Review by Booklist Review
The authors' goal in this handbook is to provide information on the age and provenance of Native American arts and crafts. The focus is on utilitarian objects made of natural materials found in abundance in the geographical area in which each tribe resided. Materials such as porcupine quills, moose hair, corn husks, and sweet grass are discussed at length and displayed in a wealth of photographs of the crafts that incorporate them, including intricate quill work on clothing and bags. Seven major tribal regions are defined, beginning with the Northeastern Woodlands, continuing to the Great Plains, and ending with the arctic and subarctic regions, with Johnson and Yenne supplying elaborate details of the variations in style found among tribes within the same geographical area, such as the different designs on parfleche cases made by the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, and Sioux. Moccasins are given their own chapter, as the four main styles of moccasin construction are found throughout North America. For collectors seeking to authenticate an item and everyone seeking expert information on Native American crafts, this will prove a valuable, up-to-date resource.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Johnson (The Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America) and Yenne's (Indian Wars: The Campaign for the American West) latest volume sheds light on Native American arts and crafts by offering "reviews of significant tribal styles of attire, or of Indian arts and crafts in specified areas." Beginning in the Northeast, they move east to west through the Great Plains, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest, with chapters on California and the Pacific Northwest proving especially interesting. Tribes on the West Coast wove baskets for cooking and storage with such skill and passion that their wares were "so fine that they were watertight, making them excellent as utilitarian containers." With the help of museums and private collectors around the world, Johnson and Yenne also present pages of stunning images and drawings. Beautifully beaded moccasins, for example, are shown alongside intricate illustrations on how they were sewn and details of 19th- and 20th-century Navajo textile patterns are paired with historical photographs of women at looms. This highly visual publication will be a boon to ethnographers and artists interested in Native American traditions. With more than 400 color photos, illustrations and drawings. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Aimed more at collectors than general students, this companion to the authors' Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America (Firefly, 2007) fills in some historical background but is largely a set of dryly academic descriptions of characteristic materials, manufacturing methods, and decorative motifs associated with common types of Native North American artifacts. Seven of the nine chapters are regional surveys covering Arctic residents to the Southeastern Nations; the other two are a broader overview of "Moccasins" and a cursory look at "Ceremonial Dress of Recent Times." The captions and narrative run to eye-glazing lines such as "Western Sioux moccasins of the second half of the nineteenth century were the classic shoe Type 14 with separate hard rawhide sole and buckskin upper with a tongue, sometimes forked, and a collar of varying size." Still, readers will be impressed by the hundreds of black-and-white and color illustrations, ranging from museum specimen photos (of widely varying quality) to early painted portraits, galleries of pottery and fabric design variations, maps, pictures of artisans at work, and labeled diagrams or exploded views of garments, housing, headgear, and weapons. The bibliography, a mass of scholarly and regional publications, is followed by an index that lists only tribal references. Consider as, at best, a source of supplementary images and details for David W. Penney's North American Indian Art (Thames & Hudson, 2004) or Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips's Native North American Art (Oxford, 1998).-John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
