Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was already an old man when the young poet Rainer Maria Rilke went to interview him for the first time. Rilke stayed on to work as Rodin's secretary. Intensely sensitive to art, and in particular to the irreducible power of objects, and yet able to express this awareness in prose of great lyricism and clarity, Rilke was destined to be the critic who would most naturally dramatise Rodin's work. In 1903 Rilke published this essay, a sustained and profound meditation on the unique power of Rodin's sculpture that has never been equalled. Written around a chronology of Rodin's work, it is also a very approachable introduction to some of the greatest sculpture of the nineteenth century.

This new edition of a best-seller shows how to create useful and whimsical objects. Expert guidance presented in a friendly, straightforward style that reflects the quiet simplicity of the craft. It provides all the instruction and inspiration you'll need to become an accomplished whittler. Relax the old-fashioned way - Whether you're in front of a campfire or on the front porch, "The Little Book of Whittling" will help you unwind while you create useful and whimsical objects with nothing more than a pocketknife, a twig and a few minutes of time. Author Chris Lubkemann, with 40 years of whittling experience under his belt, will have you "whittling away the hours" with expert guidance presented in a friendly, straightforward style that reflects the quiet simplicity of the craft. Whether you're a beginner looking to get started in the most basic form of woodcarving or someone simply seeking a peaceful way to spend some free time, "The Little Book of Whittling" provides all the instruction and inspiration you'll need to become an accomplished and relaxed whittler.

In this compelling book Nigel Saul opens up the world of medieval gentry families, using the magnificent brasses and monuments of the Cobham family as a window on to the social and religious culture of the middle ages.

Bob Sherman explores everything from the basic parts of a candle -- fuel, additives, scent, and wick, to instructions on how to make dozens of original candles. Here are detailed chapters on creating your workspace, choosing from the many different kinds of wax, moulds, and wicks available, and sorting through the equipment you will need. The entire book is heavily illustrated with hundreds of instructional photographs. Candles you can create: container, dipped, wax crystal, votive, marbled, applique, floating, two-tone, ice, chunk, beer, fireplace, mottled, mushroom, torched, balloon, sea shore, tie dye and hurricane shell.

The Last Laugh is the first and only book to take readers deep into the bizarre universe of the standup comic, from the classic years of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Shecky Greene, to today's comedy superstars. Phil Berger shows how styles and trends in standup have changed over the past fifty years, but how taking the stage in a comedy club is as tough as it's always been. Performers profiled in the book include Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Elaine Boosler, Robert Klein, Bill Cosby, Billy Crystal, Dick Gregory, Andy Kaufman, Steve Martin, Cheech and Chong, Eddie Murphy, and a host of others. Filled with comics' hilarious routines and anecdotes, this substantially updated edition also chronicles the lives and careers of more recent artists, including Richard Lewis and Jay Leno.

A single carving knife and an afternoon is all that is needed to create one of the charming little characters in this book. The whittled little folk are full of personality, from the Monk, to the Policeman, to the Woodsman, acclaimed artist Harley Refsal provides patterns and instructions for carving over 20 delightful characters in wood. At the beginning of "Whittling Little Folk", readers will find step-by-step carving and painting instructions for a Scandinavian inspired man and woman. Once they have learned to carve these two projects, they will find an additional 20 patterns that can also be created with the same technique and some subtle changes. Each project includes four separate patterns (for each view) and carving/painting notes. Also included is a brief overview of the Scandinavian flat-plane style of carving and instructions on how to customize patterns.

Stone statues, indigenous to the early Turks, appeared in the vast territory of the Asian steppes, from Southern Siberia to Central Asia and across the foothills of the Ural Mountains. The custom originated among Cumans in Eastern Europe. The skill of erecting anthropomorphic stelae required proficiency in processing different kinds of stone and wood, and was characterized by artistic value of representations, as well as by the timeless aesthetics of the canon. The author presents the results of her formative studies into the collection of the Cuman sculptures of the Veliko-Anadol Forest Museum, Ukraine. The book delves into the history of research on Cuman stone stelae, resulting in great reading for all archeologists and historians alike.

In this wide-ranging, thought-provoking and sometimes provocative new book, leading sculptor Antony Gormley, informed and energised by a lifetime of making, and art critic and historian Martin Gayford, explore sculpture as a transnational art form with its own compelling history. The authors' lively conversations and explorations make unexpected connections across time and media. Sculpture has been practised by every culture throughout the world and stretches back into our distant past. The first surviving shaped stones may even predate the advent of language. Evidently, the desire to carve, mould, bend, chip away, weld, suspend, balance - to transform a vast array of materials and light into new shapes and forms - runs deep in our psyche and is a fundamental part of our human journey and need for expression. With more than 300 spectacular illustrations, Shaping the World juxtaposes a rich variety of works - from the famous Lowenmensch or Lion Man, c. 35,000 BCE to Michelangelo's luminous Pieta in Rome, the Terracotta Warriors in China to Rodin's The Kiss, Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, Olafur Eliasson's extraordinary Weather Project and Kara Walker's Fons Americanus, and Tomas Saraceno's ongoing Aerocene project, as well as examples of Gormley's own work. Antony Gormley and Martin Gayford take into account materials and techniques, and consider overarching themes such as light, mortality and our changing world. Above all, they discuss their view of sculpture as a form of physical thinking capable of altering the way people feel, and they invite us to look at sculpture we encounter - and more broadly the world around us - in a completely different way.

