Aboriginal Australian and Tasmanian Rock Carvings and Paintings & Aboriginal Australian Decorative Art
By Daniel Sutherland Davidson. With a Foreword by Kim Akerman.
Two volumes in one. ISBN 978-0-85905-374-7 and ISBN 978-0-85905-375-4, Case bound with laminated cover, 330pp, plus 6 colour plates, 16.5 x 25cm, 950 grams
$95.00* + POST
First published in 1936 and 1937 these rare books are unknown to most anthropologists, art dealers and collectors.
Davidson was the most important ethnographer of his time and his reputation for the quality and quantity of work produced is unmatched.
In 1937 F.D. McCarthy described the 1936 volume as “the first monograph of aboriginal rock carvings and paintings”
All subsequent students of Aboriginal Art owe a debt to Davidson’s work.
Not only do the volumes extensively cover the rock engravings and paintings but discuss in detail techniques and styles of decoration, on weapons, baskets and containers, pearl shells, baobab nuts, tree carvings, grave posts, bullroarers, churingas, waningas and many others objects.
The symbolism and distribution of design elements and originating areas are also discussed.
This is an essential volume for anyone with an interest, scientific, aesthetic, or commercial, in Aboriginal art and artifacts.
It is a companion volume to the earlier publication of Davidson’s collected papers, Aboriginal Ethnographica, Hesperian Press, 2011. Also of note is his Aboriginal Australian String Figures, Hesperian Press, 2006.