String Figures

by Andrew Lampert (Editor), Harry Smith (Artist), Jason Fulford (Photographer)

Volume two of "The Collections of Harry Smith" focuses on Smith's erudite study of string figures, an age-old form of spiritual and recreational play that he passionately chronicled in multiple mediums. This immersive volume contains photographs of the extant mounted string figures created by Smith alongside interviews, film stills and selections from his unpublished anthropological research. Additional contextual materials include an introductory essay and a conversation between musician, photographer and filmmaker John Cohen, a longtime colleague of Smith, and painter Terry Winters.

162 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 2015

Reviews

[molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very lucky find, beautifulll (perfect) images of Harry smith’s collected and practiced mounted string figures and interviews describing his obsessive, analytical research process, looking specifically at the offshoot objects of culture which he collected in order to define a greater human universality (I can’t stop thinking about the fact that across cultures and time, all string figures were made with the same length string?????!!!!)

Got me thinking about how to anthropologically study material culture in the internet age hm…must look for answers

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally love this series of books, and do hope they are able to complete the others. Harry Smith was such a remarkably unique, brilliant, and creative thinker!

[Frederic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wonderful little book is almost as idiosyncratic and brilliant as Harry Smith himself seems to have been. Includes 45 of his mounted string-figures, selections from his notes, stills from Film Number 18: Mahagonny and Film Number 23 (which include string-figures), and nice text introduction and conversation/interview between John Cohen and Terry Winters. Smith studied anthropology at the University of Washington in the 1940s with Erna Gunther and Melville Jacobs, before becoming reasonably well known for his work in music and film, and exemplified a sort of "outsider" or "misfit" anthropology that seems to blossom unpredictably -- and is worthy of more attention in the discipline.