Search
Books
Books
Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic
By Judith Schwartz
A & C Black
London, England
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
$55
A little girl toting a machine gun, a man on all fours in a rolling circus cage with knives embedded in his back and the head of a man with a gas pump nozzle stuffed in his mouth —these are just a few of the “in your face” images among the provocative works by more than 200 artists from 30 countries assembled by Judith Schwartz in this overview of a seemingly growing and immensely varied area of ceramic ...
Books
By Ken Ferguson, Garth Clark, John Perreault,
Ted Rowland and Peter
von Ziegesar
Silver Gate, Inc.
Arlington, Texas
$45
“How does the son of a Rust Belt worker become a world-renowned ceramist?” asks the ceramics historian Garth Clark in the biographical essay that begins this monograph on Ken Ferguson (1928-2004), a giant of American ceramics. The answer, we learn through the contributions to the book, is hard work, a powerful belief in himself, diverse artistic interests, a deep love for his métier and, in crucial instances, excellent timing. There is some overlap of information in the essays, but the ...
Books
By Elizabeth Goring, Helen Clifford, Nel Romano, Francoise Carli, Kevin Coates
Arnoldsche Art Publishers
Stuttgart, Germany
$75
The British goldsmith Kevin Coates is acclaimed for his jewelry, table sculpture and presentation works, such as Ovid Metamorphoses, 1995, distinguished by their technical virtuosity, wide-ranging cultural references and richness of materials. In their mysteriousness and preciosity, they remind some viewers of objects displayed in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosities. Though Coates has been creating jewelry since the 1970s, a revolutionary
period in art jewelry throughout the world, the look of his work—figurative, complex and colorful—offers a sharp contrast to that of the ...
Books
By Sabrina Gschwandtner, foreword by David McFadden
Stewart, Tabori & Chang
$29.95
It’s not news that during the past decade there has been a huge resurgence in the popularity of knitting. A younger generation is gathering in bars and coffee shops, finding others who share their passion for what was generally regarded as a homey craft. And their creations extend far beyond, although don’t exclude, sweaters and scarves. Sabrina Gschwandtner, the founder of the zine KnitKnit, brings us makers of high-end fashion, miniature dollhouses, teacups and navigable boats. These knitters are interweaving science and technology and using not only yarn, but ...
Books
3D TypographyBy Jeanette Abbink and Emily CM AndersonForeword by Karrie JacobsMark Batty PublisherNew York, NY$45
Thanks in large part to the personal computer, graphic design has quietly gone mass. In the process, any remaining mystique around the care and use of type seems to have flown out the window. A zillion times a day someone buys (or just grabs) a digital typeface from the Internet. Once a word is keyed in using that font, alternate sizes or colors are little more than a click away.
In their redesign of this magazine, Jeanette Abbink and Emily CM ...
Books
By Kathleen Mangan
browngrotta arts
Wilton, Connecticut
$25
In honor of the 100th birthday of Lenore Tawney, who in the 1950s and 60s was one of a group of artists who created sculptural weaving or fiber works that hung freely in space, browngrotta arts has published this 36-page monograph, the first in a series examining a particular period or body of work by an established artist. It presents Tawney’s geometric drawings of the 1960s and their realization in the 1990s as three-dimensional thread constructions in Plexiglas boxes—“drawings in air.” Bringing together Tawney’s ideas and intentions, Kathleen Mangan offers insight into these ...
Books
By Kathleen Mangan
browngrotta arts
Wilton, Connecticut
$25
In honor of the 100th birthday of Lenore Tawney, who in the 1950s and 60s was one of a group of artists who created sculptural weaving or fiber works that hung freely in space, browngrotta arts has published this 36-page monograph, the first in a series examining a particular period or body of work by an established artist. It presents Tawney’s geometric drawings of the 1960s and their realization in the 1990s as three-dimensional thread constructions in Plexiglas boxes—“drawings in air.” Bringing together Tawney’s ideas and intentions, Kathleen Mangan offers insight into these ...
Books
By Dan Klein, Stephen Procter
RLDI Rob Little Digital Imaging
Carwoola, New South Wales, Australia
$78
In a career of some three decades, the British-born artist and teacher Stephen Procter (1946–2002) created a serene, accomplished oeuvre that encompassed glass works, but also paintings and drawings that reflected his aesthetic concerns. After studying both engineering and agriculture, Procter became a glass engraver, but dissatisfied working with pre-made forms, he traveled to glass workshops in Austria, learning prismatic cutting, fine carving and glassblowing. Ultimately Procter’s mature works—fused, blown, cut and engraved spherical vessels—seamlessly combined the techniques he had mastered. In 1992, Procter ...
Books
Choosing Craft: The Artist’s ViewpointEdited by Vicki Halper and
Diane DouglasThe University of North
Carolina PressChapel Hill, NC$35uncpress.unc.edu
This anthology, assembled from makers’ letters, conference reports, articles in periodicals, lecture notes and oral histories, focuses on artists' experiences and opinions as a primary resource for craft scholarship. Editors Vicki Halper and Diane Douglas, both with museum backgrounds, create a picture of craft as cultural labor, emphasizing lifestyle and economics rather than aesthetics.
The period covered, post-World War II to the present, witnessed the evolution of the studio craft movement in the United States. ...
Books
Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of ColorBy Patricia Phillips Marshall and Jo Ramsay LeimenstollUniversity of North Carolina PressChapel Hill, NC$40
Thomas Day (1801-1861) was a fine-furniture maker whom some have called the father of North Carolina’s furniture industry. Day was skilled in all aspects of woodworking, producing beautiful case furniture such as secretaries, bureaus and sideboards. His interior architectural woodwork reflected his artistic creativity; each interior was uniquely designed for its owner.
In North Carolina, and particularly in Caswell County, Day’s importance as a furniture maker never diminished. His clients kept their unique furniture—such as a ...
Books
Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive EraBy Ezra ShalesRivergate Books, Rutgers University Press, 2010, $50rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Ezra Shales' high-minded epic challenges readers to reconsider industrial arts, one of the wellsprings of contemporary craft. Yet Made in Newark is less about the things - jewelry, leather goods, gas logs - that were actually made in this northern New Jersey city (long before it became a symbol of economic blight) than about their social setting. Inspired by civic ideals fostered a century ago, the author examines the innovative programs of Newark's Free Public ...
Books
Edited by Dean and Geraldine Schwarz
South Bear Press
Decorah, Iowa
$75
Of the émigré artists who fled Nazi-occupied Europe and ultimately played significant roles in the postwar development of the American studio craft movement, one of the most influential was Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985). By the time she emigrated to the United States, in 1940, the French-born but German-educated ceramist was a Bauhaus-trained master potter, had headed a ceramics workshop, designed prize-winning porcelain dinnerware for the Royal Berlin factory, and operated a pottery in Holland with her husband, Frans Wildenhain, a fellow Bauhausler.
She joined Pond Farm, an artists’community in northern California. ...
Books
Essay by Don Davidson
Mobilia Gallery
Cambridge, Massachusetts
$35 ($20 students and artists)
Magical and witty describe the metal box sculptures fabricated during the last five years by Japanese-born Mariko Kusumoto, presented in this enchanting catalog. “Most of my pieces are interactive… the viewer must keep opening things to see the secrets inside or push, pull, or wind up something to see movement or hear sounds.” The essay by Don Davidson, an art historian, notes Kusumoto’s eclectic sources of inspiration—jazz improvisation, for example, and a 400-year-old Buddhist temple—he writes, “Her disparate combinations of personal and cultural references bespeak both a history ...
Books
By Juli Cho Bailer
Museum of Glass
Tacoma, Washington
$8.95
In installations and sculptural works, eight internationally established artists—Wim Delvoye, Teresita Fernández, Mona Hatoum, Maya Lin , Jean-Michel Othoniel, Kiki Smith, Fred Wilson and the late Chen Zen—have used glass to explore a variety of visions and narratives, having selected the material for its “extraordinary potential and complex cultural and metaphorical allusions,” according to curator Juli Cho Bailer, in this catalog of an exhibition at the Museum of Glass through February 3. Each work is presented with an account by Bailer of the themes and technical approaches of the artist. ...
Books
By Paul J. Stankard
McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company
$39.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback
This engaging autobiography by the artist Paul J. Stankard, known internationally as a master for his blown glass paperweights, columns and orbs with flameworked botanical motifs, is a testament to his strong creative and entrepreneurial spirit and lifelong quest for excellence. It is a straightforward account by a mature artist eager to acknowledge the art community that has nourished him. And it is a story of triumph over adversity. Second oldest of nine in an Irish Catholic family with college-educated parents, Stankard was the only one beset by ...
Books
Art Textiles of the World: CanadaBy Sandra Alfoldy, Alan C. Elder, Lisa Vinebaum, J. R. CarpenterTelos Art PublishingBrighton, England$73telos.net
Openness to technology, responsiveness to the environment and a capacity for contemplation, are among the qualities of the 20 Canadian artists chosen by publisher Matthew Koumis to represent a composite of the textile arts in their far-flung land. The book is the 13th Koumis has published in the Art Textiles of the World series.
Sandra Alfoldy, who teaches craft history, traces Canada’s textile history, touching on the contributions of Native peoples, French and British colonizers, and ...
Books
“Drawing a pattern is not the easiest way of doing it, but when the time is spent, something magical happens.” —Mike Perry ...
Books
The Ceramics Book: Second Edition
Edited by Emmanuel Cooper
Ceramic Review Publishing
London, England
$23
www.ceramicreview.com
If you’re a ceramics lover off to the British Isles, you might want to grab a copy of this A-Z directory of members and fellows of the Craft Potters Association, the national body representing studio potters in the UK. The association’s directory has lately surfaced as The Ceramics Book, edited by the potter Emmanuel Cooper, editor of the bimonthly magazine Ceramic Review. In this updated second edition, The Ceramics Book brings together photographs of and information about approximately 260 selected members, ...
Books
By David Whitehouse
Corning Museum of Glass
$29.95
“Visitors to our museums are frequently unaware that glass has been manufactured for thousands of years, and they marvel at the objects that were made as early as the second millennium B.C. They are also unaware that many of the techniques used to fashion glass into beautifully decorated shapes have been in existence since at least the first century B.C.” So write Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum and David Whitehouse, executive director of the Corning Museum of Glass, in the foreword to this scholarly and vividly photographed catalog of ...
Books
Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary ArtEdited by Maria Elena BuszekDuke University Press, $25dukeupress.edu
"Looking back, it wasn't probably the best idea, releasing a new word and seeing what happened." So writes Betsy Greer in her contribution to Extra/Ordinary, a new collection of essays edited by art historian and feminist critic Maria Elena Buszek. The word in question is craftivism, and well might Greer pause and ponder. Though it is not the exclusive topic of this anthology - essays range widely, from pure theory to quilting, bookmaking, and boatbuilding - about half of the ...
Departments
Blog
Tags
