No comments about Gold, Silver, and Bronze.

2 comments about 3-d ABC: A Sculptural Alphabet (Bob Raczka's Art Adventures).

1. Bob Raczka writes terrific books about art for children. His excellent Here's Looking at Me: How Artists See Themselves should be in every art teacher's collection. In 3-D he explores sculpture. Using an ABC book format, he presents a wide range of concepts and media.
   
   His subjects are well chosen to engage young imaginations. Each work is presented with full attribution which includes the title, the artist, the date and the location of the piece. A page at the back gives full credit for the photography in the book too. The importance of properly citing resources and giving credit to the work of others should be and must be continually emphasized to students.
   
   Everything works in this book from the clear typography to the clean layout. The art is beautifully photographed and tagged with a letter of the alphabet.
   
   Concert for Anarchy by Rebecca Horn at the Tate Gallery in London is an inverted grand piano, hanging in midair with the keys spilling downward. It illustrates "U is for Upside Down."
   
   "A sculpture can make you look at things differently,"
   
   My favorite piece in the book is Spoonbridge & Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN which is also the cover image. It is tagged with "S is for Spoon"
   
   "A Sculpture can make you Smile"
   
   This books will certainly make you smile and think about sculpture in a whole new way.
   It was also nominated for the Cybil Non-fiction Picture Book award.



2. Bob Raczka's 3-D Sculptural Alphabet is an attention-getter with its cover featuring the Claes Oldenburg "Spoonbridge & Cherry" on the grounds of the famed Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It's fun to be there when a school group visits, and listen to their comments and 'flights of imagination'.
   
   Inside this delightful book the bright 'spoon' assemblage is faced with "table with pink tablecloth." Aren't you surprised that Formica is part of that piece of art (owned by Chicago's Art Institute)? Sculpture in public places increases the possibility of enrichment from art for all of us. During the last few decades we have seen fewer generals on horseback and more imaginative & abstract subjects decorating city plazas.
   
   Reviewer mcHaiku rather envies Bob Raczka, seeing him as an author who can make children laugh, and also inspire their recognition of art in everyday surroundings - and he accomplishes this without the task of writing very many words! In fact, he must greatly enjoy seeing the books created from his own favorite choices of art works. These, in various sculptural forms may be some that children don't often see in books, or on classroom walls. Some artists like Picasso share several different kinds of art; others may practice one form of creativity. How fortunate we are, how wealthy to have our lives enriched by this series and other books 'aimed' at children.
   
   Living in an under-populated rural county is not all bad. Ours is the buckle on an "art belt" - with Columbus & Bloomington, Indiana, on either side, and having fine sculptures by these artists to discover: Jean Paul Darrieu, Jerald Jacquard, Henry Moore, I. M. Pei, Jean Tinguely, some featured in Bob Raczka's book. There are three large outdoor pieces by Jacquard on a hillside just down the road from us. A feeling of exhilaration and creative urge is bound to invade the blood stream by such proximity.

No comments about Diana Guest: Stonecarver.

1 comments about Hacksilber to Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near East and Greece (Numismatic Studies).

1. Although money in various forms has existed since the dawn of history, coinage was a distinct invention of the Greeks and their eastern neighbors the Lydians around 600 BC. The economic and cultural conditions that led to the invention of coinage is the subject of this volume of eight academic papers "presented at a colloquium held in Chicago on December 30, 1997, as part of the 99th annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America." The aim of the session was "to bring together scholars who have been involved in the analysis and interpretation of evidence of the use of silver as monetary material. The scholars have expertise in archaeology, history, and metallurgical analysis, and in the problems of the background and origins of Greek coinage in antiquity."
   
   The preface, introduction, and initial commentary by Miriam Balmuth, the editor of the volume, set out the principal issues to be covered. In the ancient Near East, as opposed to Greece, weighed bits of silver, commonly known today by the German name "Hacksilber," were used as a medium of exchange for centuries if not millennia before the introduction of coinage. Hoards of Hacksilber, once thought to be "jeweler's hoards" of raw silver, are now correctly understood to be monetary deposits much like later coin hoards. What steps led from the use of Hacksilber as money, to the use of pre-weighed and pre-stamped coins?
   
   In "The silver hoards from Tel Dor," Ephraim Stern describes the contents and archaeological context of a Phoenician hoard of Hacksilber found in Israel that can be dated to about 1000 BC. Seymour Gitin and Amir Golani similarly describe the contents of a number of seventh-century silver hoards from Israel in "The Tel Miqne-Ekron silver hoards: the Assyrian and Phoenician connections." These papers are followed by a brief commentary by William Dever.
   
