Wheat weaving is an ancient folk art made to celebrate a successful harvest. Today straw designs are admired for their beauty and intricacy. This title provides advice on the tools and materials needed to get started; tips on preparing the straw; and step-by-step projects for mastering the techniques of plaiting.

Make amazing natural projects ranging from simple but lovely plaits to creations fit for museums. The 20 different weaving techniques will prepare you to make house blessings including fans and harps; love knots, used to preserve and promote love; ancient and traditional designs such as Celtic knots, Earth Mother, Glory Braid, and much more.

Wheat weaving is an ancient folk art made to celebrate a successful harvest. Today straw designs are admired for their beauty and intricacy. In this volume, professional straw artist Linda D. Beiler provides expert advice on the tools and materials needed to get started, tips on preparing the straw, and 22 step-by-step projects for mastering the techniques of plaiting, folding, and spiraling, and for combining techniques and adding decorative touches. Helpful series photographs demonstrate the process for creating hearts, bows, Arabic cages, Welsh fans, and a variety of abstract pieces.

Complete illustrated introduction to the age-old craft of plaiting harvest, or good luck figures from straw. 150 illustrations.

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.