To Touch the Past: The Painted Pottery of the Mimbres People
The Mimbres flourished in southern New Mexico some 1,000 years ago. They are remembered today for the images they painted inside shallow bowls and eventually buried with their dead. Their astonishingly beautiful paintings, showing a sophisticated sense of design and remarkable level of confidence, have been avidly collected in the 20th century and have inspired contemporary artists, both Native American and others. To Touch The Past: The Painted Pottery Of The Mimbres People covers every aspect of the wondrous legacy of Mimbres painted pottery, providing a time line of Mimbres culture and summarizing its chronological, social, and stylistic history: its technology and forms; a formal and iconographic analysis of its imagery; and its intellectual and ideological history, including both its original functions and its modern ones as Pueblo art and a universal fine art. It is believed that most of the pottery was made by women for domestic purposes: storing food and household water, cooking and food service. Many of these painted vessels were taken out of household service and "killed" by being smashed or punctured as a mourning ritual, and then buried with the dead under or near their homes. To Touch The Past is a beautifully designed and executed book. The text and illustrations combine to reflect the highest standards of scholarship and publishing. To Touch The Past is a unique and essential addition to any Native American studies reference shelf or artbook collection.  --Midwest Book Review