In this wonderful new book an old tradition is shared with today's carvers. Helen Gibson, a new author at Schiffer Publishing, teaches woodcarving at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina. The patterns for the creche she carves have been part of the tradition of the school for so long that no one is quite sure of their origins. Carving them is a community effort, with different carvers having different specialties. Helen takes the reader step-by-step through the delicate carving process of one of the figures, with clear color photography illustrating each technique. Patterns and complete views for the Mary, Joseph, three Wisemen, three Shepherds, and the baby in the manager are included. Helen started carving when she was in about the fifth grade. She now lives and works at the school in Brasstown, North Carolina.

What carver's Christmas is complete without a nicely carved Santa? In this new book Tom Wolfe leads the carver through the process of creating a beautiful Santa ornament for the tree or to be displayed on a stand. A basic understanding of carving techniques is all that is needed to follow this fully-illustrated step-by-step instructions. As always Tom is happy to offer the tips and wisdom of many years of professional carving. The project covered in the book is a traditional Santa's head along with a sculpted stand from which to hang it. In the back are many other examples, from the saintly Nicholas to a fanciful "Banana Santa." All in all this is book will bring delight to carvers and those who see their work.

Since the 1930s, more than 1.5 million glass paperweights have been made in Britain. Here is the first comprehensive reference to identify them. Whether you have been given one paperweight as a gift and know nothing about the subject, or are a serious collector who owns hundreds of items, this book is certain to prove indispensable. For the beginner, the illustrations and listings will help in identifying your paperweight, as well as giving its value. The production of glass paperweights in Britain is due largely to the initial stimulus of one person, Paul Ysart, whose family settled in Scotland. Many Ysart paperweights never illustrated before are shown here, including a rare signed and dated butterfly, a magnum containing a metal badge, and a scrambled weight with butterfly portrait canes. Strathearn items include miniatures and magnums, and rarely seen illustrated brochures. Whitefriars lovers will appreciate the most comprehensive list ever published. Of the book's 360 color illustrations, over 60 are of Whitefriars, including more than fifteen highly important paperweights never illustrated before, such as the Royal Visit and a footed magnum over five inches in diameter. Caithness, John Deacons, William Manson, and Selkirk's ranges are well covered, as are many studio artists. Humorous stories and tales of production problems add to this book's appeal. By listing over 2,000 British paperweights, the author has provided a notable reference work that will be consulted for years to come.

The Art of Cosmic Spectrum features the characters, worlds, and stories created by artist Yana Bogatch aka Cosmic Spectrum. Previously, she has self-published a graphic novel and two art books. Now, The art of Cosmic Spectrum showcases the artist’s entire story and demonstrates the development of her style and career, as well as brand new art and tutorial content. With character art and comics being her specialty, the book features an array of tips and techniques for drawing anatomy, gesture, and character details.  Sketchbook pages reveal Yana’s experience in animation and storyboarding; her use of both traditional and digital tools reveals the artist’s versatility. Storytelling and connecting with other people are vital to the artist, and readers will be fascinated to discover how she infuses her art with these motivations. Another way in which she shares her art is through her shop, where creativity and commercial success meet.  Yana’s energy, enthusiasm, and entrepreneurial spirit will encourage readers looking for way to transform their passion for art into a viable career while staying true to their style. The Art of Cosmic Spectrum is the creative inspiration and springboard every character artist needs.

When is a fetish not a fetish? Find out in this celebration of the most misunderstood genre of Southwestern Indian carvings. From Beast Gods to Directional Guardian Spirits, this book explores the magic and mystery behind the charismatic, mostly stone, animal figures (or fetishes) skillfully carved by artists from Southwestern Pueblos. Enthusiasts will delight in the hundreds of full-color photographs. Pictures and text highlight the impressive variety of forms, materials, and traditional and contemporary styles available to collectors. This book discusses the symbolic meanings associated with these figures and explains how they are "borrowed" for use by members of non-Native American cultures. A newly revised price guide is included to help collectors orient themselves to current market values.

The power and beauty of traditional African sculpture has influenced 20th century art and design around the world. Found in many museums, its abstract forms, skillful rendering, and deep symbolism has also made it a welcome addition to the homes of private collectors. This new book offers a broad survey of the traditional sculpture that is available in the marketplace. The sculpture shown here covers a span of 100 years and focuses on masks, statuary, and architectural carvings in wood, bronze, and terracotta from sub-Saharan Africa with a sampling of the contemporary work in stone. The works are presented in beautiful color photographs, and accompanied by helpful, informative captions and a guide to values in today's market. The book helps the collector evaluate the quality and authenticity of African sculpture.

