Travel to Caribbean

Cuban Elegance

Format: Hardcover
Author: Michael Connors
ReleaseDate: 01 April, 2004
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Rating:

Colourful Cuba
The colour photographs are excellent, accompanied by descriptive text. This is a great coffee table book of good quality. I bought it out of a sense of curiosity of how the more affluent Cubans might live. Unfortunately, as it turns out, I don't generally share their taste in design or dark furniture, but don't let that put you off an excellent and informative book. .

Astonishing
That Michael Connors and Bruce Buck were able to navigate the bureaucracies to get to Cuba and to the subjects of the book; astonishing that with an admitted paucity of research material they were able to craft a book that reveals the wealth of historic artifacts in Cuba. Cuban Elegance is an astonishing work.

Connors' concise, comprehensive and well-researched narrative along with Bruce Buck's beautiful images bring to light the stylistic and historical influences of three centuries of Cuba's heritage.

Kudos to both gentleman for what must have been an arduous task. The fruits of their labors is a book that should be an elegant addition to a great many libraries.

Beautiful photos and fine writing about Cuban furniture
Connors and Buck, the author and photographer, spent months touring Cuba and doing detective work to gain access to relics of past eras. This book is the first comprehensive review of Cuban furniture from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century.

Connors stays clear of the contentious times of Cuba, avoiding this battleground of American politics over the past 50 years. He gained the cooperation of American and Cuban authorities, no mean feat, and produces a veritable feast. He also used archives and collections of Cuban artifacts from other Caribbean countries to gain this masterful view which he presents in a prose that is descriptive but not ornate.

The color and style of Cuban furniture needs only an honest narrative for its story to be told. Connors cites Hispanic-Moorish, African and French influences on the many pieces of furniture sited in rooms lit through mamparas (tinted glass swinging doors) and mediopuntos (fanlights, semicircular windows made of complex forms of stained and plain glass set above doors and windows) of old Cuban haciendas.

This is a beautiful book designed to bring a touch of our hemisphere's elegant beauty into everyone's living room and even our lives. It does to ours and to anyone who owns it.

Related products:
click image or link for details on these Caribbean travel books.

	The Houses of Old Cuba
	Havana Then and Now (Then & Now)