Product Description

Art teachers, students, and ambitious amateurs all will value this copiously illustrated volume. It presents both a general overview of sculpture and a practical guide to working in stone. All important stone-working equipment and tools are shown, from compass and calipers to chisels, mallets, saws, sanders, and drills. Examples of finished pieces are shown from all over the world, and cover many historical eras, including statues and relief carvings from ancient Egypt and the Orient, marble masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance, and abstract figures from the modern era. Different types of stone are shown and described, including alabaster, most often used in small-scale pieces, as well as sandstone, granite, and marble. Practical instruction includes methods of measuring and copying in stone from a clay model. Step-by-step photo essays show several different contemporary works in progress, starting with a rough stone slab and progressing to completion and installation of a finished sculpture. Examples range in scale from small figurines to public monuments. Hundreds of full-color photos show the artist's studio, the processes of stone working, and magnificent examples of world famous artworks in stone. Other informative features include a six-page glossary of stone-working terms and a brief bibliography. Here is a fine reference volume for artists and craftsmen—but also a book for the personal library of every general reader who has an interest in sculpture and the fine arts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #356241 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780764154249
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Josepmaria Teixido I Cami is a sculptor who lives and does most of his work in Barcelona, Spain. His artworks have been shown in more than 20 public exhibitions.

Jacinto Chicharro Santamera is a well-known Spanish art historian

Customer Reviews

Just plain silly
This slim volume is disappointingly brief in its treatment of the process of sculpture, and confoundingly obscurant in its discussions of capital-A-Art. "Nature, forming caverns, wanted to open up its heart to reveal moments of living intimacy," this book begins. What?!?

Except for 10 pages on direct carving, the whole first half of this book is utterly useless. The second half delves into process in slightly greater depth, but Camí frustratingly concentrates on such professional aspects as large-scale sculpture, enlarging from models, and site selection and preparation for public monumental sculpture; all of this is beyond the journeyman, and anyone advanced enough to be creating public commissions will have no need for such a summary overview.

The primary problem here is with Camí himself -- he identifies himself as a sculptor as distinct from a "practitioner." In other words, Camí generates the concept of his sculptures, but leaves the actual carving of the stone to subordinates. Almost none of the photos show Camí himself doing anything more than supervising the creation of "his" works, and he spends as much time explaining why the people who do work of carving the stone are less important than the one who envisions the form as he does explaining how that form is created. I wish his "practitioners" had written this book instead of the "sculptor" himself.

While in general disappointing, this book does actually have a few insights -- and, more importantly, photographs -- that expand slightly upon the instruction offered in Liebson's book, but that alone is hradly enough to recommend it. You'd be better served spending the money on a new chisel than on this slim and spuerficial homage to Camí's own genius.

Outstanding
This is the best book on stone sculpture since CONTEMPORARY STONE SCULPTURE by Dona Z. Meilach and with both books, one has all the knowledge they need to get started carving a block of stone. I have been sculpting professionally for 45 years and collecting reference books, on my profession, since day one. Go for it! EJ Sculptor

An Important and Entertaining Introduction to Stone Sculpture
SCULPTURE IN STONE relates in words and pictures the history of the world's oldest form of sculpture and serves as a valuable resource for practitioners of the art of carving, for art historians, and for collectors of both ancient and contemporary stone sculpture.

Beginning with a brief but informative survey of making art from earth's resources, author Cami walks us through the complexities of the refinement of the tools from the original stone chisels to the most modern equipment. The portion on conceptualization of how to transform a formless body of solid material into an artistic statement usurps a large portion of this volume - with copious references to the author/sculptor's own work.

But the real glory of this beautiful volume is the plethora of fine photographs of famous works, contemporary works, tools, pillars, sarcophagi, monuments, figures and abstractions that fill the pages of this resource book. The tendency towards the 'how to' aspect of the volume intrudes a bit too often, but that only widens the audience for readers interested in the history of Egyptian and Greco-Roman secrets as well as the means by which contemporary artists still marry their inspiration to the stone. Grady Harp, June 05