An engrossing and visually splendid exploration of the artistic and cultural meaning of canes.
The humble walking stick is a medium for intricate art and ingenious engineering, according to this lavishly illustrated work.
Moss, a joint chairman of London’s Antique Walking Cane Society and an avid collector, surveys the history of walking sticks and canes—and their ubiquitous spinoff, the umbrella—and their multifarious guises and functions. Canes, he notes, were a practical necessity for navigating muddy, treacherous pre-modern streets, especially for 18th-century fashionistas wearing high heels and unwieldy wigs. They were also useful for fending off ruffians, whether as a club or as a disguised sword, spear, or gun. Jewel-encrusted scepters were status markers for noblemen, and simpler canes were understated testaments to the tastefulness of the self-made London dandy. Above all, they were art objects, whether gnarled carvings by folk craftsmen, sleek art deco confections, or props in a Fred Astaire dance routine. Moss illustrates all of this history with photos of items in his own collection, which make up the heart of the book. He showcases a bewildering variety of walking sticks and umbrellas: sword-canes, pistol canes, razor-blade canes, canes that squirt water to amuse children (or acid to repel assailants), canes that contain shaving kits, cameras, telescopes, matchboxes, ear trumpets, watches, nutmeg graters, musical instruments, or even surgical instruments for performing circumcisions. His photographs focus on the rich artistry of the handles, including porcelain ones painted with delicate landscapes; ivory and wood handles carved as animals and flowers; erotic carvings of supine maidens; historical busts; macabre carvings of deceased heads in various stages of decay and vermin infestation; and a whimsical carving of a man peering cross-eyed at a wasp on his nose.
This treatise presents its readers with a soup-to-nuts introduction to canes, covering everything from details of construction, materials, and patents to cultural conventions that governed their use. The hundreds of sumptuous full-color images do full justice to the items, and the text curates them well, examining them by genre and period. Moss’ lucid prose features evocative appreciations of both the canes’ aesthetics—“The sculptor has expertly carved the woman’s sinuous hair and body to follow the curve of the handle,” he writes of a handle featuring mermaids, “while her counterpart lies face up on the top of the handle, her exquisitely detailed tail wrapped around the swell”—and their symbolism, noting, for example, that the iconic puppet character Punch’s appeal lies in the fact that he’s “a strange combination of the demon and the buffoon.” Over the course of the book, his shrewd, wide-ranging historical analysis situates canes in their larger social context, as well: “Dandyism can be seen as a stand against the levelling of democratic values, often including a nostalgic loyalty to pre-industrial values, such as the ideals of ‘the perfect gentleman’ or ‘the autonomous aristocrat.’ ” Connoisseurs and casual readers with a liking for good-looking fashion accessories will find a great deal of interesting lore and imagery here.
An engrossing and visually splendid exploration of the artistic and cultural meaning of canes.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5381-4495-4
Page Count: 568
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
