The New World's Old World: Photographic Views of Ancient America, and: Ceramica y Cultura: The Story of Spanish and Mexican Mayolica (review)

The University of New Mexico Press has recently released two quite beautiful books of interest to historians of Latin America. The first of these, The New World's Old World: Photographic Views of Ancient America, is a wonderful collection of vintage, and some more modern photographic images of Pre-Columbian ruins in the Americas. Castleberry assembled the 75 photographs for an exhibition at New York's AXA Gallery. Essays by Georgia de Havenon, Kathleen Stewart Howe, Edward Ranney, Martha A. Sandweiss, and Castleberry accompany the images. These essays provide historical details to the photos as well as to the photographers, among whom one finds E. George Squier, Ansel Adams, Hiram Bingham, William Henry Jackson, Alfred Maudslay, and others. The heart of the book consists of essays by Howe, with an introduction to ancient Mesoamerican archeology and the importance of photography in its development, Sandweiss, studying the relation of photography and the archeology of the American Southwest, and Ranney, whose essay is entitled "Images of a Sacred Geography." This book is quite handsome and serves both as a strong scholarly work and will grace any coffee table as well.

The second book, Cerámica y Cultura: The Story of Spanish and Mexican Mayólica, compares the production of majolica pottery in Spain and Mexico. Profusely illustrated, the volume includes fourteen essays that detail the history of majolica in Spain and Mexico, look at the use of the pottery in both the domestic environment and in architecture, and study its production currently in both Spain and Mexico. The over 240 illustrations cover a wide range of styles, historic pieces, as well as insights into production. Two of the essays detail production in Spain, focusing on Barcelona and Seville. In Mexico, artisans of Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, and Puebla are the focus of essays. As in the case of the previous book, this work also stems from a major exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This, too, is a beautiful book that will assist historians of material culture while also serving as a welcome addition to any coffee table.