Books October/November 2003 Uncommon Legacies: Native American Art from the Peabody Essex Museum Jesse Monongya: Opal Bears and Lapis Skies Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit Hidden Threads of Peru: Q’ero Textiles; Woven Stories: Andean Textiles & Rituals Art Jewelry Today; Fireplace Accessories Roxanne Swentzell: Extra-Ordinary People Glass Art: Reflecting the Centuries International Glass Art Archive
	Uncommon Legacies: Native American Art from the Peabody Essex Museum by John R. Grimes, Christian F. Feest and Mary Lou Curran, 2002, American Federation of Arts, New York, NY. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 272 pages, nine additional contributors, illustrated. $60. The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, has one of the finest collections of Native American art in this country, the result of a collecting history that began in 1799 with the founding of its predecessor, the East India Marine Society. Companion to a traveling exhibition of the collection’s masterworks, acquired in the course of trade and missionary activities, this handsome scholarly book presents the collection as a “fragmentary chronicle” of a cultural dialogue between the Native and non-Native worlds, with museums serving as mediators. “The quality of our dialogue with these past Native artists will be vastly enriched by individuals -- Native people, artists, curators, scholars -- who can share their insights into earlier symbols and values, and their meaning today,” writes John R. Grimes, the Peabody’s curator of Native American art and culture. Demonstrating that these holdings are not static, the book includes contemporary Indian artists in a chapter by Thomas “Red Owl” Haukaas, a Lakota artist. The catalog chapters feature 119 works, representing the art of the American Southeast, the Northwest Coast, the Northeast Woodlands and Great Lakes, the Plains and South America. A glossary of tribal names and related terms and a bibliography are included. Circulated by the American Federation of Arts, the exhibition ends its tour, which began in 2002, at the Peabody Essex (through December 13). TOP
	Jesse Monongya: Opal Bears and Lapis Skies by Lois Sherr Dubin, 2002, Hudson Hills Press, New York, NY, and Manchester, VT, 802-362-6450. 182 pages, foreword by Diana Pardue, preface by Susan Harnly Peterson, photographs by Kiyoshi Togashi. $50. The subject of this lively, well-researched monograph is Jesse Monongya, a master of painterly inlay, whose jewelry reflects his dual Navajo and Hopi heritage. Born in 1952, Monongya, having served as a marine in Vietnam, began his career by apprenticing with his father, the noted jeweler Preston Monongye. Other Native artists -- Charles Loloma, Lee Yazzie and Dennis Edaakie also had an impact on Jesse’s style and technique. In this first volume of the series American Indian Master Jewelers, Lois Sherr Dubin, the author of North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment from Prehistory to the Present, tells Jesse’s life story, much of it in his own words, and traces his artistic development. The vivid photographs of Monongya’s bracelets, necklaces, pendants, bolo ties, earrings inlaid with Acoma jet, sugilite, coral, turquoise, lapis, ivory and the like are complemented by images of the dramatic southwestern landscapes that inspired him, and photographs of the artist at work in his Scottsdale, Arizona, studio. TOP
	Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit by Sharon J. Busby, 2003, Marquand Books, Seattle, WA. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115. 160 pages, illustrated. $55. The Haida and Tlingit peoples of the northern Northwest Coast are well-known for finely woven baskets fashioned from the strong, supple roots of the Sitka spruce, which grows in shoreline habitats. In this illuminating study, Sharon J. Busby, a self-taught authority on spruce root basketry, traces its history and evolution, examining its uses in the Native communities and the changes in style that occurred when their baskets became part of the souvenir trade in the late 19th century. She explains the complex twined weaving techniques and describes recent efforts to pass on these basketry traditions. Her text is complemented by Ronald H. Reeder’s color images of baskets from the 1850s to the present (from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Seattle, the Alaska State Museum, Juneau, and private collections), skillful drawings of the weaving techniques by Margaret Davidson, and historical photographs. A glossary and a bibliography are included. TOP
