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lavish books for 2007

A sudden surge of gorgeous books is now spread across bookshops, perfect for gifts this new year

An everyday art:
Faces of Oman by Tonny Holsbergen

At last, a genuine artist. While many might aspire to such status, most are only by their own self confession. Of course, you can’t just be an artist because your end result looks good – that’s too subjective a term, and one man’s masterpiece is another’s eyesore. But perhaps the best approach is to recognise those who are true to themselves and their subjects: creators of works that have meaning, and who can produce a growing body of work.

Tonny Holsbergen seems to be the genuine article. Her latest compilation of paintings in book form – Faces of Oman – contains a large number of paintings over an impressive array of pages. Just how many we’re not quite sure, because the pages aren’t numbered. Fair enough: that’s besides the point anyway. But what is important is that, page after page, intimate glimpses of everyday rural life in the sultanate emerges. And that’s the second reason we commend Tony: while a few works seem to lean to the clichéd – think Lawrence of Arabia and camel caravan formulas – most are of what many of us will see a million times but not really register.

Generally revolving around the Bedouin, these aren’t the climaxes of sunsets, desert sheikhs or forgotten princesses. Rather, it includes three Bedouin ladies in traditional garb in light conversation, or the sunlight making its way through the old souq in Ibri. This is the best part of Tonny’s work. It is an everyday art, of passing meetings in the street, glances through a face mask, wizened faces in the sun. These are moments unimportant in themselves, a million fractions of a second in a day like any other. But together, they string into a larger picture, an entire conversation. And somewhere within is the story of Oman, now.

The telling of that started a long while ago, when Tonny travelled to the sultanate, and was enchanted by the Bedouin of the desert. Patricia Groves, who has written the introduction of the new book, explains, “Traditional market towns in the interior of the country were another favourite haunt, especially Ibra and Sinaw, where Bedouin women regularly come to sell their crafts. Tonny’s gift for sketching quickly and accurately allowed her to form an immediate bond with the market people who were delighted to see their activities transformed into works of art.”

What do Tonny’s paintings look like? That’s the next surprise – not finished impeccably with white backgrounds, formally pinned and placed. Rather, each seems half sketched, half painted, some on handmade paper from Nepal with bits of vegetation in them, almost all earthy toned in background. Patricia Groves points to the Impressionists as an influence, and this is quite obviously evident. But Tonny goes way beyond traditional Impressionism – she has succeeded in her own style, and apart from its play on the light of the moment, it is also consistently one of motion.

There always seems to be a bit of a blur around objects that are moving, a shadow of half colours following silently, lines that sweep with the action. This is largely the style, although they are a few departures. Two such ones are on fresh produce in Nizwa souq, and these are quite Pointilistic, following an offshoot of the Impressionists who used little dots of pure colour to produce a seemingly flowing larger whole, like Seurat and his bathers in the Seine.

In the end, we best remember Tonny for her more mundane recordings, like ‘Morning exchange in Salalah,’ rather than the glorified impressions of the Royal Cavalry or the inevitable ‘Heading home in the sunset’ type, which she either felt compelled or obligated to produce. Don’t miss her work, or this book.

Available from the Bait Muzna Gallery and other sellers of fine books and art

A rock for everyone:
Oman’s Geological Heritage, from Petroleum Development Oman

When the undisputed leader of the oil and gas exploration industry in Oman – PDO – comes out with a book on geology, you buy it. 16 years after it was first published by the company, Oman’s Geological Heritage has now resurfaced again, this time in its second edition, edited by the man who many call the father of geology in Oman, Ken Glennie.

Of course, rocks are rocks, and remain so for millions of years, so why another edition, and book?

H E Dr. Rumhy, the Minister of Oil and Gas, explains, “While the country’s geology, of course, has not changed, the thinking about it has. Theories have been refined in light of new evidence, and the book really had to be amended if it was to be regarded as the definitive layman’s guide to the geology of Oman.”

Which is a good thing, because now you have some of the great geological features in the world, not only at your doorstep, but explained in simple English (or Arabic, if you want – there’s another version available), with fantastic photographs and illustrations. And it starts right from the beginning of time, taking you across the country and the ages, to the present day and beyond. That’s more than 800mn years and considerable layers of rock for you to digest.

Take Chapter One, for example: ‘How Oman Came into Being.’ It tells the old tale of how oceanic crust was squeezed to form the Oman Mountains, the workings of plate tectonics and the seismic surveys we conduct today to study the ground beneath. It is
presented, like every other chapter, with a mixture of photographs, drawings and satellite images.

