Fraktur is a manuscript-based folk art tradition brought from Europe by German-speaking immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania in the seventeenth century. Fraktur documents are exuberantly decorated with distinctive lettering and painted tulips, hearts, angels, unicorns, and eagles. Resembling illuminated manuscripts, fraktur documents were usually domestic and personal documents, such as birth and baptismal certificates, writing samples, music books, and religious texts. Framing Fraktur takes a unique approach to the study of traditional fraktur by connecting it to the work of contemporary artists who similarly combine images with texts. Examining masterworks from the Free Library of Philadelphia's vast collection of fraktur as well as manuscripts, books, and broadsides, the first section of the book provides historical background, analysis, and recent interpretation of fraktur material culture. In the second section, fraktur is linked to modern practices and movements from around the world, including Dada, Pop Art, Imagism, graffiti and street art, and contemporary folk art genres such as samplers, block prints, and sign painting. Vividly illustrated in full color, Framing Fraktur traces the resonances of this unique and vibrant art from the past to the present. Contributors: Lisa Minardi, Janine Pollock, Matthew Singer, Judith Tannenbaum.

The brief Russian presence in California yielded some of the earliest ethnography of Native Californians and some of the best collections of their material culture. Unstudied by western scholars because of their being housed in Russian museums, they are presented here for the first time in an English language volume. Descriptions of early nineteenth-century travelers such as von Wrangel and Voznesenskii are followed by a catalog of objects ranging from hunting weapons to household objects to ritual dress to musical instruments, games, and gift objects. This catalog of objects includes over 150 images, many in full color. An essential volume for those interested in the ethnology, archaeology, art, and cultures of Native Californians.

Celtic Art is the only indigenous British art form of world significance and this book is a graphically eloquent plea for the establishment of this great national art to its rightful place in schools and colleges where the history of ornament is being taught. Until recently, the classical orientated art-world has regarded the abstract, iconographic and symbolic style of the Celtic artist as something of an enigma, a mysterious archaic survival largely ignored in histories of art. The modern trends away from realism and the interest of the younger generation in psychedelic and art nouveau styles provides favourable ground for the Celtic art revival which the widespread interest in this new edition seems to indicate is possible. When this book first appeared, it was hailed as a 'veritable grammar of ornament'. It is certainly an indispensable reference book and practical textbook for the art student and craftsman seeking simple constructional methods for laying out complex ornamental schemes. The entire chronology of symbols is embrace from spirals through chevrons, step patterns and keys to knotwork interlacings, which are unique to this particular Celtic school. There are also sections dealing with zoomorphics, authentic Celtic knitwear, ceramics and other areas in which the author pioneered in his day. This book deals with the Pictish School of artist-craftsman, who cut pagan symbols like the Burghead Bull, and in the early Christian era designed such superb examples of monumental sculpture as the Aberlemno Cross, the Ardagh Chalice and the counter-parts in the Books of Kells and Lindisfarne. Knotwork Interlacings, owing much of their perfection and beauty to the use of mathematical formulae, are unique to Pictish Art and are found nowhere else than the areas occupied by the Picts. The outstanding achievement of their art was the subtle manner in which they combined artistic, geometric and mathematical methods with magic, imagination and logic, the function being both to teach and adorn. Although incidental to the main educational purpose of this book, there is also an implicit challenge to the art historian and archaeologist. The author frankly admits that the evidence such researches into the art have revealed of a hitherto unsuspected culture of much sophistication in pre-Roman Britain, pose as many questions as are answered. Who were the Picts? Whence the Asiatic origins of the Celtic Art? The instinct to ornament is one of the most basic human impulses that seems to have atavistic roots in the primeval creative and imaginative characteristic that separates man from beast.