	Hidden Threads of Peru: Q’ero Textiles by Ann Pollard Rowe and John Cohen, 2002, Merrell Publishers, London, Rizzoli International Publications, New York, NY, 212-387-3400. Textile Museum, Washington, DC. 160 pages, illustrated. $50. Woven Stories: Andean Textiles & Rituals by Andrea M. Heckman, 2003, University of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 800-249-7737. 216 pages, foreword by Garth Bawden, illustrated. $45. Both these fine books combine ethnography, anecdote, textile analysis and vivid photography to bring to life the role of weaving in two remote agricultural communities in the Peruvian Andes that can trace their traditions to the Inca empire. The focus of Hidden Threads of Peru, the companion to a 2002 exhibition at the Textile Museum, is the Q’ero people living on the eastern flanks of the Andes 100 miles from Cuzco. Ann Pollard Rowe, curator of Western Hemisphere collections at the Textile Museum, provides exhaustive analysis of the ponchos, shawls, bags and rugs woven or knitted by the Q’ero. The contributions of her collaborator, the filmmaker and photographer John Cohen, include descriptions based on his field experiences and photographs of the people and their textiles taken over a 40-year period. The book’s title refers not only to the isolation of the Q’ero community but also to the structure of the weaving, in which some threads are hidden inside the fabric. In Woven Stories, Andrea M. Heckman, an anthropologist as well as a weaver and photographer, documents the lives of the Quechua people in the region called Ausangate, 85 miles southeast of Cuzco. In the more than 20 years that she studied and photographed the Quechua, immersing herself in their daily lives and rituals, she came to view their textiles, through their structure and symbols, as visual metaphors for the meaningful relationships this community forms with nature, animals and the environment. Heckman sees the Quechua as survivors maintaining a continuity with the past through their weavings, but adapting to a world of rapid change. TOP
	Art Jewelry Today, by Dona Z. Meilach, 2003, 256 pages, illustrated, $50 Fireplace Accessories, by Dona Z. Meilach, 2002, 256 pages, illustrated, $49.95; Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 610-593-1777. These two volumes are primarily pictorial compilations with minimal text, culled from images sent to Dona Z. Meilach by the artists. Art Jewelry Today includes more than 500 works by 193 jewelers from 14 countries, many of them leading figures, organized into such categories as gold, silver, mixed metals and other media, found and recycled objects, glass and enamels. One deftly illustrated chapter surveys techniques. Fireplace Accessories, an offshoot of the author’s earlier books on ironwork, comprises 400 photos of historical and modern fireplace screens, surrounds, andirons and the like by more than 100 artist-blacksmiths from nine countries. TOP
	Roxanne Swentzell: Extra-Ordinary People by Gussie Fauntleroy, 2002, New Mexico Magazine, Santa Fe. University of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 800-249-7737. 96 pages, illustrated. $38.95. (Limited edition of 300, with an original aquatint etching, signed and numbered, $225, 505-827-6917.) At age 41, the New Mexico ceramist Roxanne Swentzell, of Santa Clara Pueblo, is known for her expressive, often droll figure sculptures—sometimes self-portraits—caught in the actions, gestures and spiritual quandaries of daily life. Following a sketchy biography, these works are presented in excellent photographs by Swentzell accompanied by her reflections on their meanings as told to Gussie Fauntleroy, a magazine writer. One chapter illustrates how Swentzell forms her figures from coils of clay in the long tradition of Pueblo pottery making. Fourth in New Mexico Magazine’s Artist Series, this volume is the first devoted to a ceramist. TOP
	Glass Art: Reflecting the Centuries by Helmut Ricke, 2002, Prestel Verlag, New York, NY, 888-463-6110. 384 pages, illustrated. $85. The Glasmuseum Hentrich, the glass collection of the museum kunst palast in Düsseldorf, Germany, is one of the most wide-ranging in the world, comprising some 9,000 objects from prehistory to the present. In this informative catalog-cum-survey of glass art, Helmut Ricke, director of collections at the museum and chief curator of the Glasmuseum Hentrich, draws on more than 550 outstanding examples, ranging from ancient pre-Roman, Roman, Islamic, medieval, renaissance and baroque times, through the 19th century and up to the 1990s. In his chapter on the 1960s to the 1990s, illustrated with the work of leading glass artists in Europe, Australia, Japan and the United States, Ricke writes, “A large number of works created today cannot be judged with the conventional criteria for evaluating crafts, for in concept and artistic quality they answer to the same demands made on sculpture. The material’s intrinsic value, however, and the large proportion of complicated techniques used to make it continue to stand in the way of perceiving glass sculpture as an integral part of the major contemporary art movements. In the context of modern art glass essentially leads a life of its own.” The book’s reference value is enhanced by historical maps of glass production, a glossary, illustrated techniques, a discussion of reproductions, imitations and forgeries, and a bibliography of literature cited in the catalog entries for each work. TOP
	International Glass Art by Richard Wilfred Yelle, 2003, Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 610-593-1777. 400 pages, six contributors, illustrated. $95. This visual survey of the studio glass movement was occasioned by the 25th anniversary of UrbanGlass: New York Center for Contemporary Glass, Brooklyn, of which Richard Wilfred Yelle is a founder. Each of the more than 175 artists included is represented by a portrait and several works. Most of the texts, except for a brief history of UrbanGlass, are reminiscences by collectors, reflecting Yelle’s view that these devotees have played a vital role in the development of contemporary glass.
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