2 comments about Uwe Ommer's Black Ladies: 30 Postcards (PostcardBooks).

1. "Set against the landscape of Africa, Ommer's full-color photographs of beautiful black women is an homage to the glory of the female form. Text by Calixthe Beyala, a poet from Cameroon. Text in German, French, & English. 9" x 12". Color photos."--Barnes & Noble



2. There isn't a thing bad you can say about the photographer Uwe Ommer. His work is fantastic. He knows the art of showcasing the beauty of ethnic women.

No comments about Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s.

2 comments about Period Rooms in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series).

1. In my opinion, this book is well worth having and a must for serious students of Interior Design and the Decorative Arts. Written in a scholarly fashion with beautiful photos, it is a marvelous resource affording the reader the opportunity to view period rooms in context. Arrived promptly in good condition, as described.



2. This book is one of the most helpful architecture and furniture books I have found. The met has put together a wide variety of periods and locations to let us look into the rooms of times past. The pictures are stunning and the descriptions are very informative.

3 comments about Publishing Your Art As Cards, Posters & Calendars.

1. I owe much of my successful card business beginnings (Scarlet Crane Creations) to this book. It contains valuable insight and information that is not readily available for anyone interested especially in their own greeting card/stationery business.
   
   I particularly appreciated the list of resources and recommendations for trade shows and found the honest accounts of his own experiences most helpful.



2. I actually returned this book because it was not what I expected. No detailed information here.



3. The most informative book I have ever seen covering the detailsof the print production process. Also, some very helpfultips on marketing that will benefit no matter what the field.

2 comments about Metals (Materials for Inspirational Design).

1. There were some very beautiful processes and materials that I didn't know about until I saw it in this book (such as metal foam, inflatable steel, etc.). There were also a few things that I felt didn't need to be in the book like commonly known metals such as gold, silver, copper, brass, and aluminum and very common processes like laser cutting (which was in there twice, in different chapters).
   
   The book also has very beautiful photographs of products and the materials. Almost every page featured a product that illustrates the material or process. There is a quick info chart for each material and process that gives the pros and cons and common uses as well as a website.
   
   When I bought this book I thought it was going to be a very in depth look at new and innovative uses for metal and new manufacturing processes for forming metal, but it's more of a book of things to google. I think it would be more valuable if there were pictures of the actual process they're talking about rather than one big pretty photo of the finished product.



2. Like all of the books in this series, it is very well documented with the the right amount of writing and lots of pictures for quick reference. I personally use it when I need to get ideas on particular materials to use when working on an industrial design project (I'm a design student) or for product presentations.
   
   I think this book could be helpful to industrial engineers and designers alike, as well as teachers, students and professionals in the field.

1 comments about The Arts of China After 1620 (Yale University Press Pelican History of Art).

1. This is a beautiful book with good information, well organized.
   However it was described as having 320 pages and there are something like 275, which was disappointing.
   Aside from that I like it better than the first volume (to 900) and the subject is more interesting to me than the second period.

No comments about Uncovering the History of Children's Drawing and Art (Publications in Creativity Research).

1 comments about From Play to Art (Heinemann/Cassell Language & Literacy).

1. A wonderful companion to observing and supporting young artists during their most creative stage, as young players. Great for parents and teachers interested in supporting their childrens creativity, at home and at school.

2 comments about Georg Jensen: A Tradition of Splendid Silver.

1. The first edition of Janet Drucker's Georg Jensen: A Tradition of Splendid Silver was published just four years ago, in 1997. Now, just a few breaths later, a revised and expanded second edition with an updated price guide is out. Given the impressive richness of the first edition, one might say,"So soon?" The first edition had gone out of print, but it would have been more usual at this remove to reprint it without revisions. The reasons are not especially apparent at first glance; the jacket design(and the jacket advertising copy) has barely changed, the general organization and graphic design of the first edition have been retained in the second, and the number of pages is about the same. When one sits down with both editions and begins to compare them page by page, the differences quickly become apparent. A very large amount of new material has been added into the new book, including 250 new images and expanded archival information on production and designers. Since the publication of the first edition, so much previously unavailable material came to light that its inclusion seemed paramount.
   No matter how long and fully one has worked on a research project in the arts, as soon as one publishes, more material, often keenly interesting material, appears in response to the publication. A study of the second edition's acknowledgements suggests that the beauty and inclusiveness of the first edition brought the suthor new contacts with other dealers, collectors, museum curators, auctioneers, and other specialists, each of whom had something wonderful to add to the story.
   In the case of the new photographs in the second edition, many previously unlocated Jensen pieces turned up. Some pieces illustrated in the first edition only in rather murky old catalogue or magazine photos became available for new color photography. Additional historical photos surfaced as well. The net gain of images in the new book is(by my count) just over two hundred color and black-and-white images overall. That the new addition is physically about the same size as the old one owes to a meticulous reworking of the layout on perhaps half the pages in the book. There was enough "air" (unused white space) in the basic design of the text pages for the first edition to accommodate many more photos in the second edition without choking the graceful layout of the book.
   One of the most important innovations of the second edition is also easily overlooked in a casual inspection, and it will prove very useful to collectors and dealers in understanding Jensen product. The photo captions now include all Jensen design numbers that were stamped on their items of jewelry and hollowware, along with the trademarks and other marks on the back and bottoms of the pieces(only some of these were available to the author for the first edition) All Jensen jewelry and hollowware items were so marked, except for special-order pieces, and much of the earliest flatware was also marked in this way. As in the first edition, there is a full explanation of the marking system near the end of the book. Other important additions to the book are more readily apparent. These include complete reprints of the Jensen illustrated flatware catalogues for the Cactus(flatware pattern 30) and Acorn (flatware pattern 62) patterns, and for the so-called"Unique Serving Pieces". These include seventy-two ornamental serving utensils in a variety of numbered patterns not matching the full-line flatware patterns. The new edition also includes both chronological and production data for all of the sterling silver designs of Henning Koppel that were produced for the Jensen company. The Value Reference Guide has also been updated. This guide is not based on opinion but consists of actual auction records from sales in the major American and British houses over the past decade.
   Given that the first edition had been sold out before public demand for the book had subsided, a reprinting would have been welcome enough. Both the author and the publisher are to be congratulated for instead producing this most significant and valuable revised and expanded second edition. I am glad to recommend it to owners of the first edition along with the ever-expanding group of collectors of Jensen"estate" silver who were not able to obtain the orginal book.



