We are an authorized, direct-from-the-publisher retailer of NEW books. Our titles are ON HAND and available for immediate shipping. This marvelous new book presents over 300 masterpieces of textile art made and worn by women of the Kuna tribe living on coral isles off Panama's Atlantic coast. Lively, varied, original and full of wit, molas remain rooted in tradition yet appear amazingly contemporary. They are now prized by museums and private collectors throughout the world. This lavishly illustrated book reveals the lifestyle, behavior and beauty that underpin Kuna women's creativity. Michel Perrin's brilliant demonstration of the links between molas and other aspects of Kuna culture such as oral literature and body decoration has been praised by French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Also featured are Perrin's discussions with Kuna women during his field trips, revealing their opinions on techniques and artistic values. In addition, the book includes excerpts from myths and traditional accounts of the rituals, animals, plants and objects that inspire the women's designs for their magnificent molas. "As you turn the pages of Michel Perrin's book, you're immediately seduced by the beauty of the images: nearly 300 masterpieces of textile art by the Kuna (or Cuna) Indians of Panama, published for the first time. But Michel Perrin does more than offer them for our contemplation. He sets them in a cultural and historical context, transcribing the myths in which the Indians explain their origins, describing their former practices of tattooing and body painting... Repeated stays over the past twenty years have enabled him to establish a close relationship with these amazing Indian artists, observing them at work, discussing the principles behind their art, grasping their artistic values... Anthropologists, historians and critics should devote to this art the study it merits."
CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS,
L'Homme, n. 151, 1999. "A remarkable, magnificent book, [presenting] a view at once ethnographical and aesthetic by a great ethnographer."
GERARD GROMER,
France-Culture
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