In "Origami Zoo, "two of the world's finest paper folders present an exciting collection of original origami animals. Their creatures, ranging from the exotic to the familiar, the elegant to the whimsical, will both inspire the beginner and challenge the most accomplished folder.
Choose among the dolphin, penguin, swan, owl, goose, kangaroo, praying mantis, or even the mythical Pegasus or extinct wooly mammoth. Each of these thirty-seven new projects is true origami-folded from a single piece of paper with no cutting or gluing-and is complete with clear step-by-step diagrams, instructions, and a photograph of the finished model.
"Origami Zoo "will challenge and delight anyone with a penchant for creating something wonderful out of (almost) nothing.

In The Portrait Bust and French Cultural Politics in the Eighteenth Century, Ronit Milano probes the rich and complex aesthetic and intellectual charge of a remarkably concise art form, and explores its role as a powerful agent of epistemological change during one of the most seismic moments in French history. The pre-Revolutionary portrait bust was inextricably tied to the formation of modern selfhood and to the construction of individual identity during the Enlightenment, while positioning both sitters and viewers as part of a collective of individuals who together formed French society. In analyzing the contribution of the portrait bust to the construction of interiority and the formulation of new gender roles and political ideals, this book touches upon a set of concerns that constitute the very core of our modernity.

This book deals with the use of archaistic stylistic elements (i.e., those which revive or imitate features of Greek Archaic art) in free standing statuary dating from the second century B.C. to the third century A.C. The main objective of the study is to determine how the archaistic style was used, what prototypes were imitated, what subjects were represented, how the replicas of statue types were distributed, how these statues were displayed, and what prompted such stylistic anachronism.
The introductory chapter deals with general problems of archaism in ancient art and the specific questions pertaining to statuary in the round. The body of material, nearly three hundred pieces in all, is organized by type on the basis of pose and garment arrangement.
In a concluding chapter, evidence from the body of the study is collected and possible answers are suggested for the questions outlined above.
This study contributes to the currently widespread scholarly interest in stylistic revivals (especially classicism and archaism) which occurred not only in Roman times, but in earlier and later periods as well.

For the first time, the 92-metre frieze of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, one of the largest historical narratives in marble, has been made the subject of a book.

The pictorial narrative of the Boer pioneers who conquered South Africa’s interior during the ‘Great Trek’ (1835-1852) represents a crucial period of South Africa’s past. Forming the concept of the frieze both reflected on and contributed to the country’s socio-political debates in the 1930s and 1940s when it was made. The frieze is unique in that it provides rare evidence of the complex processes followed in creating a major monument.

Based on unpublished documents, drawings and models, these processes are unfolded step by step, from the earliest discussions of the purpose and content of the frieze through all the stages of its design to its shipping to post-war Italy to be copied into marble and final installation in the Monument. The book examines how visual representation transforms historical memory in what it chooses to recount, and the forms in which it depicts this. It also investigates the active role the Monument played in the development of apartheid, and its place in post-apartheid heritage.

The second volume, to be published later this year, expands on the first, considering each of the twenty-seven scenes in depth, providing new insights into not only the frieze, but also South Africa’s history.

Join the thousands of paperfolders woldwide who enjoy this marvelous pastime.

CONTENTS -
1. AEROSOLS -
2. BACTERICIDES-FUNGICIDES - SANITIZERS -
3. CLEANERS FOR HOUSEHOLD AND INDUSTRY -
4. CARE OF FLOORS -
5. LAUNDERING AND DRY CLEANING -
6. TREATMENT OF METALS -
7. PESTICIDES -
8. MISCELLANEOUS -
BIBLIOGRAPHY -
APPENDIX -
Glossary -
Suppliers of Materials and Equipment -
Useful Tables -
Patents -
Periodicals of Interest -
Associations Related to the Industry -
INDEX -

The Lives of Chinese Objectsis a fascinating book. It is the result of excellent historical research as well as curatorial expertise. The reader is taken on an amazing journey starting with the startling discovery of the image of five Chinese bronzes on display as part of the Great Exhibition in 1851...The stories uncovered are riveting, a mix of curatorial detail and description, historical research and theoretical analysis. This book is beautifully written - clear, detailed and informative. The author is ever present in the text and the book is as much a story of her journey, as it is a story of the lives of the 'Putuo Five'. I just wanted to keep reading." . Suzanne MacLeod, University of Leicester

This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo - China's most important pilgrimage island - to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers' and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the 'Mongolian race' and, later, as examples of Oriental art. The statues escaped the bombing of the Museum during the Second World War and lived out their existence for the next sixty years, dismembered, corroding and neglected in the stores, their histories lost and origins unknown.

As the curator of Asian collections at Liverpool Museum, the author became fascinated by these bronzes, and selected them for display in the Buddhism section of the World Cultures gallery. In 2005, quite by chance, the discovery of a lithograph of the figures on prominent display in the Great Exhibition enabled the remarkable lives of these statues to be reconstructed.

Bernini and His World is a unique exploration of Gian Lorenzo Bernini the sculptor, offering new insights and including discussions of the artist's stylistic innovations and the ways in which he approached sculpture. Placing his life and work within a social, anthropological and historical context, Livio Pestilli gives a fascinating and in-depth account, from the Rome in which Bernini lived and its reception of foreign sculptors to the myth-making narrative of his biographers, and the judgements of his critics. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, this book draws on a deep familiarity with both historic and modern Italian culture to give readers a vivid account of sculpture and sculptors in early modern Rome, and of Bernini's lasting legacy.