Customer Reviews

Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is really a beautiful book. The pictures and descriptions are lovely and very authentic. I fell in love with so many kachinas in this book and wish I could collect more! I bought this when I knew only a little about kachinas and I learned a great deal about each character and along the way gained a real reverence for the Hopi's spirituality.

An essential for kachina collectors. Author Barton Wright is known as the authority on Hopi kachinas and this book (his major work) shows why. It contains descriptions of 255 kachinas, from the most "popular" to many lesser known and seldom carved dolls. The sketches by Cliff Bahnimptewa are very detailed ... some of the best in print. This book is certainly a "keeper" if you are a collector of this outstanding art of the Hopi. One to add to your library!

Excellent book with detailed pictures of Kachina's gave it as gift to grandchildren, and it help them to identify the Kachinas. Good quality pictures. Came in great shape and would recommend this product.

As a relatively new collector of kachinas, I found this to be one of the three best guides for identifying vintage dolls, and also for garnering additional historical information on what each represents.

in the intro, Barton Wright tells us that
when we are considering kachina representations,
it is crucial to know the age of the representation-maker!

Anyone young won't have the depth of understanding/knowing of the kachina in question
that an old person would.

Cliff, when he did these paintings, was young.

Some of the errors are probably oversights
( wrong eyes or mouth on a kachina, kachina holding the wrong thing, etc ),
but a few suggest that either he was "punking" us,
or his unconscious was heavily mucking with his awareness/work
( when he put the antlers backwards on the antelope kachina, e.g. ).

As my first investment in understanding kachinas, I wish I'd got another of Barton Wright's books on 'em,
instead of this, but am glad I got this for my collection of understanding-means...

The copy of the book I got is physically-different from the picture above,
being "landscape" format instead of "portrait" format,
and not having any picture on it ( maybe there was a dust jacket once? ).

Beautifully made, & Cliff's a better artist than me, but READ the text!