted in this monumental book, almost completed at the time of his death, which describes the evolution of southwestern textiles from the early historic period to the late 19th century, establishes a chronology of their development and delves into materials, techniques and designs. Ann Lane Hedlund, a former student of Wheat’s who is director of the Gloria F. Ross Center for Tapestry Studies, edited the book and constructed a chapter from his notes on the development of textile design. With its exhaustive analyses, maps, line drawings of weaves, and dye-test results, the book is certain to be an essential reference, with particular appeal for collectors, weavers and scholars.
The
Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and The Collecting
of American Indian Art
by Ralph T. Coe, 2003, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Yale
University Press, New Haven, CT, 203-432-0163. 340 pages, illustrated.
$65.
For more than 30 years, the art historian and former museum director Ralph T. Coe, who was responsible for two landmark exhibitions of American Indian Art, has been assembling a collection of his own that now totals some 800 works. Nearly 200 of these, recently shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—the future beneficiary of Coe’s collection—are presented in this companion book. They encompass objects from most Native American geographic regions and historical periods, from the fourth millennium B.C. to the present—masks, katsinas, weapons, button blankets, pottery and baskets, and totem pole and canoe models. Of particular interest to Coe are cross-cultural items, such as birchbark trays decorated with floral designs, that suggest the influence of European tastes. Coe’s catalog entries are delightful narratives blending erudition and anecdote. The essays include a memoir by Coe, a history of collecting by J. C. H. King, and a discussion of Native American art in the context of theory and text by Judith Ostrowitz. Eugene Thaw’s foreword stresses Coe’s role in the recognition of Native American work as art rather than ethnology.
The
Bamboo Basket Art of Higashi Takesonosai
by Lloyd Cotsen and Robert T. Coffland, 2002, Cotsen Occasional Press,
Los Angeles, CA, 312-663-5351. 104 pages, photographs by Pat Pollard.
$35 paperback.
At age 89, Higashi Takesonosai, who lives in Kyoto and has won prestigious prizes in Japan for his bamboo baskets, is becoming increasingly known beyond his native land for his consummate artistry. This monograph includes a personal view by Lloyd Cotsen, who has acquired more than 30 Higashi works, and a biographical account that traces how Higashi, whose original ambition was to be a painter, learned bamboo basket making through painstaking apprenticeships, ultimately developing the skill, vision and experimental attitude to regard the material as a medium for art. Almost all the 40 works shown, overall and in detail, are from the Cotsen collection, except for several owned by the artist.
Glass
and Glamour: Steuben’s Modern Moment 1930-1960
by Donald Albrecht, 2003, Museum of the City of New York. Harry N.
Abrams, New York, NY, 800-345-1359. 96 pages, illustrated. $24.95 paperback.
In the early 1930s, Arthur Amory Houghton Jr., a 27-year-old member of the family that controlled Corning Glass Works, sought to rescue the company’s financially ailing Steuben Division—later called Steuben Glass—through modern design. He hired the architect John Monteith Gates as managing director and sculptor Sidney Waugh as design director and “for three decades,” writes Donald Albrecht, in this catalog of an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (through April 25), “the dynamic triumvirate . . . reshaped Steuben in a progressive ‘corporate’ mode, envisioning their product through the multiple lenses of function, design, manufacturing, distribution, and promotion.” Steuben glass was presented to the public in special shops, museum exhibitions, advertising campaigns and luxury publications. Examples of the functional and decorative crystal that in time became the gift of presidents and the quintessential wedding present are shown in black-and-white photographs.
Gold
of the Akan from the Glassell Collection
by Doran H. Ross, 2002, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. Merrell
Publishers, New York, NY, 800-343-4499. 296 pages, contributions by Frances
Marzio, illustrated. $75.
The royal courts of the Akan peoples of Ghana are the most spectacular in Africa, known for elaborate ceremonies in which the use of beautifully crafted gold objects is central. These include jewelry, headdresses, swords and sword ornaments and even adornments for sandals and umbrellas. This study of these opulent works and their meaning in Akan societies, by Doran H. Ross, an authority on African gold and former director of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, is focused on the examples assembled by Alfred C. Glassell, Jr., who donated his collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1997. The book includes photographs of the Akan peoples in full regalia, taken over more than two decades.
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