<p>“This is a heartfelt homage to a master craftsman and a thought-provoking journey into the anthropology of art and aesthetics. Feder-Nadoff vividly depicts the dynamics of family, community, ritual and change in a Mexican town. Her firsthand accounts of apprenticeship and creativity are finely interwoven with meditations on agency and the continuous un/remaking of person, place and memory.” (Trevor Marchand, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, SOAS, University of London)<br>
<br>
“Michele Feder-Nadoff’s stunning book, An Anthropology of Making, demonstrates powerfully how the embodiment of art is linked to the art of living in the world. Through her long-standing apprenticeship to coppersmiths in Santa Clara del Cobre, Mexico, Feder-Nadoff shows how the ethnographer’s existential implication can lead to a profound comprehension of artisanship, culture and social life. It is an ethnography with soul.” (Paul Stoller, West Chester University, Pennsylvania and Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen/Nuremberg)<br>
<br>
“Copper and care, forge and field, hearth and home. Crafted through labor and love by artist-anthropologist Michele Feder-Nadoff, this book narrates the ways in which artisanal copper smithing in Michoacán, México combines memory and imagination, linking past, present and future. It is an homage to her teacher, and an example of how embodied practice can produce new forms of knowledge.” (Anne W. Johnson, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City)<br>
<br>
“With this book, Feder-Nadoff gifts the reader with a rich and evocative account of the practices of coppersmithing in Santa Clara. Through the words, and accounts of the life-world, of Maestro Jesús, we gain privileged understandings of the techniques and aesthetics of an age-old craft, but also inspiring, and at times deeply moving, reflections on life, community, grief, and the bonds that tie today’s makers to generations of practitioners stretching back to pre-Hispanic times. As a whole, the book offers invaluable insights into the transformational powers of craft – of material form, of bodies and selves, of communities and histories.” (Geoffrey Gowlland, Université de Genève)</p>