Arts & Crafts Era Concrete Projects
By Pedro and Reta Lemos; 2008; 201 pp.; Hardcover, $24.95; Schiffer Publishing

Concrete, according to California-based artists and educators Reta and Pedro Lemos, can be easily molded into just about anything, from chimneys and paving slabs to toys and candlesticks. The Lemoses published this instruction book in 1922 as Color Cement Handicraft (and vintage editions now fetch up to $150). The volume details techniques for sculpting forms, tinting ingredients, tooling surface motifs, inlaying glass mosaic, and applying final glazes. The prose can be a little hard to follow—“Do not forget to roughen the surfaces of the spaces and to add neat cement also before dripping the color onto either the mat finish or glaze finish” —and Schiffer, alas, has reproduced the subtly-colored original plates in hazy black-and-white. The book will nonetheless likely inspire some hobbyists, and inform scholars and collectors about how creative 1920s homeowners on tight budgets filled their homes and gardens with fashionable concrete pieces.