A major new look at the work of one of America's foremost self-taught artists Bill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949) came to art-making on his own and found his creative voice without guidance; today he is remembered as a renowned American artist. Traylor was born into slavery on an Alabama plantation, and his experiences spanned multiple worlds-black and white, rural and urban, old and new-as well as the crucibles that indelibly shaped America-the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration. Between Worlds presents an unparalleled look at the work of this enigmatic and dazzling artist, who blended common imagery with arcane symbolism, narration with abstraction, and personal vision with the beliefs and folkways of his time. Traylor was about twelve when the Civil War ended. After six more decades of farm labor, he moved, aging and alone, into segregated Montgomery. In the last years of his life, he drew and painted works depicting plantation memories and the rising world of African American culture. Upon his death he left behind over a thousand pieces of art. Between Worlds convenes 205 of his most powerful creations, including a number that have been previously unpublished. This beautiful and carefully researched book assesses Traylor's biography and stylistic development, and for the first time interprets his scenes as ongoing narratives, conveying enduring, interrelated themes. Between Worlds reveals one man's visual record of African American life as a window into the overarching story of his nation. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Founded in 1925 in Santa Fe, the Spanish Colonial Arts Society has become central to the collection and promotion of traditional Hispanic arts in New Mexico. Its extraordinary collection of some twenty-five hundred objects, both secular and religious, comprises the finest of its kind. Serving as the Society's 'museum on paper' this exceptional two-volume set includes vividly illustrated essays on New World santos, furniture, straw applique, tinwork, and textiles. Essays on historical arts, the revival period, Spanish Market, and contemporary masters of traditional Spanish arts record the development of this historic collection from the early Spanish New Mexicans to today's working craftsman. Books with slipcase.

Dress helps us fashion identity, history, community, and place. Dress has been harnessed as a metaphor for both progress and stability, the exotic and the utopian, oppression and freedom, belonging and resistance. Dressing with Purpose examines three Scandinavian dress traditions-Swedish folkdrakt, Norwegian bunad, and Sami gakti-and traces their development during two centuries of social and political change across northern Europe. By the 20th century, many in Sweden worried about the ravages of industrialization, urbanization, and emigration on traditional ways of life. Norway was gripped in a struggle for national independence. Indigenous Sami communities-artificially divided by national borders and long resisting colonial control-rose up in protests that demanded political recognition and sparked cultural renewal. Within this context of European nation-building, colonial expansion, and Indigenous activism, traditional dress took on special meaning as folk, national, or ethnic minority costumes-complex categories that deserve reexamination today. Through lavishly illustrated and richly detailed case studies, Dressing with Purpose introduces readers to individuals who adapt and revitalize dress traditions to articulate who they are, proclaim personal values and group allegiances, strive for sartorial excellence, reflect critically on the past, and ultimately, reshape the societies they live in.

After World War I, artists without formal training "crashed the gates" of major museums in the United States, diversifying the art world across lines of race, ethnicity, class, ability, and gender. At the center of this fundamental reevaluation of who could be an artist in America were John Kane, Horace Pippin, and Anna Mary Robertson "Grandma" Moses. The stories of these three artists not only intertwine with the major critical debates of their period but also prefigure the call for inclusion in representations of American art today. In Gatecrashers, Katherine Jentleson offers a valuable corrective to the history of twentieth-century art by expanding narratives of interwar American modernism and providing an origin story for contemporary fascination with self-taught artists.

Chinese folk arts originate in the rural areas of China's vast territory. As forms of communal art, folk arts are evident in everyday food, clothing and shelter, in traditional festivals, ceremonies and rituals, and in beliefs and taboos. As a living example of cultural heritage, folk art demonstrates the continuity of Chinese culture from ancient to modern times, a culture with distinctive national and regional characteristics and a history of some 8,000 years. Chinese Folk Arts provides an illustrated introduction to the history and development of this colourful part of China's unique artistic culture.

Folk art was neither widely collected nor highly valued in the early 1900s, when globetrotting Chicago socialite and philanthropist Florence Bartlett (1881-19540 began buying indigenous works encountered on her travels and dreamed of founding a museum to celebrate cultural diversity. Beartlett realised her goal in 1953, when the Museum of International Folk Art opened in Santa Fe near her long-time summer home. 50 years later, Bartlett's vision lives on in an ever-expanding museum collection that includes contemporary pieces as well as centuries old textiles, woodwork, pottery and ethnic garb.

This volume covers Chinese art during the reign of the Sui and Tang Dynasties during which the various disciplines of plastic and performing arts all entered a stage of unprecedented prosperity and development. It also traces new explorations in calligraphy, painting, and mural art and highlights architectural achievements during the historic period. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.

Part of everyday life, yet rich in symbolic meaning, renderings of the sun and the moon are present in all folk and tribal art traditions of India. They are always in relationship with each other. Agrarian societies keep track of time by referring to markers in the seasonal variations of the sun, moon, and the planets. Over the course of time, they have also woven wonderful stories and myths around them. Here, for the first time, is a collection of unusual stories and exquisite art from some of the finest living artists, on this most universal of themes.

