RR 2008/321 The Shell: A World of Decoration and Ornament

摘要

The Shell is something of a "coffee table" book. Like its Thames & Hudson stablemates, The History of Beads; Cabinets of Curiosities and Amulets, it is lushly illustrated, containing 528 illustrations (509 in colour), large format (31.0 x 23.8 cm. -roughly an inch taller and deeper than A4), and needing both hands to hold. It is a book to be used with care; not that one would wish to do otherwise. Anyone interested in the beauty of shells and how they have been incorporated in works of art, will relish, respect, and revere this book - a work of art in itself. The tone is set in the opening quotation in the Preface from a French shell trader of 1736 (Edme Francois Gersaint): "Shells form a felicitous group, and the sight of them may inspire lofty ideas as to form, in architects, sculptors, and even in painters". The Preface is titled: The Beautiful Shell and the book's subtitle is A World of Decoration and Ornament. Not that it is just a work of fine art (of which more later) for the Introduction covers such basics as the definition of a shell and its parts, and how shells have been used for both decoration and as tools (gouges, scrapers, fishhooks, chisels, knives and containers).