A dazzling cross-section of turtle figures from a diverse group of cultures are gathered here--including Waterford crystal from Ireland, Native American pueblo pottery and fetish carvings, and Japanese netsuke carvings, among many others. Nearly 350 color photos display turtles' intrinsic beauty captured by artists from around the world in materials prized since the beginning of time. Mythology, anthropology, biology, and environmental concerns are interwoven in a way that will both pique your interest and hold your attention. Realistic pricing information is included for each item. Upon reading this fascinating book, you will never again be indifferent toward turtles.

Whether the name Limoges brings to mind a region in France, the city of Limoges, or the factories that produce fine Limoges porcelain, a picture of romance, beauty, and fabulous artisans no doubt follows. This stunningly photographed book is dedicated to helping porcelain connoisseurs from the novice to the advanced learn how to identify, affordably collect, and decorate with hand-painted Limoges porcelain. Shown are vases, jardinieres, dinnerware, coffee and chocolate pots, cake plates, punch bowls, and more. This is the first Limoges collectors' book with dedicated sections on tea accoutrements, white and gold wedding band porcelain, and porcelain jewelry with hand-painted Limoges art. Going room by room, the author provides fabulous decorating ideas, from accessorizing with a single piece of Limoges to displaying an entire collection. Included are descriptions, measurements, values, history, collector hints, and a concise alphabetical mark guide. A truly inspirational book for collectors and designers alike.

Beneath the original Venetian glass and rosewood case at La Specola in Florence lies Clemente Susini's Anatomical Venus (c. 1790), a perfect object whose luxuriously bizarre existence challenges belief. It - or, better, she - was conceived of as a means to teach human anatomy without need for constant dissection, which was messy, ethically fraught and subject to quick decay. This life-sized wax woman is adorned with glass eyes and human hair and can be dismembered into dozens of parts revealing, at the final remove, a beatific foetus curled in her womb. Sister models soon appeared throughout Europe, where they not only instructed the specialist students, but also delighted the general public. Deftly crafted dissectable female wax models and slashed beauties of the world's anatomy museums and fairgrounds of the 18th and 19th centuries take centre stage in this disquieting volume. Since their creation in late 18th-century Florence, these wax women have seduced, intrigued and amazed. Today, they also confound, troubling the edges of our neat categorical divides: life and death, science and art, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, spectacle and education, kitsch and art. Incisive commentary and captivating imagery reveal the evolution of these enigmatic sculptures from wax effigy to fetish figure and the embodiment of the uncanny.

The world that shaped Europe's first national sculptor-celebrities, from Schadow to David d'Angers, from Flaxman to Gibson, from Canova to Thorvaldsen, was the city of Rome. Until around 1800, the Holy See effectively served as Europe's cultural capital, and Roman sculptors found themselves at the intersection of the Italian marble trade, Grand Tour expenditure, the cult of the classical male nude, and the Enlightenment republic of letters. Two sets of visitors to Rome, the David circle and the British traveler, have tended to dominate Rome's image as an open artistic hub, while the lively community of sculptors of mixed origins has not been awarded similar attention. Rome, Travel and the Sculpture Capital, c.1770-1825 is the first study to piece together the labyrinthine sculptors' world of Rome between 1770 and 1825. The volume sheds new light on the links connecting Neo-classicism, sculpture collecting, Enlightenment aesthetics, studio culture, and queer studies. The collection offers ideal introductory reading on sculpture and Rome around 1800, but its combination of provocative perspectives is sure to appeal to a readership interested in understanding a modernized Europe's overwhelmingly transnational desire for Neo-classical, Roman sculpture.

A method of study that will allow the beginner to learn the fundamentals of chip carving, and help the more advanced carver to hone their skills. The ordered exercises will build your skill and knowledge of chip carving, beginning with the most basic cuts and following through to the most difficult. This book studies in depth the fundamental techniques of chip carving. It progresses from the easiest to the hardest cuts. It includes designs and projects after each exercise, helping to keep the reader enthusiastic throughout the learning process. This is a book that really gets down to the basics. People want to know exactly how to execute each cut and they need a reference book to turn to when they are having difficulty with a certain type of cut. This is the book!

A comprehensive survey of the intriguing misericord carvings, setting them in their religious context and looking at their different themes and motifs. Misericord carvings present a fascinating corpus of medieval art which, in turn, complements our knowledge of life and belief in the late middle ages. Subjects range from the sacred to the profane and from the fantastic to the everyday, seemingly giving equal weight to the scatological and the spiritual alike. Focusing specifically on England - though with cognisance of broader European contexts - this volume offers an analysis of misericords in relation to other cultural artefacts of the period. Through a series of themed "case studies", the book places misericords firmly within the doctrinal and devotional milieu in which they were created and sited, arguing that even the apparently coarse images to be found beneath choir stalls are intimately linked to the devotional life of the medieval English Church. The analysis is complemented by a gazetteer of the most notable instances. Paul Hardwick isProfessor in English, Leeds Trinity University College.

