Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #348854 in Books
• Published on: 1974-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Fascinating Book on Woods Craft originally published in 1938
This is a reprint of Mason's classic 1938 edition. It is fascinating, even though Mason uses some slightly racist-sounding phrases, it is obvious that he repects (respected) Amerindian culture. He has a great feel for their spirituality. And personal experience with our First Peoples. It's a little corny and naive other parts.

Mason's book has many drawings of original drums and their designs. He gives detailed practical instructions on how to build drums, hand-frame drums and a pow-wow drum, from processing a raw animal hide to bending wooden slats into a hoops, stretching and drying the drum head, painting and adding adornments. He left me with the impression that it is nearly impossible to build dud!

Stinky probably spoke true (if the book was a 1938 musty-smelling edition) but Stinky's review was woefully misleading. The book is a classic on woods craft type drum building. It also provides an intimate glimpse into the recent past before thoughts and words were filtered through a politcally correct seive.

A good primer with decent instruction
This book is all black and white. No photos, but a lot of easily interpreted hand drawings. I disagree with the oversimplification the author gives to the sources of the different drums, but it is not a distraction from the actual material. This would make a nice book to give to people at a drum making workshop.

Stinky
This book stunk, it literally had smelly pages