Now in a full-color second edition, Not Just a Pretty Face is an engaging exploration of the role of dolls and doll making in Alaska Native cultures. From ancient ivory carvings to the thriving tourist market, dolls and human figurines have played integral parts in the ritual, economic, and social lives of Native Alaskans. Dolls served as children's playthings, represented absent community members at ceremonies, and predicted the movements of game animals for shamans. Not Just a Pretty Face surveys these and other uses of dolls and figurines, illustrating in beautiful color photographs the diversity of the doll-making tradition in Eskimo, Athabaskan, and Northwest Coast Native communities. Authors explore the ethnographic literature, twentieth-century oral histories, and photographic documentation of dolls and the doll-making process. Contemporary doll makers explain, in their own words, how they learned to make dolls and what doll making means to them. The second edition features a photo essay on Rosalie Paniyak of Chevak, one of the most influential doll makers in Alaska today. Not Just a Pretty Face provides a panoramic view of an ancient tradition and situates the art of doll making within a contemporary context. Scholarly, yet accessible, Not Just a Pretty Face is a lively contribution to the literature on dolls, anthropology, and Native studies.

Rich in images and gently told, Keeper of the Delaware Dolls is the story of a Delaware Indian woman, Lynette Perry, and the remarkable life she has led in rural Oklahoma throughout the twentieth century. As Perry reflects, hers is a life "lived to old rhythms played by a country fiddle and an Indian drum," a fluid merging of square dances and Delaware stomp dances. Through her eyes, readers are afforded a rare glimpse of how the world of the Delawares has persisted and remained meaningful into the modern era. A recurring theme in Perry?s life has been the making and keeping of dolls, a practice joining her to her female Delaware ancestors. Her great-grandmother Wahoney (Ma Wah Taise) was a doll keeper who died at the age of 108 in 1909. Believing the Delawares? old world to have slipped away, Wahoney asked that her dolls be buried with her. Unlike her great-grandmother, however, Perry feels that the abiding force of traditional Delaware culture has returned to her, time and again, throughout her long life. In an effort to connect to her Native past, she has revived the doll-making craft.

The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts covers thousands of years of decorative arts production throughout western and non-western culture. With over 1,000 entries, as well as hundreds drawn from the 34-volume Dictionary of Art, this topical collection is a valuable resource for those interested in the history, practice, and mechanics of the decorative arts. Accompanied by almost 100 color and more than 500 black and white illustrations, the 1,290 pages of this title include hundreds of entries on artists and craftsmen, the qualities and historic uses of materials, as well as concise definitions on art forms and style. Explore the works of Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, and the Wiener Wekstatte, or delve into the history of Navajo blankets and wing chairs in thousands of entries on artists, craftsmen, designers, workshops, and decorative art forms.

Grand Procession celebrates a remarkable new tradition-based, contemporary American Indian art form. From a heritage rooted in dolls and ledger-book drawings, a fresh and exciting sculptural art featuring human and animal figures has evolved since the mid-1980s. Typically around two feet tall and meticulously clothed in elaborate beaded and quilled ceremonial dress, the figures carefully emulate Plains and Plateau traditions of the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The premier collection of these figures, created by five award-winning Native American women artists--Rhonda Holy Bear (Lakota), Jamie Okuma (Luiseno), and the Growing Thunder family (Assiniboine-Sioux): Joyce Growing Thunder, her daughter Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty, and granddaughter, Jessica Growing Thunder--has been brilliantly assembled by Charles and Valerie Diker. While each figure is a strong work of art, the assemblage of figures is particularly powerful. Beautifully illustrated, this volume will appeal to all those interested in American Indian art and crafts, contemporary and historic Indian lifeways, sculpture, and dolls. Grand Procession crosses many boundaries.

Presents an introduction to dollmaking, looking at the materials and tools needed to make, decorate, and clothe cloth and wooden dolls, and including instructions for twelve dolls, each of which illustrates a different dollmaking technique.

Profiles five of the women behind the most important dolls of the past century, and introduces six women making dolls today.