Carol Stangler’s The Craft & Art of Bamboo: 30 Eco-Friendly Projects to Make for Home & Garden is, at heart, a book about persuasion: it asks the reader to see bamboo not as a decorative novelty, but as a living medium with history, utility, and aesthetic dignity. The revised and updated 2009 edition presents itself … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – The Craft & Art of Bamboo: 30 Eco-Friendly Projects to Make for Home & Garden by Carol Stangler
T.A.E.’s Book Review – Make It in Clay – A Beginner’s Guide to Ceramics by Charlotte Speight & John Toki
Make It in Clay: A Beginner’s Guide to Ceramics reads less like a glossy craft manual than like an apprenticeship compressed into a book. First published in 1997 and revised in 2001, it appears as a spiral-bound, 224-page guide by Charlotte F. Speight and John Toki, aimed at a “simple, beginning studio situation.” That phrase … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – Make It in Clay – A Beginner’s Guide to Ceramics by Charlotte Speight & John Toki
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Good Bones, Great Pieces: The Seven Essential Pieces That Will Carry You Through a Lifetime by Suzanne and Lauren McGrath
At once primer and manifesto, Good Bones, Great Pieces stakes a modest but ambitious claim: a home’s durability—its capacity to endure fashions, life changes and moves—depends less on trend-chasing than on a coherent set of flexible, well-chosen objects. Suzanne and Lauren McGrath, a mother–daughter design team steeped in editorial and television worlds, lay out that … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Good Bones, Great Pieces: The Seven Essential Pieces That Will Carry You Through a Lifetime by Suzanne and Lauren McGrath
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 500 Enamelled Objects: A Celebration of Color on Metal Edited by Marthe Le Van
Marthe Le Van’s 500 Enamelled Objects is an exercise in visual generosity: a catalogue raisonné of the enamelled surface presented less as dry typology and more as a sustained love letter to colour, light, and the tiny, deliberate acts of making that turn metal and glass into something incandescent. The book’s premise is simple and … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 500 Enamelled Objects: A Celebration of Color on Metal Edited by Marthe Le Van
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Contemporary Wicker Basketry:Projects, Techniques,Inspirational Designs by Flo Hoppe
Contemporary Wicker Basketry by Flo Hoppe offers both the novice and the seasoned basket-maker an elegant synthesis of tradition and innovation. In this richly illustrated volume, Hoppe contextualizes wickerwork within a lineage stretching from ancient utilitarian forms to today’s sculptural explorations. She deftly balances a respect for time‑honored techniques with an enthusiasm for fresh, personalized expression. Scope … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Contemporary Wicker Basketry:Projects, Techniques,Inspirational Designs by Flo Hoppe
The New Renaissance Mindset 