Bark Canoes: The Art and Obsession of Tappan Adney

Rating:
Summary: A lifelong obsession revealed
Review: What a beautiful book this is - I saw it in a museum shop in Calgary while on holiday and I just had to have it. This is a celebration of the canoe-builders' art that almost never materialsed. Adney's notes and models could well have disappeared had it not been for some timely intervention by far-sighted individuals to preserve the collection and organise his notes into this and other books.
But surely a canoe is a canoe is a canoe... not after reading this! Such wonderfully crisp photos, taken from all angles with great depth of field, give a complete idea of each craft. The subtleties of design, use of materials and construction techniques leave one in no doubt as to the differences in ethnic origins beween canoes that at first glance look more or less similar.
The quality and detail of the notes that Adney made for each drawing is a lesson for all would-be modellers ... nothing seems to have been left out; insets have minute details highlighted; there are cross-sections of ordinary-looking bits of wood; and stages in construction and building techniques are shown. Adney's models are a testament - both to human ingenuity in the use of available materials, and to one man's lifelong devotion to preserving a dying craft (in both senses).
His contribution to art, ethnology and archaeology cannot be overstated.