A friend a mine asked me for books on the arts of the Amazon, and especially the feather headdresses and masks. So, I went through my library and here is my selection.
PS: by clicking on the title or the picture, you will be redirected to the www.abebook.com website, where you can purchase that book.
If you want to have just one book on the topic, it has to be:
BRAUN, Barbara (ed.), Arts of the Amazon, London: Thames & Hudson, 1995.
It really covers the whole topic with a bounty of colour photographs; moreover it is cheap and easy to find!
If you are looking for something a bit more encyclopaedic and focused on the feathers, there is the excellent:
It is actually the catalogue of the extensive collection of the contemporary German artist Horst Antes, which was shown at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum of Cologne and the Reiß Museum of Mannheim.
In terms of huge coffee table books, the elephant folio
is unbeatable. It has 69 plates of watercolours by Noemia Mourão depicting adornments of the Brazilian Indians.
The most recent one is
It is together an exhibition catalogue, rich on the feather ornaments, and an essay on the role of the shaman and on the destructions by the white people of the forest and the culture..
More focused on the ethnography and the meaning of these feather works (and also on the birds used for them), is
Much less well known than the featherwork, are the bark and wood masks. As far as I know, the reference for these is
HARTMANN, Günther, Masken südamerikanischer Naturvölker, Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1967.
And then there are the infamous shrunken heads. A book for collectors on the topic (including the making of fakes !) is the slightly gruesome
I now list a number of exhibition or museum catalogues that are very well done but are more limited in scope than the previous ones :
Invisible People: Arts of the Amazon. The Meckler Collection, Fresno, CA: Fresno Art Museum, 1992
AIMI, Antonio, La civiltà e i popoli dell’Amazzonia, La Spezia: Fratelli Melita, 1992
BECKER-DONNER, Etta, Brasiliens Indianer, Wien: Museum für Völkerkunde, s.d.
LOMMEL, Andreas, Indianer vom Amazonas, München: Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, 1960
SCHOEPF, Daniel, L’art de la plume. Indiens du Brésil, Genève : Musée d’Ethnographie, 1985
There are few monographies on the art of a specific region or ethnic group but I can recommend:
Culture Artisanat Wayana, Maripasoula : Association CAWAY, 1990
BALDUS, Herbert, Tapirape. Tribo tupi no Brasil Central, Sao Paulo: Compania Editora Nacional, 1970
Finally, I have to mention a favourite a mine :
STEWARD, Julian H., Handbook of South American Indians, Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology in 6 volumes. It is obviously dated but as it is extremely detailed and includes numerous drawings of objects, I still find it fascinating. On the Amazon part of the continent, you have to refer to volume I: The Marginal Tribes of 1946, which covers i.a. the Indians of the Paranà delta, of the Gran Chaco and of Eastern Brazil and to volume III: The Tropical Forest Tribes of 1945 from Bolivia up to the Guyanas.