This title shows you how to create beautiful and decorative pieces in the folk art tradition, with 35 projects. It is a historical and practical exploration of folk art, including interior decoration and craft ideas, illustrated with 300 inspirational photographs. It includes projects from traditional quilts and hooked rugs to decorations for walls and furniture, using crafts ranging from wood carving to punched tinware. You can learn how to use original techniques to cut or pierce tin, sew decorative samplers and bed covers, paint fabrics and wooden items, and create stunningly simple pattern motifs for surfaces around the home. You can make a painted sewing box, chair or bridal chest; sew an alphabet cot quilt, an applique cushion cover, a cross stitch pincushion or a sampler; or create a carved wood spoon rack or rocking cradle. Crafters and home decorators have long been delighted by the charming appeal of folk art effects, which are simple to achieve without special materials or training. This book explores and celebrates the pleasure of creating beautiful pieces for the home that have a practical purpose, using traditional craft-making techniques. The book features 35 ideas and functional items, ranging from embroidered or appliqued quilts and cushions, wall and floor coverings with attractive stencil patterns, to carved wooden or metal motifs, such as an Amish Sewing Box or a Pierced and Cut Lampshade. Lavishly illustrated, this book is an inspirational guide to an accessible decorative heritage, which will be treasured by every creative home decorator.

Based on extensive research in West Africa, Christopher Steiner's book presents a richly detailed description of the economic networks that transfer art objects from their site of use and production in Africa to their point of consumption in art galleries and shops throughout Europe and America. In the course of this fascinating transcultural journey, African art acquires different meanings. It means one thing to the rural villagers who create and still use it in ritual and performance, another to the Muslim traders who barter and resell it, and something else to the buyers and collectors in the West who purchase it for investment and display it in their homes.

Mexico is home to some of the world's most extraordinary folk art, and the majority of its highly acclaimed pieces were created by women. Looking closely at eight types of Mexican folk art, including votive paintings, embroidered exvotos, cardboard Judas dolls, reproductions of Frida Kahlo's paintings made of clay, and clay figures from Cumicho called "alebrijes," this beautifully illustrated volume is one of the first to trace the role and effects of gender on both the objects of Mexican folk art and the knowledge and life experiences that lie behind them.

This little book contains over sixty new contra, circle and square dances, along with notes on performance dancing and contra dance classes.

This publication is a survey of European hand tools, from various woodworking and other trades, dating from the 16th century to the 19th century. The tools that are illustrated and analysed were either made decoratively or received surface decoration, often incorporating ancient symbols, dates and owners initials. Although all the tools featured were made to be primarily functional, the focus of the book is on the aesthetic qualities that transform such tools into examples of genuine folk art. Planes, braces, axes, compasses, saws and chisels, etc, are featured, including many that have not been previously recorded or published. The tools presented, via photographs, drawings and paintings have been sourced from various national museums across Europe and from private collections too.

Florencio Morales (1949-1992), a Mexican immigrant and Los Angeles artist who fashioned elaborate assemblages in his front yard, was known as "el hombre de las banderas" ("the man of the flags") because he always flew American, Mexican, and California flags over his home.Illustrated with color photographs that show the brilliance of his art, this vibrant book explores and documents Morale's creative expression as he commemorated a profusion of Mexican and American holidays throughout the year. Over a period of twelve years until his death he created exhibits for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Valentine's day, Easter, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, the anniversary of the Treaty of Teoloyucan (August 13), and Mexican Independence Day. These displays served as settings for extravagant and spirited celebrations within the local community. Created from "found" materials and from bits and pieces gathered from scores of sources, Morales's assemblages intrigued and stimulated his audiences. His yard served as gathering places where strangers and friends could interact.In ritual, folk art, legends, beliefs, foodways, and music, his yard exhibits express the vitality of Mexican folklore adapted to a new setting, urban Los Angeles. By drawing upon dynamic symbols from his heritage and combining elements from American and Mexican culture, Morales communicated his dual identity.In acknowledging the artist's influences, motivations, and aesthetics, this fascinating book provides a rich understanding of the man and his art, as well as the interplay between the artist, his creations, and the community.

Thousands of artists have exhibited and sold their work at the Traditional Spanish Market of Santa Fe, New Mexico in the sixty years it has been in existence. This book is a record of the 186 artists who participated in the 2010 Market. They stand as testament to all who have been there before. Donna Pedace has been the National Director of OASIS (Older Adult Service and Information System, Inc.), based in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Executive Director of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. Before joining the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, sponsor of the Traditional Spanish Market of Santa Fe, she was the Executive Director of the New Mexico Multicultural Center.