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New Releases: Spring 2024

By Jon Spayde
April 11, 2024

Spring 2024

Books

Free To Read

Photo by Sarah Sampedro

Featured in a new book about Michael Coffey is the furniture maker's Swahili Cabinet.

MICHAEL COFFEY: SCULPTOR AND FURNITURE MAKER IN WOOD
By Michael Coffey
Pointed Leaf Press, 2023
$85

Coffey’s bold combination of functionality and a sculptural freedom inspired by natural forms and forces is on lavish display in this large-format volume. A number of two-page spreads are devoted to single works such as Swahili Cabinet (pictured above), in which clearly defined doors and drawers are swept by elegant indentations that evoke ocean tides. The dramatic photography is interspersed with short chapters in which the artist shares his life story, working methods, and philosophy of making.

CRAFT ACROSS CONTINENTS: CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE AND WESTERN OBJECTS:
THE LASSITER / FERRARO COLLECTION
Edited by Annie Carlano, Joe Earle, and Rebecca E. Elliot
Giles, 2023
$40

Lorne Lassiter and Gary Ferraro’s dual focus as collectors—of European and American works, mostly in a sculptural vein, and Japanese pieces owing more to functional traditions—is showcased in this catalog of an exhibition at Charlotte, North Carolina’s Mint Museum that closes in May. The couple’s tastes range from an elegantly simple woven bamboo basket by Sōhō Katsushiro to Russell Biles’s The Passion of Andy—perky porcelain characters from the Andy Griffith Show.

CERAMICS: AN ATLAS OF FORMS
By Glenn Barkley
Thames & Hudson, 2024
$65

This is a lively history told in full-page photographs and concise studies of 114 works, ranging from a 3500 BCE Egyptian jar to piles of ochre arranged on a gallery floor by Indigenous installation artist Dean Cross, one of the many Australian makers featured. There’s deep scholarship here, with an eye for unusual work—such as a Meissen bust of an 18th-century comedian and a Victorian polychrome peacock.

GREENWOOD SPOON CARVING
By Emmet Van Driesche
Mortise and Tenon, 2023
$75

This read-and-watch combo is for those who, in the publisher’s lively phrase, “have wandered down the spoon-carving rabbit hole.” In the amply illustrated book, veteran carver Van Driesche addresses issues such as how to design a beautiful spoon, how to make a clean carving transition from handle to bowl, and how to sell your spoons. In the accompanying online course, he walks viewers through the making of a spoon, from green wood to handsome utensil.

SIMONE LEIGH
Edited by Eva Respini
DelMonico Books / Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2023
$75

Leigh, a multimedia artist who often employs ceramics in her sculpture, represented the US at the 2022 Venice Biennale. This comprehensive monograph is being published on the occasion of the first museum survey of her two decades of work. The book combines a generous offering of images of the works with scholarly essays by some 24 contributors. It illuminates an oeuvre that fuses Black feminism, traditional African imagery, and ideas and forms from across the African diaspora.

IN PURSUIT OF COLOR: FROM FUNGI TO FOSSIL FUELS: UNCOVERING THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS DYES
By Lauren MacDonald
Atelier Éditions/DAP, 2023
$49.95

How humans have colored cloth reveals a lot about history, our relationship with nature, and the shifting patterns of global trade and power. Textile artist and anthropologist MacDonald takes up the histories of 19 dyestuffs—derived from flora, fauna, fungi, and fossil fuels—to tell the story of how dyeing has evolved from communal ritual to global industry. There’s plenty of information about how natural and industrial dyeing work, too.

Jon Spayde is a writer, editor, and performance artist in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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