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The
Art of Beadwork by Valerie Hector Valerie is an established fiber artist and beadwork historian. She has traveled various areas of the world for a first hand look at beadwork techniques and for study of heirloom art. Her travels and study culminated in authoring this book. You will learn some history about beadwork and beads along with photographs of ancient beadwork. Each section of beading projects begins with a theme - Asian Inspirations, African and Middle Eastern Inspirations, European Inspirations and American Inspirations. Within each section of inspirational work, beadwork history is provided for specific areas and the particular beadwork created. The Asian Inspirations encompasses the Han (Mainland China), Ancient Japanese, Kathi, Sa’Dan Toraja, Straits Chinese, Kenyah and Ambai Island beadwork. The African and Middle Eastern Inspirations include Ancient Egyptian, Yoruba, Maasai, Dinka, Xhosa, Ndebele and Msinga/Zulu beadwork. The European Inspirations has 17th Century (English), J.M. Van Selow (1760’s Germany), Wiener Werkstatte (1920’s Austria) and Funerary (French) beadwork. American Inspirations encompasses Plains and Plateau, Achomawi/Atsugewi (California), Huichol (Mexico) and Chimu (Peru) beadwork. You can see by the many countries she has visited, Valerie has insight to diverse cultural beadwork, their history and offers a view of their local color and artwork. The beadwork projects begin with glass bugle beads in structural forms, reminiscent of children’s erector sets making square, circle, cube, and triangle formations. There are exciting polyhedrons, from simple to complex, creating graduated colors with these unique formations. Several beading techniques are explored; brick stitch, circular herringbone, right angle weave, peyote, bead stringing, netting, triangular tubes, bead wrapping much in the tradition of passamentarie, loom weaving, square stitch and embellishment. Each project is unique, works of art that are not found in other books. One of the right angle weave project is a square sample and you can make several to combine into a shawl. The gemstone earrings are very exotic. There is a beaded tassel necklace that is worked around the whole necklace, herringbone hair sticks and earrings, rectangular peyote bracelets, a ladder stitch collar with pattern diversity, right angle chevron bracelets and exceptional box shapes plus Valerie’s tubular polygon stitch ropes. Every project follows after the history and examples using the stitch. The color is lavish and the book content is exceptional. All the illustrations are easy to follow and in large print. I found the design options on page 21, of great interest, which includes dimensionality, negative space, movement, abstractions and other artistic considerations. There are color photographs of beadwork, vintage and contemporary, are much like a gallery running through the whole book, inspiration everywhere. The Art of Beadwork is a beautiful book, perfect for reference, learning beading techniques, creating projects and dynamite beadwork. I highly recommend Valerie’s book! Review by Lydia F Borin |