2. Collectors of jewelry of any type now have another acquisition for which to long. It's a signature piece, finely detailed, a valued addition to any serious collection. It is a jewel indeed, but you may not find it at the jewelers. It's a creation of Janet Drucker and it should stand the test of time, for Drucker has crafted Georg Jensen A Tradition of Splendid Silver into a splendid guidebook.

   Not a dry tome, crackling with boredom, this book offers an at once scholarly treatise on Jensen amd a readable reference as well. Drucker sets up the volume by putting Jensen's ascendency into prospective. She grounds him in his time period and explains the forces which created his work and appeal. Not settling for another long line of picture strewn collection catalogs, she introduces the reader to Jensen's life story in a well written and very readable text. Next the collector's delight: the litany of his accomplishment.

   Chapters are devoted to his jewelry, his holloware and his flatware. Then Drucker offers the benediction with a look at Jensen's worldwide legacy. But don't stop there, because the appendix offers the musuem collections of the master and a listing of the artists whose work built the Jensen line.

   Now, lest you think this book is a must for scholars only, rest assured the exquisite photography and the easy to read captioning will make this gem a perfect adornment for your home library. If you know Jensen or not, Georg Jensen A Tradition of Splendid Silver will be splendid for you.

4 comments about Approaching the Magic Hour: Memories of Walter Anderson.

1. I have read numerous books on Walter Anderson but this by far was the best. His wife gave a personal account of his as well as their lives. It has truth as well as compassion. His art is much easier to appreciate after reading this enlightening book.



2. I first heard of Walter Anderson from an artist living in Mississippi when I was in high school, in 1963. She took me to the compound where Walter Anderson lived with his wife, brother and extended family. Anderson had become a recluse by this time, and I never met him. I got to see the pottery work he did and became fascinated with his art. As a sixteen-year-old, I was impressed with the colors and designs. I have aged, become an artist myself, and seen more of his work, I have come to appreciate the mystic quality, the blending of earth, sky, animals,plants, air, being and emotion into a whole expression.

   That this passionate expression was tied in with madness has fascinated me in understanding the edge between creativity, altered states of consciousness and mental illness. Understanding the complex persona of a person who has collapsed his entire life into his art is the challenge here. This is the person who tied himself to a tree on an island in the path of a hurricane to stay at work, after all. The relationship of this creative genius to his family and his struggle to bring forth the body of work we gratefully have today is the story of this book. It is honestly and well told. The unstated story is that without the tolerance, understanding, even suffering of Agnes Grinstead Anderson (the artist's wife), neither the man nor his work might have survived. In a time when people are less willingly to sacrifice for each other, This woman's story looks at the complications of a real life beyond the reach of easy pop psychology solutions.




3. Walter Anderson had the eyes of a child. His wonderment at the world around him, his passion for recording his love, and his driven personality -- all this makes for fascinating and inspirational and romantic reading. Anderson is being discovered as a true original -- his classical training in Europe and the Northeast is the foundation for his unusual work. I found this account to be as marvelous as the letters and life of Van Gogh. Sissy Anderson's writing is poetic and unpretentious. A classic.



4. This is a wonderful book that chronicals the life of the brilliant, yet disturbed Mississippi artist, Walter Anderson. Told by Anderson's wife, Sissy, the book tells of the passion Anderson had for the natural world around him, and the torture he endured because of this passion. The book tells of Anderson's life as a boy, and the love affair that he and Sissy shared. It chronicals the relationship he had with his children, his bouts with mental illness and depression, his long stays on Horn Island (Anderson's own personal paradise) and the discovery of the magnificent "Little Room", full of brilliant murals and paintings.