Adrienne Kaeppler
Polynesia: The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art
310 x 235mm, 410pp Hardcover with dust jacket, Black cloth slip case, 804 colour illustrations. From the limited edition of 300 copies, signed and slipcased
Book of the Month February 2011
Australian: $265 (Approx. US $277, Euro €210)
ISBN 978-1-883528-40-9
Worldwide 7 - 10 days, Australia 3 - 7 business days
About the Book
This superb and lavish publication offers an exceptional view of the visual arts of Polynesia. Adrienne Kaeppler, the world-renowned expert on the subject, and the greatest specialist on the collecting done in the Pacific by the early voyagers, especially Captain Cook, has brought her immense scholarship and taste to bear on this remarkable study of a remarkable collection. The arts of Polynesia offer a richly diverse and relatively little known body of work, covering an enormous geographical area yet linked by shared artistic conventions. The collection of Mark and Carolyn Blackburn, one of the greatest private collections of Polynesian art, encompasses this broad field of artistic endeavour. It features both ceremonial and functional traditional forms in diverse media, from delicate ivory ornaments and decorated barkcloth to formidable weaponry and imposing sculpture in coral, wood, and stone. The geographic spread of the collection is vast, covering the Pacific Ocean from Hawai'i to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to 'Aotearoa (New Zealand), and the many islands in between. Many of the pieces have noteworthy historical antecedents, such as items associated with the eighteenth-century voyages of Captain Cook, and the Dupetit-Thouars material from the Marquesas, first collected by the nineteenth-century French admiral of that name. We have been fortunate to get a small number of copies of the limited edition of this beautiful publication, which is already in short supply. The book is superbly designed, by Barbara Pope, and the photographs wonderfully lush since they were all shot on film, mostly by the Swiss photographer Heini Schneebli.
About the Author
Adrienne Kaeppler is curator of Oceanic ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. She has carried out field research in Tonga, Hawai'i, and elsewhere in Polynesia. Renowned for her work on the ethnography and collections from Cook's voyages, she continues to focus on connections between social structure and the visual and performing arts.