Starting with commercially available wooden eggs, Mary Finn shows how to transform them into all kinds of delightful characters, each with a unique personality. Using detailed, step by step instructions and color photography, this book shows how to create both "big headed" and regularly proportioned egg people, carve whole figures or partial figures, and add legs or go without. A list of ten basic steps is applied to each of four projects: a Santa carving, a man in a business suit, a butterfly-catching lady, and an ice hockey player. You will learn how to orient the egg, establish the basic outline, complete details such as eyes, hair, and clothing, and paint the finished project. Carving egg people is the ideal project for people with limited access to saws or other large equipment as well as for those who want an enjoyable "take-along" carving project.

The adult male elk stand roughly five feet high at the shoulder, weighs nearly eleven hundred pounds and can run at speeds up to thirty-five miles per hour. Dale Power captures this powerful animal single-handedly, with wood carving tools! Discover all the techniques you'll need to "capture" a realistic looking elk of your own in wood from this book. Step-by-step instructions make carving the elk, with a combination of hand and power tools, an easy task. Over 250 color photographs illustrate each technique and tip along the way. Useful methods for changing the positioning of the elk are included. You'll also learn how to burn in the hair pattern, paint your creation in natural colors and how to mount it on a base. Patterns for two elk are included. The gallery photos provide perspectives of the animal carved and of additional elk in several poses to fire the carver's imagination.

I am interested in your personal hang-ups: Not your lifetime neuroses but your (ideal) hat, coat and/or clothes tree or hanger, wall hooks, free standing pole, rack, stand or small wall system. With this invitation Gail M. Brown, an independent curator, challenged artists to create inventive forms for an exhibition at The Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. The resulting sculptures by 38 artists ranged from a straightforward coat rack to a four-foot apartment house riding on a fish, from a scepter-like paean to Joan Miro to a four eyes nun-backed chair, and from a bird house to a wall-mounted seat and desktop. The artists used a wide range of woods, from the ordinary to the exotic, as well as rubber, steel, and gold-plated brass. The works project grace, intelligence, whimsy, humor, and serious craft.

This study of the monument of Godfrey of Bouillon offers new insights to the political uses of public monuments devoted to figures from the past, modern uses and appropriations of the Middle Ages, and the role of historical culture in the creation of national identity. On 15 August 1848, a bronze equestrian statue of the crusading hero Godfrey of Bouillon (d.1100) was unveiled in the Place Royale in Brussels, Belgium's capital. Conceived and largely funded by the national government, its creation was a major element in a programme of political and cultural consolidation put into place after the Belgian Revolution (1830-1831) and the consequent establishment of the nation's independence. From the outset, the monument was designed to transmit ideas about history and nationhood, and functioned as a focal point in discussions of politics, language, religion and identity. This book sheds new light on a range of dynamics in nineteenth-century Belgium, using the statue as a prism; it investigates responses to it both home and abroad, and traces broader national interest in the commemoration of Godfrey, adopted as a national hero despite being born almost 800 years before the emergence of the state. Above all, it reveals that Belgian politics and culture in this period were profoundly shaped by a sustained interest in the Middle Ages, and by efforts to shape a historical narrative that traced Belgian nationhood back to that era, and beyond.

Bringing together established and emerging specialists in seventeenth-century Italian sculpture, Material Bernini is the first sustained examination of the conspicuous materiality of Bernini's work in sculpture, architecture, and paint. The various essays demonstrate that material Bernini has always been tied (whether theologically, geologically, politically, or in terms of art theory) to his immaterial twin. Here immaterial Bernini and the historiography that sustains him is finally confronted by material Bernini. Central to the volume are Bernini's works in clay, a fragmentary record of a large body of preparatory works by a sculptor who denied any direct relation between sketches of any kind and final works. Read together, the essays call into question why those works in which Bernini's bodily relation to the material of his art is most evident, his clay studies, have been configured as a point of unmediated access to the artist's mind, to his immaterial ideas. This insight reveals a set of values and assumptions that have profoundly shaped Bernini studies from their inception, and opens up new and compelling avenues of inquiry within a field that has long remained remarkably self-enclosed.

