A beautifully illustrated book on the origins and history of traditional Hispanic tinwork.

Higinio V. Gonzales (1842–1921) was more than a gifted metalworker. A man of varied talents whose poems and songs complement his work in punched tin, Gonzales transcends categorization. In The Artistic Odyssey of Higinio V. Gonzales, Maurice M. Dixon, Jr., who has spent more than thirty years studying New Mexico tinwork, describes the artist’s signature techniques. Featuring translations of Gonzales’s poetry, this book restores a long-forgotten New Mexican innovator to the prominence he deserves. Recounting the scholarly detective work that revealed the full scope of Gonzales’s art and career, Dixon tells the story of a craftsman who was also a poet. He begins with Gonzales’s first signed literary work, a handwritten birthday poem decorated with beautifully drawn flowers and birds, dated 1889, and then pieces together the artist’s life and career. Through meticulous research into manuscripts and the dates of tin cans that Gonzales repurposed into elegant, fanciful frames, niches, sconces, and religious decorations, Dixon identifies as Gonzales’s numerous pieces of poetry and tinwork once attributed to anonymous poets and artists. His most important discovery served as a Rosetta stone: an ink wash and watercolor drawing in an ornamental tin frame (housed at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos), whose documented provenance helped Dixon to identify Gonzales’s other artwork. More than 100 color photographs of Gonzales’s tinwork and more than a dozen translations of the artist’s poetic and musical works punctuate the narrative. Both a catalogue raisonné of a hitherto little-known artist and an anthology of his writings, this book reconstructs the creative life of a long-overlooked talent, one whose quest for beauty resulted in a prolific body of art and literature.

A pictorial celebration of New Mexico's history and landscape. In celebration of New Mexico's statehood centenial, Richard Melzer focuses on the various social and political elements that have made the Land of Enchantment what it is today. Filled with images that document the past hundred years, New Mexico is a photographic delight accompanied by brief insightful essays that leave the reader in no doubt of a history that is both imposing and exciting in its scope. This book is also an official product of the state's centennial celebration. Richard Anthony Melzer is a professor of history at the University of New Mexico Valencia Campus. He is a former president of the Historical Society of New Mexico and is the author of many books and articles on twentieth-century New Mexico history.

A comprehensive overview of New Mexican folk arts from the 16th century to the present time.

This question-and-answer book contains 400 reminders of what is known and what is sometimes forgotten or misunderstood about a city that was founded more than 400 years ago. Not a traditional history book, this group of questions is presented in an apparently random order, and the answers occasionally meander off topic, as if part of a casual conversation.

Studies retabloes--Mexican paintings on tin created in the latter half of the nineteenth century--from art, religious, and historical perspectives, and discusses efforts made to restore and conserve the artwork.