No comments about Masks of Mystery.

1 comments about Islam and the Religious Arts (Religion and the Arts).

1. Dr. Baker has produced a meticulously researched and documented survey on the rich variety and diversity of Islamic religious arts, including rather ill-recognized topics such as banners and flags, dressing in the faith, and new developments in popular cultures, like the devotional posters. The contents are as follows: Introduction; the Maker, Law, and Creativity; The Word and Calligraphy; the Place of Prayer; Visions of Paradise; The Pilgrimage; Hidden Meanings; Leading the Faithful; and State of the Art, a chapter that discusses "changes in attitude regarding aspects of religious imagery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." The book is not limited to sources from the Middle East, but includes Muslim cultures from Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, spanning the first century of Islamic history to the present. Studying the text is enhanced by fifty-seven black and white figures, and eight color plates, many of which are photographs by the author of unusual materials seldom seen by other than specialists (such as Iranian devotional posters, for example). There is a copious eighteen page Bibliography, footnoting after each chapter, and an Index.
   The author is an independent lecturer and researcher, with over thirty years experience in Islamic studies and a decade in teaching the history of ceramics and glass. She now specializes in Islamic textiles and glass, and accompanies art and architecture tours to the Middle East. This is a work that, because of its completeness and scholarship, should be in every university library Reference section, and on every university course list in the fields of Islamic Studies, Islamic Arts, and Comparative Religions.
   Each chapter contains more than its title suggests. Space limits allow me to refer to just one chapter, Visions of Paradise. It includes topics on cemeteries and mausoleums; tombstones--in Iran, in the Caucasus and Anatolia, in South Asia and beyond; cenotaphs; tomb compounds and mausolea; origins and patterns of mausolea; their regional locations and forms; symbolism of their ground plans; Sunni and Shi'i views of mausolea; and more. We learn that mirrors on walls first appeared mid-16th c. in Iran, in palaces and especially in imamzadas, or shrine-tombs. Glittering, reflective mirrored walls, constructed of pieces of glass imported from Europe at great cost, were decorated by cut glass inlaid into wet plaster in geometric designs. Baker says it is unclear whether mirrored walls were a mark of high status, or if they had spiritual associations, e.g., of the nur Muhammed (light of the Prophet), or as an analogy of mirrored glass representing the transformation of body and spirit at the day of judgment. The chapter continues with elegant discussions on gardens of Paradise, the garden tomb, the languages of trees and flowers, with a special section on trees in the royal compound of Yogyakarta in Java, where the tree placements and species conveyed mystical concepts--"...certain trees were planted according to their perfume, colouring and linguistic connotations to complement the underlying Sufi spiritual message resonant throughout the compound." The chapter ends with a discussion on birds in the garden of paradise, among which were doves and pigeons: "The soft cooing tone... was taken to be the devoted Sufi within the garden voicing its endless ku-ku (lit. where, where [is the beloved]?)
   I highly recommend this book on the arts of Islam as a source of pleasurable hours of reading and learning, for students and teachers as well as for the general knowledge-seeking reader.

No comments about The Mystery of Love.

No comments about Celebration: Santa Comes to Town (Celebration).

No comments about Art/Women/California, 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections (San Jose Museum of Art).

2 comments about Treasures of Jewish Art.

1. This is a book of photos that represent the Jewish Ceremonial Art Collection of a Chilean Couple;Jacocbo and Asea Furman. Each page has a full size photograph of the object and a detailed description of it on the other page. The art is beautiful and the range is wide. The only slight flaw in this book is that I would have included more of the collectors notes. They were fascinating. This is a top rate book and I am pleased it is in my collection. Libraries should include this as an art reseach item and it is fabulous for a coffee table.



2. IT WAS ENTERTAINING AND FUN TO READ AND I ENJOYED THE PICTURES VERY MUCH.

No comments about The Angel Tree.

No comments about Early Christian iconography and A school ivory carvers in Provence / by E. Baldwin Smith (Princeton monographs in art and archæology).

No comments about Rome, Vatican: With the Sistine Chapel.

No comments about Music on the Rocks.