Following chapters take you through rock formations, glacial effects, mountains, fossils, deep-sea goings on, oil and, perhaps best of all, such delights as ‘Nature as Artist.’ It includes such earthy pleasures as photographs of the crackled surface of a wadi after a flood, or the surrealistic rock formations hewn by desert winds, where the Sharqiya desert meets the sea.

But what really elevates this edition above a dry thesis on rock are the maps, charts and diagrams. Such illustrations include those of fossils, bedding, LandSat imagery, a schematic Omani oilfield and such intricacies as the water flow and reserves in the Umm er Radhuma.

Even more useful, you’ve got a glossary at the back, explaining what a crinoid is, or how a desert varnishes rock. This book is packed with information and is beautifully published – a must have if you’re interested in the country.

Available in Family Bookshop and other stores

Fit for kings
Frankincense: Oman’s Gift to the World, by Juliet Highet

A new entry into bookshops around the world, including Oman, Frankincense is a large, hardbound, lavishly published book packed with information and images of its subject. The first thing that you notice about it as you riffle through its pages is that it certainly looks up to the task of portraying one of the most valued commodities the world has treasured, the maker and breaker of civilisations.

The book is beautifully published, in thick, smooth paper, elaborate typefaces, full page photography and is splashed all over – from selected classic verses to the background of certain pages – with the colour gold.

As Juliet Highet writes, “The word ‘perfume’ is derived from the Latin per fumum, meaning ‘through smoke,’ and it was through burning frankincense that the entire history of perfume developed into the bottled fantasies of the global billion-dollar industry of today.” She goes on, tracing almost 5,000 years of the burning of the fragrant white smoke, from Sumerian temples to Bethlehem, winding through the incense routes from Dhofar, across the civilisations of the world. Think Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, the Queen of Sheba. “But,” she goes on, “the history of Frankincense has not ended; the story continues.” Indeed, 13 per cent of high quality female scents use it, even if it is through some sort of synthetic form.

And Juliet dives deeper than ancient history: “Is it really possible for something so apparently delicate, so intangible as the sense of smell capable of affecting our emotions, triggering memories, influencing our brain and behaviour?” She looks to Sigmund Freud, who reasoned that once humans had assumed an upright posture their sense of smell began to deteriorate – distanced from the earth, and forgetting how to smell it, we repressed the sense, leading to conditions ripe for psychoanalysis.

What makes this book different from most expansive coffee table books, which all look good, is its intelligence. This isn’t just a series of colourful photographs, or a reproduction of history. Some paragraphs delve into both the academic and the abstract: “The Latin word sagax, from which ‘sagacious’ or wise is derived, also means having an enhanced sense of smell. Can one accrue wisdom or ‘the idea of immortality,’ from sniffing, as Salvador Dali suggested? It is such an intimate action, in the sense that one is actually taking into one’s being minute particles of whatever one smells; and thus it is, perhaps, that one gains insight into its intrinsic substance.”

Available from Family Bookshop and other stores

Egypt’s enduring legacy:
Cairo Cats by Lorraine Chittock

“Nomadism,” says Lorraine Chittock, “isn’t an escape from society, but a return to natural rhythms deeply embedded in us.” And Lorraine might just be the one true nomad left: currently making her way through South America with her two dogs, working on her next book.

And while many readers of her online blog (onamissionfromdog.com) will eagerly await her new book as she details her current travels, Cairo Cats is the perfect book to enjoy – or gift – till then. It opens with an introduction by the late Dr Annemarie Schimmel, an internationally acclaimed scholar on the Islamic world, author of 80 books including The Mystique of the Oriental Cat. Her writing examines the roots of the remarkable relationship that cats enjoy with humans throughout the streets of the Arab world, a perfect combination of academic research with the often playful photographs
that follow.

Cairo Cats is a charming book that you will find irresistible, with its photographs of felines draped across the hustle of the souqs, inner-city streets and ancient Egyptian mythology. Most would shoot the pyramids – Lorraine is different. To pursue cats through grubby by-lanes, against motorbike tyres, tattered carpets and cafés, Lorraine has not just shown us how integral cats remain to everyday life in one of the oldest civilisations on earth: she has shown us a personal depth and empathy that we can only aspire to. So while this book might be about cats and the next about dogs, there’s no doubt that the real crowd puller is Lorraine herself.

Available from cairocats.com. For more on Lorraine, visit her online at www.lorrainechittock.com