Isbn: 9780977149124 - Accidentally on Purpose: the Management of Irregularities in African Textiles and African-american Quilts (6 results)

Paperback. Condition: Near Fine. Square 4to, 175 pp, near fine in pictorial wraps. 128 color illustrations + numerous b&w text illustrations. Quiltmakers' profiles. Bibliography. Scarce.

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. A few spots of discoloration to rear cover, otherwise light handling to french-fold covers. Binding tight and text clean.

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Softcover. Square format. 8vo(9.5 x 9.5 in.). White wraps with French flaps adding stability. Color quilt image on front with black titling. Rear is blank. Lightly used condition. Little surface wear. Corners are good. Printed on nice low-gloss paper. This is an extensive study of quilt designs from Africa that traveled and were used by African American quilters. Page after page of color images. Brief profiles of quilters are mixed in with text and images. The images are well-captured, dense in color, many are extraordinary. A special book, hard to find. …

paperback. Condition: As New.

Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed.

Paperback. Condition: New. This exuberantly illustrated book celebrates the sophistication, vivacity, and significance of improvisational African-Aemrican quilts, both as artistic achievements and as expressions of African-American traditions. The knowledge, attitudes, and values carried across the Atlantic by enslaved Africans appear to have informed a quiltmaking tradition so powerful that, to this day, it preserves its identity in a special province of African-American quilts. Such "Afro-traditional" quilts are made by people who have no formal art training and who usually do not consider themselves artists; they learned their craft and absorbed its aesthetics by watching and helping their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers who, in turn, learned form previous generations. The resulting--often highly idiosyncratic--quilts call out to be seen as the works of art that they are. The brilliance of this work must be partially credited to a tradition which encourages individual expression and provides a context in which the talents of individual artists can flourish. Improvisation, pervasive in black African art and familiar as a basic element of many African-American musical forms, is a vital force in this tradition. The artists maintain a generous attitude toward the accidental, embracing innovations that originate beyond the conscious domain. they use approximate measurement and "flexible patterning," in which the design, conceived of as a an invitation to variation, will not repeat, but will materialize in a sequence of visual elaborations. Afro-traditional attitudes and methods are antithetical to the standard American quiltmaking tradition--practiced by both whites and blacks--in which great value is placed on precise measurement and exact pattern replication. Instead they bear a keen likeness to the improvisatory practices of the textile-makers of Kongo and West Africa, regions from which American slaves were taken. These antipathies and affinities suggest an enduring African influence on the Afro-traditional quilt.…