In over 300 clear, detailed color photos and easy to follow descriptions, master carver Jeff Moore takes readers through all of the steps necessary to created a beautiful, life-like screech owl in wood. Beginning with a pre-shaped blank to simplify the roughing out process, techniques used in both high speed texturing and wood burning are shown. These techniques achieve eye-catching, realistic features and great detail. Instructions are also provided for creating feet with a realistic appearance complementing the habitat base. Following the carving stage, instructions are provided for airbrushing and brush painting techniques necessary to complete the screech owl and bring the carving to life. Additionally, the pattern is provided, along with detailed reference photos of a live screech owl. This book will be a vital reference guide for any wood carver's library.

This is the ultimate guide to ceramic wall pockets, presenting the work of more than 60 American pottery firms. Beautiful pieces, designed in every color and shape imaginable to hold, primarily, flowers, are displayed in more than 570 stunning color photographs. Nearly all the wall pockets made by Roseville and Weller are included as well as many from Brush-McCoy, Camark, Frankoma, Hull, Nelson McCoy, Peters & Reed, Rookwood, Fulper, Grueby, Marblehead, Owens, and Teco. Arts and Crafts era wall pockets from California Faience, Jervis, Newcomb Pottery, George E. Ohr, Overbeck, Strobl, Walley, and Wheatley are also presented. Typical manufacturers' marks are displayed, a selected bibliography is provided, and values are presented in the captions.

This book presents a new study of Greek large-scale bronze statuary of the late Archaic and Classical periods. It examines the discovery, origin, style, date, artistic attribution, identification, and interpretation of the surviving bronzes, and focuses in particular on their technical features and casting techniques. It contains over 170 plates of photographs and drawings to illustrate its discussion. It also places the development of the casting techniques in connection with the stylistic evolution in Greek free-standing sculpture. During the Classical period, artists preferred bronze to marble when creating their contrapposto figures. Indisputably, bronze gave particular freedom to artists in creating three-dimensional figures. In addition, the evolution in style encouraged the development of the uses of bronze to serve the new needs and tendencies in sculpture during the late Archaic and especially the Classical period. Through the examination of how technical matters affect style, this book presents fresh interpretations of these important monuments of Greek art and offers a new approach in the field of Greek free-standing bronze sculpture.

Beautiful color photographs of hundreds of Majolica ceramics from the Victorian age and more historical research contiue in this new study. The book traces majolica's roots and lists the manufacturers and their marks. Over 300 color photographs, taken in America and Britain, illustrate the high craftsmanship of majolica's nineteenth century potters. Artistic influences on majolica's designs are reviewed along with the evolving majolica markets England, America, Europe, and Canada. Specialty tablewares, decorative pieces, titles, and the controversial greenwares all are included. The price guide is a valuable tool.

Valuable new information on American Brilliant Cut Glass is presented in the Boggesses' most recent work, Diverse sources including 135 originals catalogs, patent records, magazine advertisements and personal interviews with people within the glass industry as well as collectors and dealers were used to complete this thorough study. Patterns, colored patterns and their variations, common and unusual shapes, changing terminology, and signature marks are all discussed in detail. Rare pieces, such as those appearing in Exhibitions, are also addressed. Over 950 photographs illustrate this comprehensive text.

91 designs for workable projects: abstract patterns in both straight-line and curve; men and women in characteristic 1920s garb; geometrically stylized birds, trees and animals; and more. Intermediate to advanced level. 60 plates.

When Tom Wolfe published his first book on Woodspirits, Tom Wolfe Carves Woodspirits and Walking Sticks, we had no idea how popular it would become. Thousands of people saw it, bought it, and asked for more. So here it is, a new collection of Woodspirits, this time done in the traditional Bavarian way. Carved from a section of a tree, the branch forms the hat. Of course Tom brings his own inimitable style to the carving, making it lively and creative. As always he takes the carver step-by-step through the carving process. There can be no pattern, because each Woodspirit springs from a unique piece of wood. But the technique and the sequence of carving can be easily learned through the step-by-step color illustrations. A gallery of several Woodspirits will give the carver many ideas about the variety and variations they can obtain when they release the Spirits from the Wood.

First published in 1935, this book was intended to provide westerners with a more definite and comprehensive understanding of Chinese Art and its achievements. Newly available opportunities to study authentic examples, such as the Royal Academy exhibition that provided the impetus for this volume, allowed for greater opportunities to conduct in-depth examination than had previously been possible. Following an introduction giving an overview of Chinese art and its history in the west, six chapters cover painting and calligraphy, sculpture and lacquer, 'the potter's art', bronzes and cloisonne enamel, jades, and textiles - supplemented by a chronology of Chinese epochs, a selected bibliography and 25 images.