Craftsmanship and Art

We have just completed work on Professor Philip Dark’s vast, 670-page anthropological work Craftsmanship and Art. It was left uncompleted when Professor Dark died some years ago. An extraordinary book. One of its strengths is that much of the research was conducted in the period 1955-1980, since when many of the practices it describes have been abandoned. The following from the index gives a brief glimpse of its breadth:

Ute Indians
basketry 320
currency of dessicated fingertips 440
Wodabe people
cicitrization 370
hair of women 411
pack oxen 294
stretching of children’s limbs 403

Professor Dark was a remarkable man, a hero of the wartime raid on St. Lazare. It was while in prison camp in Germany that he first became interested in anthropology.

We’re hoping the book will find a home in academic libraries in the Pacific region and the Americas. It deserves to be widely distributed.