   Zofia Anna Stos-Gale, in "The impact of the natural sciences on studies of Hacksilber and early silver coinage," focuses specifically on lead isotope provenance studies, which are able to locate the geographical origin of ancient silver objects based on the amount and isotopic character of small amounts of lead incorporated into the silver alloy. Although the silver in Greek artifacts proves to be largely Aegean in origin, this technique demonstrates that many Near Eastern silver samples came from not only the Aegean, but also Spain and Iran.
   
   John Kroll in "Observations on monetary instruments in pre-coinage Greece" (on the one hand), and David Schaps in "The conceptual prehistory of money and its impact on the Greek economy" (on the other), take opposing views on the exact steps which led to the widespread adoption of coinage by the Greek world in the sixth century. Kroll believes that there was an intermediate phase around the time of Solon, between earlier trading in metal utensils and the later use of coinage, during which weighed silver bullion was used for exchange. Schaps disagrees, contending that the reason coinage was adopted and spread so quickly in Greece was precisely that there was no Greek tradition of using silver bullion for money. In the Near East, by contrast, silver bullion had been in use for centuries, and so coinage was seen there as much less of a novelty (and much less of a need), and so was not taken up with enthusiasm as it was in the Greek world.
   
   In "Analyzing and interpreting the metallurgy of early electrum coins," Paul Keyser and David Clark review previous work on the composition of ancient electrum coins, cautioning against techniques such as X-ray fluorescence which examine only coin surfaces and do not penetrate to the core of the specimen. They recommend prompt-gamma neutron activation analysis (PGNAA), but are not yet able to report any results with the technique.
   
   Robert Wallace, in "Remarks on the value and standard of early electrum coins," further supports a position he has taken in earlier writings, that the reason the first coinage in Asia Minor was minted in electrum, an alloy of variable composition, was precisely the need to have a way to standardize the value of the mixed metal in the marketplace.
   
   Like many collections of papers from academic conferences, this volume is "uneven" in its treatment and style, but it is certainly valuable in bringing together a range of work on the boundary between archaeology, numismatics, and metallurgy. The work of synthesis is largely left to the reader, however, who is likely to come away also with a wish that the one of the standard practices of the sciences--to include a tightly written abstract along with every published paper--would become the standard practice in these fields as well.
   
   "Hacksilber to Coinage" will appeal to academic specialists in Near Eastern and ancient Greek archaeology and history, students of Classical numismatics and metallurgy, and economic historians. The volume is No. 24 in the series "Numismatic Studies" of the American Numismatic Society (ISSN 0517404X - ISBN 0897222814).

No comments about African Art from the Han Coray Collection, 1916-1928: 1916-1928 : Volkerkundemuseum, University of Zurich (Prestel Art).

No comments about Jeddah City of Art; The Sculptures and Monuments.

No comments about Carving Santas for Today With Tom Wolfe.

2 comments about Porcelain marks of the world.

1. Your heart beats faster, your palms are sweaty and you are hoping against hope that fine piece is what you expect it to be - could you be dreaming or is it that rare Delft saucer? How can you tell for sure that the Limoges cup you're holding is authentic or a cheap reproduction?

   If you are caught up in the world of porcelain coollecting, you know how hard it can be sometimes to verify that the piece you are looking at has some value. This book can help you verify your porcelain pursuits without the wallet breaking cost of taking them home. This book features various porcelain marks used at various times by the famous (and not so famous) porcelain makers of the time. It's small enough to tuck in a bag when you make your buying rounds so you can take it to the flea markets and antique shows and you can see at a quick glance if what you have your heart set on is really as the seller protrays it.

   I recommend this book highly to all porcelain collectors.




2. Emanuel Poche used his experience in building the porcelain collection at the Prague Museum of Arts and Crafts to also create a solid reference manual for collectors. Over 2,000 marks are illustrated and arranged in an easy to use format. The illustrations are categorized in headings such as stars, water and flora to help the reader quickly find a marking. Notes on the factory location, owner of the company, dates the marks were used and the color of the marks, also assist in identification. A short introduction and history of porcelain and its marks will help new collectors as they begin their study of this vast field. While this book does not contain as many marks as in the Dictionary of Marks - Pottery and Porcelain by Ralph and Terry Kovel, its simplicity still makes it a handy addition to any collector's library.

1 comments about 20th Century American Sculpture in the White House Garden.

1. What a marvelous book to have. Not many of us have the opportunity to see the wonderful collections that were displayed in the gardens of the White House during the Clinton years. This is the one way we can see them! Beautifully pictured with full color photos and great descriptions! A lovely book to have as an historic record of what Scuplture in America was like in the 20th-Century! You may or may not like the Sculptures that were shown - but this book has them all!

No comments about Late Gothic Sculpture: The Burgundian Netherlands.