Traditional quilts serve many purposes over the course of a useful life. Beginning as a beautiful bed covering, a quilt may later function as a ground cover at picnics until years of wear relegate it to someone's ragbag for scrap uses.
Observing this life cycle led authors John Forrest and Deborah Blincoe to the idea that quilts, like living things, have a natural history that can be studied scientifically. They explore that natural history through an examination of the taxonomy, morphology, behavior, and ecology of quilts in their native environment—the homes of humans who make, use, keep, and bestow them.
The taxonomy proposed by Forrest and Blincoe is rooted in the mechanics of replicating quilts so that it can be used to understand evolutionary and genetic relationships between quilt types. The morphology section anatomizes normal and abnormal physical features of quilts, while the section on conception and birth in the life cycle discusses how the underlying processes of replication intersect with environmental factors to produce tangible objects.
This methodology is applicable to many kinds of crafts and will be of wide interest to students of folklore, anthropology, and art history. Case studies of traditional quilts and their makers in the Catskills and Appalachia add a warm, human dimension to the book.
Coins are the one form of art to which every American is exposed, yet of art forms in the United States, coins have been the least respected and understood. This delightful volume, containing well over 400 illustrations, provides the first comprehensive aesthetic appreciation of the American series. Although frequently disparaged by the public, the series is unrivaled in aesthetic richness among modern coinages. It includes such masterpieces as the primitively beautiful coins of the struggling young republic, dignified Neoclassic designs which dominated the nineteenth century, and magnificent gold and silver commemorative medals designed by the leading sculptors of the early twentieth century.
The author traces the development of American coins through the 1960s, discussing their artistic merits, analyzing the influences of the popular arts upon their design, and tracing the inspirations of particular compositions and styles in the other arts, both European and American.
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