Ceramics Books and Magazines

I admit I was almost scared off when in Chapter One the author mentioned Lenin, since I would be more likely to read a book that quotes John Lennon than Vladimir Lenin. Fortunately I read on, for this book took me where I've wanted to go for some time - to Oaxaca. In Chapter Four the author takes you into the woodcarving villages and in Chapter Five he tells you how carving families have benefited financially in varying degrees from their participation in the woodcarving process. Chapter Six is all about how it's done - the nuts and bolts (or branches and sandpaper, so to speak) of how a carving goes from a copal tree to a finished carving in the hands of the carving families. (As a woodcarver myself, this was fascinating.) The chapter on Specialization was very interesting - and the following chapter on How Artisans Attain Success was also intriguing. Again, these chapters offered a look inside the Oaxacan woodcarving craft that most people would never see. The chapters on sales in Oaxaca and the United States were unexpectedly worthwhile reading as well.

One reviewer compared this book to a magician walking onstage and telling you how the trick is done. For me, however, the "magic in the trees" has always been the magical energy that sparked the Oaxacan woodcarvers to use their creativity to make something that can be appreciated for its artistic beauty but that can also bring a better quality of life to the carvers and their families in the woodcarving villages.

Buy the Shepard Barbash book (Oaxacan Woodcarving - the Magic in the Trees) for its pictures and alluring text. Buy this book (Crafting Tradition by Michael Chibnik) for the story behind the story. Both books are indispensable to anyone who has a passion for Oaxacan woodcarvings.


Making a neat thing very mundane   October 17, 2003
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

This very bland book attempts to apply economic theory to explain the success and failures of the
artisans and the people who sell alebrijes. What Barbash did for Oaxacan woodcarving this
university professor has undone with a book filled with criticism and forced interviews. Imagine a
magician wowing you on stage and then after word a man comes onto the stage and explains
how each trick was done and why you shouldn't be impressed because he certainly wasn't.
Chibnik's odd obsession with the Barbash book is mentioned in every chapter and makes one
question the motivation for this book. Written from 94-99 this collection of notes really sings a
professors justification for vacationing in one part of Mexico and getting his University to pay for it.

The book is devoid of interesting photos. The very few are either pictures of his own pieces or
black and white. The author also chooses a very narrow group of artists for his focus. The ones
he does focus on he mentions as "the best" or "most expensive". He praises the work of Miguel
Santiago as being the most talented and most expensive when there are others like Medina or
Aurelio Zarate that take Migel's stiff looking work up a couple of notches.

The author tries to sound very factual about things he's really only making an observation of. For
instance he mentions Maria Jimenez as the only female carver where in fact Roberta Angeles,
Christina Ibanez, and Bertha Cruz are also well known women artists. The distances he
mentions to get to villages from the city are a bit off. To get to San Pedro Cajonos the author
states it's two hours where in fact it's about eight. These little things add up and about halfway
through they demotivate you from wanting to read further.

The author takes a hard jab at wholesalers and dealers. He describes them as people who could
have easier ways to make a living other than importing folk art. Sad but true. The prices he
assumes these dealers pay for reflect 1994 and certainly not 2003 when the book is published.
He pokes fun of various catalog descriptions and websites for doing the things they naturally do
to make something interesting to buy. Ironically in the Epilogue he alerts the reader that Clive
Kincaid the largest wholesaler in his book will no longer be carrying woodcarvings. Clive is
mentioned as saying "shop owners and museum curators where just walking past our booth".
A hard blow to the hundreds of Oaxacan artists that have grown with him over the years.
Well if Clive read Chibniks book there wouldn't be any surprise as to why.


Art Socioeconomics   May 19, 2003
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Anyone interested in Mexican folk art will have noticed the brightly-painted animals, people, and alebrijes (fantastic imaginary critters) featured in many Mexican-oriented gift shops. Michael Chibnik's book is an excellent introduction to the socioeconomics of the craft. These figures are produced in only four villages, all in central Oaxaca. The people who make them have varying degrees of Zapotec heritage, but are mostly Spanish-speaking. They are now used to dealing with international buyers; this is a global age, and the sight of a rich, sophisticated buyer in an adobe-and-pole home in a remote Oaxaca village occasions no surprise. Chibnik follows items on their odyssey from such homes to the elite art stores of Oaxaca and the United States.
Chibnik stresses the newness of the craft. True, but Oaxaca has a very old tradition of superb and imaginative woodcarving, previously applied to shrines, masks, and local utility goods. It not only produced the skills, it provided an existing market structure. This Chibnik fails to address.
Some points in the book deserve expansion. First, aid and development workers interested in small enterprise development should very definitely read it. It chronicles, very thoroughly, a spectacularly successful bit of local initiative and creativity. The villagers not only invented this craft; they have kept improving it steadily. Woodworking expands, diversifies, and gets more creative; meanwhile, the people themselves get rapidly more sophisticated in business. Chibnik provides very detailed accounts of the economics of the craft, from the price of wood (fortunately, a common sort of tree is used) to the markups in Tucson and Los Angeles art galleries.
This sort of value-added bootstrapping is rare in Mexico (and elsewhere). It should be encouraged. Thousands of well-meant development initiatives, pushed by outsiders, have failed; here we have an excellent study of one that was strictly local initiative and that succeeded. Chibnik does not explicitly target small enterprise development experts, but they are the people who really should be reading this book with great care.
Second, this is good art. Chibnik quotes, without much comment, some sadly snobbish statements to the effect that this stuff is "commercial" and thus automatically low. As if Rembrandt, Michelangelo and Monet weren't commercial artists! Come on, scholars--good art is usually made with at least one eye toward an audience willing to pay for it. Chibnik is generally silent on the quality of pieces and why it matters, though he does make some judgements. Yet, discussion of quality--why people really like some pieces and find others dull--should be a natural part of an economic study. Anthropologists and economists tend to be skeptical (or downright cynical) about quality judgements, but such judgements are a fact of life, and do structure the market. They should be directly addressed.

As noted by an earlier reviewer, this book is rather underillustrated. Given that there is only one other book about the craft (and it rather short), one would hope that, some day, a full art-critical study of the carvings will be produced.
The same earlier reviewer found the style dry. I disagree. Maybe I'm just used to academia, but I find this a very well-written and readable book. It is mercifully free from the jargon usual in economic studies and art criticism. I found it engaging and hard to put down. Highly recommended to anyone with a serious interest in the socioeconomic side of folk art.


Interesting Read (but not much to look at)   March 25, 2003
 4 out of 5 found this review helpful

Crafting Tradition succeeds in giving a thorough look at the economics, history and marketing of Oaxacan wood carvings. Be forewarned, however, that there are only 16 pages of color reproductions in the book. Those pieces that are shown in color are not necesarily the most exciting Oaxacan carvings I've ever seen so in the "art book" category this book fails to give the reader much to look at. But if you are interesting in learning about how the carving market developed, how the artists and sellers fit into the overall scheme, and how Oaxacan carvings are sold to buyers and collectors, this is an interesting read. It's written in a dry, scholarly tone, and feels like an economics text book. But the "behind-the-scenes" information is something that isn't addressed too often. So while I like the information, I wished the style of writing were livlier and would have liked many more examples (in color) of Oaxacan art. Recommended for those with a deep interest in Oaxacan wood carving tradition, not recommended for those looking for a catalog of Oaxacan art to look at.