Coffee Table Book of: Figure Skating (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Figure Skating is a large-format coffee table book of figure skating, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the boot and the blade, laces and guards, old skates of bone, wood and iron, the circles and tracings of the old figures, covered and outdoor rinks, frozen lakes, ponds and rivers, and skaters anonymous in plain dark clothing.

It opens with the skate and its blade: the toe picks of a blade, old wooden skates with iron blades curling at the toe, a square swept clear on a snowy lake, a single skate showing the gentle curve of its blade, a skate made from a bone and an empty covered rink with its resurfacing machine.

Then laces, guards and the first lakes: a skater gliding on one foot across a lake in late gold, the hooks and laces at the top of a boot, hard guards and soft guards, a pair of skates alone on a meadow pond at noon, old leather boots on their blades, a single circle traced on a frozen bay at sunrise, a lantern glowing on the ice at dusk and bubbles caught deep in lake ice.

Toward the end: an old brick rink with warm arched windows at dusk, the sun setting early over a frozen lake, an open-sided rink at sunrise with mist low along its far boards, reeds white with rime at the edge of a lake, an old skating pavilion beside a frozen lake, snow falling at night on a small rink lit by one lamp, a plain dark skating dress on a hanger, the first star over a frozen lake at dusk and, last of all, a pair of white skates on pale ice.

Short notes run through the book, on the boot and the blade, the figures once traced on the ice, rinks and frozen lakes, and the long history of the skate: the toe picks are used mostly in jumps, footwork and spins, boots were first fixed permanently to their blades in the nineteenth century, on cold, still nights feathery frost can grow on new ice, and open water steams in the cold air beside the ice.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.