Describes, step-by-step, how to create decorative candles using basic equipment and both traditional and modern materials. This book explores various techniques including moulding, hand-dipping, marbling and carving, as well as how to add surface decoration.

"A Pot of Paint reconstructs the lost transcript and revisits the highly contested issues surrounding one of the most celebrated trials in the history of art. A libel suit brought in the London courts by American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler against John Ruskin, England's most powerful art critic, the trial was essentially a debate of aesthetic theory conducted at a critical hour in the evolution of modern art." "After viewing an 1877 exhibition that included some of Whistler's most abstract works, Ruskin declared in print that the artist had flung "a pot of paint in the public's face." He called Whistler a "coxcomb" and said that it was the height of "cockney impudence" to ask two hundred guineas for a painting such as Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. The dispute was fully covered in the popular press. Using those newspaper accounts, as well as letters, legal papers, Ruskin's instructions to his counsel, and Whistler's later rendition of events in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, Linda Merrill reveals the deeply held, contrary aesthetic ideals of the two parties, and shows that, in many ways, the real litigants in Whistler v. Ruskin were traditional, representational art and art that tended toward abstraction." "During eighteen months of pretrial delays and two days of testimony from Whistler and several well-known figures in the art world, London debated the value and the meaning of art. A Pot of Paint retrieves these debates for a society that continues to argue the merits of innovation in art and the place of art in the modern world."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A distinguished scholar of Southwestern Native arts for over thirty years, J.J. Brody here returns to his early work on the Mimbres ceramic tradition, which established him as the leading authority on the arts of this ancient people. The Mimbres cultural florescence between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1140 remains one of the most visually astonishing and anthropologically intriguing questions in Southwest prehistory. In this revised edition, Dr. Brody incorporates the extensive fieldwork done on Mimbres sites since the original publication in 1977, updating his discussion of village life, the larger world in which the Mimbres people lived, and how the art that they practiced illuminates these wider issues. He addresses human and animal iconography, the importance of perspective and motion in perceiving Mimbres artistry, and the technology used to produce the ceramics. Placing the study of ancient art and artifacts in the present, he notes the impact of the antiquities market on archaeological and artistic research.

Lavishly illustrated with nearly 400 color images, Painting the Maya Universe is the most thorough study and brilliant display of Classic Maya ceramic painting yet published. Building on twenty years of research and debate, Dorie Reents-Budet and her collaborators Joseph W. Ball, Ronald L. Bishop, Virginia M. Fields, and Barbara MacLeod bring together many perspectives, including the art historical, archaeological, epigraphical, and ethnohistorical, to examine one of the world's great but overlooked painting traditions. With an emphasis on sixth- to eighth-century pottery featuring both pictorial and hieroglyphic imagery, Painting the Maya Universe presents an extraordinary exploration of the cultural roles and meanings of these Guatemalan, Belizean, and Mexican elite painted ceramics. Maya pottery is discussed both in aesthetic terms and for the important information it reveals about Maya society, artistry, politics, history, religion, and ritual. The range of ceramic painting styles developed during this period is also presented and defined in detail. Painting the Maya Universe is the first publication to present a definitive translation of the hieroglyphic texts painted on these objects. With many glyphs deciphered here for the first time, this analysis reveals much about how these vessels were perceived and used by the Maya, their owners' names, and, in several cases, the names of the artists who created them. This information is combined with archaeological and other data, including nuclear chemical analyses, to correlate painting styles with specific Maya sites. Published in conjunction with Duke University Museum of Art and an exhibition touring the United States, Painting the Maya Universe presents an astonishing visual record as well as a monumental scholarly achievement. With photographs by Justin Kerr, the foremost photographer of pre-Columbian art, it includes over 90 unique full-color rollout photographs, each showing the entire surface of an object in a single frame. The book also addresses the questions and controversy regarding the loss of information that occurs when objects are removed from their archaeological context to become part of public and private collections. Painting the Maya Universe will energize discussion of Maya pottery, hieroglyphic texts, and iconography. Its photographs, a lasting resource on this great painting tradition, will stimulate and delight the eye. It is a breakthrough in art history and Latin American scholarship that will enrich general readers and scholars alike.