Stella and Jayne Go Shopping for Holiday Gifts

As Lori's blog reminds us, the holidays are just around the corner. Looking for the perfect gift for that special someone on your list who is crazy about horses? Hey, you know who you are. Just about every little girl who grew up to love romance novels started out reading horse books. Some of us (ahem) never outgrew them.

Which brings us to our Super Cool Gift Suggestion of the Month, a fantastic new horse book. Meet our guest today, CATHERINE JOHNS, former curator at the British Museum. Her new book, HORSES: HISTORY, MYTH, ART arrives in stores this month and because this just happens to be the start of the shopping season, we've asked her to discuss her new release.

Stella: Welcome to RWQ, Catherine: Please tell us about HORSES: HISTORY, MYTH, ART.

CJ: It is a picture-book with about 180 colour photographs of objects, dating from the early Stone Age to the present day, which illustrate the relationship between horses and people. There is an essay about the evolution and domestication of the horse, and the many roles the animal has played in human culture – themes such as racing and hunting, the care of horses, warfare and transport, mythology and symbolism – followed by 80 double-page picture spreads, each with a short, self-contained text of about 300 words. All the objects pictured and explained are from the collections of one of the world’s great museums; the British Museum.

Jayne: You have published a number of books, both popular and scholarly, relating to your professional field of Roman archaeology: what made you decide to write a book about horses?

CJ: I am deeply interested in all animals, and have always loved horses. I am one of the many women who read every horsy book, fact or fiction, that she could lay hands on as a child. As an archaeologist, concerned with the whole subject of human culture, I have been fascinated by the worldwide special relationship between humans and horses: they have a unique bond. I wanted to convey that visually, through the countless objects that people have made and used that depict the beauty and character of the horse.



Stella: Time for that famous question, where did you get the idea for this book?

CJ: I first proposed a picture-book of horses in the British Museum collections to British Museum Press nearly 25 years ago, but they were not interested. Then, a few years ago, a colleague who was doing the academic research on one of the Lakenheath burials (a 6th-century Anglo-Saxon warrior who was buried with his horse) had the idea of a special British Museum exhibition on horses. A very enthusiastic group of curators formed a planning committee, and we established the topics and objects that we wanted to include. Sadly, the exhibition was shelved, but the preparatory work we did helped to form the basis of this book. Around that time, my publishers suddenly concluded that there was a market for horse books after all, and started to press me to research and write one, even though I was in the middle of another, major writing project.

Jayne: Ah, yes, the publicity department finally notices that there is an audience...As I was saying, the artefacts illustrated and discussed in your beautiful book range very widely over place and time, from about 10,500 BC to the 21st century, and from many parts of the world. How did you, a Classical archaeologist, write knowledgeably and confidently about things like medieval armour, Mughal painting, Victorian jewellery and Tang Dynasty tomb-figures?

CJ: With the help of my friends! If you look at the Foreword, you will see that, in the standard academic tradition, I acknowledge the help of no fewer than 24 friends and colleagues. I was able to pick the brains of true experts on everything from practical equitation to Egyptian hieroglyphs, Buddhist iconography, medieval Islamic metalwork and Japanese netsuke. The internet was often useful, but my colleagues were indispensable.



Stella: What sort of readers do you think will enjoy the book?

CJ: It should attract horse-lovers above all, but it is full of arcane information on many, many aspects of art, history, mythology and human culture generally, so I hope that people who simply enjoy picking up facts of many kinds will get a kick out of it, too. I certainly enjoyed doing the research.

Jayne: The book is listed as being for adults, not children: is the text easy enough for a young reader?

CJ: It is not actually written for children, but kids who love horses usually like to learn obscure facts and specialised terms, and I have explained all the really technical or academic words anyway. The short discussions that accompany the pictures make it possible to dip into the book at any page, and I think the pictures will draw in even those who are too young to understand all the text. I could have read it myself with pleasure by the age of about ten.

Stella: There are countless books in print about horses but this one is special. Why is that?

CJ: A very high proportion of the horse books available are chiefly about the hundreds of modern breeds, or about the practicalities of riding and the care of horses. Books in English on the horse in art tend to focus on fine art – paintings and sculpture – from the Western world within the last 400-500 years. I don’t know of another book that deals with horse imagery on objects as diverse as jewellery, pottery and glass, gems, coins, bone knife-handles, and drawings and sculpture, or that gives as much weight to the arts and crafts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa as it does to those of the Western world.

Jayne: What is your next writing project?

CJ: The first must be to complete the large scholarly catalogue I have been working on for several years. But after that, and provided Horses sells well, it occurs to me that it would be a lot of fun to do a companion volume entitled Dogs: History, Myth, Art. I have already made a preliminary list of some wonderful objects for this in the Museum’s collections…

Stella: Thank you so much for joining us on the blog, Catherine! For those of you out there who would like to purchase HORSES, HISTORY, MYTH, ART, below are links to both U.S. and UK online booksellers. (Note that the UK edition features a different cover. Interesting). Of course, if you happen to be in London, you can always pop around to the gift shop at the British Museum where you will also find the book for sale.

Jayne: What about those of you reading this blog? Got a special feeling for horses? I know I do. They were the magical creatures of my childhood.



Order US version:

Order UK version: