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By Silas Kopf
Hudson Hills Press
Manchester, Vermont
$65
In the more than 30 years that the Massachusetts woodworker Silas Kopf has been making furniture including Music Cabinet, 1990, he has established himself as a recognized master of marquetry, the art of taking diverse species of wood and piecing them together to form patterns and images. Distinguishing the technique from inlay, which it often resembles in the result, Kopf explains, “In marquetry a veneered sheet is pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, including the background of the picture or design. The whole is then overlaid onto a thicker backing.”
In this ...
Books
Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative MindBy Mansfield BascomAbrams, $80abramsbooks.com
Wharton Esherick needs little introduction in the world of American craft, so it may come as some surprise that the first monograph of his life and work is coming out only now, a scant two years before the 125th anniversary of his birth. For the uninitiated, Esherick's sculptural furniture inspired a generation of studio furniture makers, including Sam Maloof and Wendell Castle. Less known are his woodcuts, sculpture and, from early in his career, painting in a late-Impressionist style.
Within these pages, the arc of his ...
Books
Jack Lenor Larsen's LongHouseBy Molly ChappelletForeword by Edward AlbeeAfterword by Francis H. CabotChronicle Books, $50chroniclebooks.com
Sometimes books seem to sing: Everything is exactly right. Jack Lenor Larsen's LongHouse, written and photographed by Molly Chappellet, is such a creature. I say "creature" because the book seems to breathe with its protagonist's own inventiveness, style and sheer passion for creating and living with beauty-as seen in the art, craft, architecture and sublime gardens that comprise LongHouse Reserve.
Larsen's 13,000-square-foot LongHouse sits on 16 acres in East Hampton, NY, and features works by Wharton Esherick, Dale Chihuly, Yoko Ono ...
Books
By Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal and Sue Scott
Foreword by Linda Nochlin
Prestel Publishing
$39.95
Once upon a time the art historian Linda Nochlin pondered the question, “Why have there been no great women artists?” That was 1971. In 2007, as Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal and Sue Scott—prominent critics and curators who happen to be women—attest, this question is no longer relevant. Over the past 35 years, due in no small part to the feminist movement, women have become a significant presence in the contemporary art world. Posner tells us that Louise Bourgeois, with her psychosexually charged ...
Books
By Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal and Sue Scott
Foreword by Linda Nochlin
Prestel Publishing
$39.95
Once upon a time the art historian Linda Nochlin pondered the question, “Why have there been no great women artists?” That was 1971. In 2007, as Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal and Sue Scott—prominent critics and curators who happen to be women—attest, this question is no longer relevant. Over the past 35 years, due in no small part to the feminist movement, women have become a significant presence in the contemporary art world. Posner tells us that Louise Bourgeois, with her psychosexually charged ...
Books
Wharton Esherick: Studio & CollectionBy Mansfield Bascom, edited by Paul Eisenhauer $19.99Esherick, Maloof, Nakashima: Homes of the Master Wood ArtisansBy Tina SkinnerPhotography by Steven Paul Witsitt$49.99Schiffer Publishing Ltd.Atglen, PAschifferbooks.com
By the late 1950s and early '60s, when Wharton Esherick (1887-1970) was starting to be hailed as the "dean of American craftsmen" and the "godfather of American studio furniture," he had spent a lifetime in relative obscurity in rural Paoli, PA, evolving from an academically trained painter into a master artist-craftsman who found in wood and the physical experience of working ...
Books
By William H. Robinson, Jordi Falgás and Carmen Belen Lord
Foreword by Robert Hughes
Cleveland Museum of Art
Yale University Press
$65
From 1868 until 1939, with the fall of the Second Spanish Republic, Barcelona, the principal city of Catalonia and a major Mediterranean port, experienced tremendous economic growth, emerging as the most politically and culturally progressive city in Spain. This fascinating period is explored in depth in this comprehensive book—with more than 30 contributing scholars—that accompanied an exhibition this past year at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although it is interesting to learn about ...
Books
By E. Graeme Robertson and Joan Robertson
Thames & Hudson
$65
Were you to randomly open this reference work to any of its abundant, evocative illustrations—of balconies, say, in the French Vieux Carré in New Orleans or of bridges in Leningrad—you would likely be drawn into a deeper investigation of the subject matter. Reprinted directly from the first edition of 1977 and largely a photographic essay, all in black and white, the book has become a classic in the literature of architecture and design. Motivated to bring attention to the aesthetic value of a distinctive form of decoration, E. Graeme Robertson, ...
Books
By Jo Lauria and Steve Fenton
Clarkson Potter/Publishers
$60
Seeking an introduction to the history of American craft in a single volume? A likely candidate might well be this 320-page, handsomely packaged companion book to the PBS series shown in the spring of 2007 and the related touring exhibition. The tone, as the title suggests, is upbeat, celebratory and inclusive, rather than critical or analytical.
Though the aim of the book is to survey 200 years, the organization is thematic, with a focus on communities, rather than strictly chronological, with much information offered in sidebars and extended photo captions. ...
Books
By William Warmus
Harry N. Abrams
$60
In 40 years of working with glass, the artist Dan Dailey has created a remarkably varied oeuvre—blown vessels and sculpture, narrative Vitrolite panels, figural lighting fixtures, large-scale murals and other commissions. All have been executed with superb technical proficiency and are notable for refinement in the details and, frequently, a playful, even cartoonish humor. Before being plunged into the dramatic presentation of some 400 images of Dailey’s work in this monograph, the reader is primed by the glass scholar William Warmus, who discusses Dailey’s place in the studio glass movement—he is a professor at ...
Books
“Mini Manifesto
Begin with ideas
Embrace chance
Celebrate coincidence
Ad-lib and make things up
Eliminate superfluous elements
Subvert expectation
Make something difficult look easy
Be first or last
Believe complex ideas can produce simple things
Trust the process
Allow concepts to determine form
Reduce material and production to their essence
Sustain the integrity of an idea
Propose honesty as a solution”
—Daniel Eatock ...
Books
One plus one seems to equal more than two in Tom Coleman’s bold stone or porcelain vessels incised with Frank Boyden’s fluid drawings of fish and birds. ...
Books
Yes, I would accept with pleasure an invitation to dinner (or lunch or breakfast) at Jane Korman's house. I'd be happy to slide my chair up to the gutsy table of imbuya wood that Wendell Castle designed for Jane and her husband, Leonard, to sample the very recipe for chocolate chestnut cake that Wendell and his wife, sculptor Nancy Jurs, contributed to Splendid Settings, Jane Korman's celebration of a book. I'd smile back at the face painted on the William Bernstein goblet that holds my breakfast parfait, be thrilled with a minted pea soup so fresh it's melting into its ...
Books
String Felt Thread:The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American ArtBy Elissa AutherUniversity of Minnesota PressMinneapolis, MN$29.95 paperbackupress.umn.edu
Elissa Auther's book considers the fiber art of the 1960s and '70s by presenting it as an instructive parallel to postminimalist employment of fiber materials (see Eva Hesse and Robert Morris) and feminist use of the same (e.g., Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Harmony Hammond and Judy Chicago). The gist of her argument is that the status of fiber-like that of craft in general-is in every case a feminist issue. Morris's felt works, for example, were never dismissed ...
Books
By Ursula Ilse-Neuman, Cornelie Holzach & Jutta-Annette Page
Arnoldsche Art Publishers, with Museum of Arts & Design, New York, and Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Germany
$60
Many artists at the forefront of contemporary studio jewelry are noted for their readiness to experiment with materials that may not be intrinsically valuable but become so through the creativity and skill of the maker. One such material—an extremely diverse one—is glass, and the 60 jewelers in this extremely handsome, 212-page, English and German catalog to a current international traveling exhibition have all used this medium in their work in aesthetically and technically challenging ways.
Asserting that ...
Books
Jun Kaneko - Fidelio / Leonore Texts by Arthur Danto, Eric Schwitzgebel, Michael C. Tusa, Robert B. Driver, Jun Kaneko Jun Kaneko Studio Omaha, Nebraska $50 junkaneko.com or thekaneko.org
The Japanese-born, Omaha, Nebraska-based artist Jun Kaneko, is known internationally for his monumental ceramic sculptures and many public commissions, all notable for their daunting scale, minimalist style and bold use of color. There is hardly an impediment to his reach into new areas. In 2006 he designed the sets and costumes for the Omaha Opera Company’s Madama Butterfly. When this came to the ...
Books
The British sculptor Henry Moore is known worldwide for monumental works in organic shapes, often inspired by stones, bones and seashells, and also for his haunting drawings (1940-42) of Londoners enduring the Blitz. What is less known, is that starting in those same World War II years, at the instigation of a small textile company headed by Czech émigrés Zika and Lida Ascher, Moore created designs for textiles, some of which were produced as head scarves and others as dress and upholstery fabrics, such as Horse’s Head and Boomerang, 1944-45, and some in large-scale panels.
This book reproducing and interpreting ...
Books
Modern Americana: Studio Furniture from High Craft to High Glam
By Todd Merrill and
Julie V. Iovine
Rizzoli International Publications
New York, New York
$75
Modern Americana—the designation seems an oxymoron, the first word suggesting pared-down functionality and the second bringing to mind the folksy or the Pop, or Colonial furnishings. The authors of this survey—Todd Merrill, a dealer and specialist in postwar designers, and Julie V. Iovine, executive editor of The Architect’s Newspaper —have chosen it to define a rather eclectic group of 27 furniture maker/designers whose work, produced from the 1940s into the 1990s, represents an original strain ...
Books
Artists' Handmade HousesBy Michael GotkinPhotography by Don FreemanAbrams Books, $60abramsbooks.com
Every so often a new generation calls for a more personalized, often simpler approach to nesting that forgoes "pre-fab" inside and out. This desire usually focuses on the present day - as with the flurry of 1970s books on that era's handmade homes - but recent volumes suggest our zeitgeist is also interested in looking backward. One of the best is Artists' Handmade Houses, which showcases 13 homes ranging from the late 19th century to the 1980s. Along with those by familiar craftsmen ...
Books
By Evelise Grunow
R 20th Century Gallery
New York, New York
$60
During a time when the scarcity of natural resources and the reuse of materials are ever-more-pertinent concerns in the worlds of art and design, the work of the Brazilian designer-maker Hugo França reminds us that magnificent sculptural and utilitarian objects can be fashioned from cast-offs. For the past 15 years, França whose educational background was in industrial engineering, has been creating monumental furniture and sculptural pieces from the remnants of the gigantic hardwood tree called Pequi that he harvests from the fields and forests of south Bahia in Brazil. ...
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