Artesania / Craftsmanship / Art Populaire / Vokskunst with text by Francesc Vicens and photographs by Joaquim Gomis. Barcelona, Spain: Ediciones Poligrafa, c. 1968.

This is one of my favorite books with the most stunning images of various handmade objects. Vicens explores why these crafted forms still appeal to our sensibilities even as we produce increasingly advanced designs.

The book opens: “The illustrations which go to make up this book, anonymously created works of art, exercise a powerful attraction on us, creatures as we are of a highly technological civilization. But what is the source of their nobility, their fascination? We might be tempted to answer this by speaking of three very evident characteristics, their human proportion, their simplicity and their lack of any kind of transcendental pretension. Such a reply might help us to explain why we can find this nobility, this charm, in objects which are in such violent contrast with the dehumanization, the unnecessary complexity and the rhetorical transcendentalism which are such frequent characteristics of the industrial society in which we live. This may be a possible explanation, but it is a superficial and incomplete one. We must, then, look more closely into the meaning of these objects.

This book places before our eyes a series of forms, some of which have been honed down to their present shape through centuries of experience, while others have been added to the repertoire of forms of popular art in relatively recent times. In his attempt to choose from the mass of material suitable for his purpose, Joan Prats has taken whatever he has found most vigorous and most direct, most expressive despite paucity of means, most imaginative in expression and most truly and profoundly felt. If we are to penetrate the secret of these objects, we shall have to ask ourselves certain questions about the factors which determine their appearance, the laws which regulate the creation and evolution of the forms of popular art.”

First edition. Hardcover. Text in Spanish, English, French and German and 152 pages of color and black-and-white illustrations with complete index. Fine in a very good edge worn dust wrapper. Comes with a plastic wrapped cover.