Ships' Figureheads

Schiffer Publishing, 1997-01-07. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Schiffer Publishing [Published Date: 1990]. Hardcover, 128 pp. Text in English. Very good in very good dust jacket. Blue cloth covered boards with light blue lettering on front and spine. light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has light bumping and creasing to edges and light overall scuffing> Now in an archival-quality Brodart Cover NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Color and black and white illustrations throughout. Contents include: Foreword by Prof. Dr. Detlev Ellmers; Introduction; Sacrificial Animals and Oculi; Stem Heads; Dragon Heads; Figurehead Lions; Other Figureheads; Groups of Figures; Figureheads of the 19th Century; Fleet Sculptors; Court Sculptors and Their Work on Royal Pleasure Craft; Independent Figurehead Carvers; Bibliography; Illustrations. [From front jacket flap] This is the story of the carved wooden bow decorations that once, when sea traffic took place exclusively in wooden ships and under sail, adorned almost every stem. As a result of an inclusive international documentation project of the Deutschen Schiffahrtsmuseums, nautical historians Hans Jurgen Hansen and Clas Eroder Hansen present this work. It begins with a report on the mythological origin of the bow decoration, which had a long life in seafaring superstition. The book continues to show the development of figureheads from the Polynesians, Phoenicians, and Vikings to the high point of the gloriously decorated Renaissance and Baroque ships. Then it moves on to the imaginative, original variety of the figureheads of the 18th and 19th Centuries, the last windjammers and the school sailing ships that are still in use today. Some 100 illustrations show the variety of figurehead types. Thirty-two pages of large colored photos show their beauty and evoke the romance that once was linked with them when they looked down from the high prows of sailing ships at the foaming sea below.