Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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69 ORNAMENT 35.5.2012 publication reviews usually identifies the maker and the approximate time period of its manufacture, information of much value. Like so many products of craft industries, too often the maker remains anonymous. The thousands of patterns of lampworked glass beads or mosaic beads were often made by Venetian or Muranese women in home or small workshops, as shown in the historical photograph section of his book, in itself informative but revealing of the difficult work conditions which glass workers endured. There are also pages of bead sample cards and anecdotes of his collecting adventures detailing those bead collections that eluded his persistent efforts. No doubt, these lost treasures will emerge again. Like the Picard series of publications on Venetian beads used in the African trade, de Carlo's book is a necessity for those interested in the glass ornaments of this unique and beautiful Italian city and its industries. Robert K. Liu Linda Kaye Moses 2011 Roots, Stems and Branches: A Recollection. Canacola Works: 118 pp., softcover $70.00. Jeweler and PMC artist Linda Kaye Moses begins this very self-reflective, not-quite-memoir by saying, "This book is not intended to be an autobiography, a minute-by-minute description of a day in the life or a life of days of an artist." Instead the book seeks to illuminate a deeper question—not about the particular accomplishments of her lifetime in arts but rather why and how Moses became a jeweler/artist, and how, over the years, has she continued to be one? Peppered with color pencil drawings, family photographs and inspirational quotes, Roots, Stems and Braches really has the feel of a personal journal or diary. Moses shares little anecdotes and vignettes from her life and childhood—being captivated as a child by her Aunt Violet's jewelry box, her first ring gifted by a favorite Uncle. It shows an open, vulnerable side to Moses, one as we all are as individuals and artists—highly complex, reconciling our past and our futures, and experiencing both pain and great beauty in the world and our travels. Photographs of Moses's jewelry are woven throughout the narrative, as is some of her artistic history leading to her craft today. The jewelry and other art images are a highlight, as clearly one of Moses's strengths is working in a variety of materials and a breadth of styles. Jill A. DeDominicis Antonia Finnane 2008 Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, Modernity, Nation, published by Columbia University Press, 359 pp., hardcover, $35.00. Antonia Finnane's book, Changing Clothes in China, provides a fairly expansive examination of Chinese fashion focusing largely from the Qing dynasty to the present. Throughout her book, she highlights how intimately a few basic fashion forms were linked to national and gender identity. The changing times of twentieth-century China caused societal upheaval that echoed the drastic changes the country itself was experiencing. Finnane's accounts draw an interesting picture of China's link between fashion and social identity, from the problems caused by the gender androgyny of Chinese clothing forms such as the changpao and qipao, to the limited roles each gender was able to express through their clothing. Men in the period of Republican China had only three major options for dress, which were the Western suit, the Sun Yatsen suit, and the changpao. Of these, Finnane notes how the Western suit and the Eastern qipao would form a definite gender dimorphism and "highly binarised visual image." Traveling then to the 1930s, she relates the popularization of the phenomenon of women wearing men's clothing, an idea both Chinese and reintroduced by the West that found an echo chamber in the Chinese media and fascination in Chinese society. These cycles of gender blurring, gender identification and gender definition can be seen throughout Finnane's overview. While confusion was present during the 1930s, with Mao's Communist China, women were again wearing clothing almost exactly like the man's, such as the Mao suit and paramilitary clothing which were essentially unisex. Finnane documents these divergences and convergences fairly extensively, giving the reader the chance to put several hundred years of Chinese fashion history into bird's eye view. Patrick R. Benesh-Liu