Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture by Thompson, John Eric Sidney (1898-1975) and Merle Greene - 1967

Unpaginated with 60 plates. Quarto (11 1/4" x 11 1/4") bound in original publisher's beige wrappers with dark brown lettering to front wrapper and spine. Limited to 4000 copies. Rubbings by Merle Green. Foreword by Robert L Rands. First edition.
Much of the finest work of the Maya artist was in low-relief sculpture, and much of the best of it appears in this book, particularly the exquisite work of Palenque. In many of these rubbings we can see the artists' work better than could the Maya themselves; rubbings artificially reproduce the bes effects of light and shadow. Anyone with experience in photographing Maya reliefs will recall waiting for the few minutes of each day when the sun's position is right to bring up the relief. Sometimes the wait will last for months until the sun crosses the meridian and illuminates the north face of the monument, then another long wait for the sun to recross, to cast shadows on the south face. Some of the reliefs were inside buildings and their Maya viewers never saw them with the sharpness of detail caught in Greene's rubbings. The rubbings here can aptly be compared to a family album of photographs. Here, as in the family album, there is no systematic effort to cover the subject; the rubbings were not made by an archaeologist to illustrate some aspect of craft. Instead, choice of subjects was governed by such factors as accessibility, state of preservation and depth relief. Moreover, as in the case of the family album, range of subjects was circumscribed. Only low relief sculpture is represented; the graceful tall shafts of Quirigua, the high relief stelae of Copan, the brilliant murals of Bonampak, the closely allied painted pottery, are all perforce absent.
Condition:
Previous owner's embossed imprint on front end paper, small stain at spine heal, corners bumped. Slipcase stained, front edges beginning to split else very good in like slipcase.