Decoration and design as Dora El Chiaty might exclaim: “What else?”. It was in Egypt, the country of her birth, that this passion developed and found its full expression, as evidenced by numerous creations showcasing not just a talent, but a genuine gift. Born in Ismaïla, to a Greek family, she arrived in France at the age of eleven as a boarder at Sacré-Coeur de Chantilly, then returned to Cairo to study at the Centre Culturel Français where she passed her baccalaureate. After a short stay in Spain, she studied journalism, advertising and anthropology at the American University in Cairo, where she got a Bachelor of Arts degree. It was there that she got to know her future husband, Hamed El Chiaty, a defining encounter in more ways than one. Indeed, Hamed would soon become an entrepreneur in tourism and would ask the woman who had become his wife to decorate two of the boats he owned on the Nile. Dora, who had always loved art in all its forms, found her curiosity piqued and successfully completed her first two projects with ease, taste and character. This would mark the start of a genuine fascination for the many different sides of this profession – decoration and design – and the starting point for many other commissions which would accompany Hamed’s rise through the tourism world, first and foremost in Egypt. Very quickly, it would become a regular occurrence: Dora took charge of the decoration of several sites with extremely tight deadlines (nine to twelve months!) and limited budgets. Between her beginnings and her most recent work there is evidence of development, of neoclassicism tempered with a conscious modernity, never forgetting an enduring reference to Islamic decorative arts. Everything inspires her: from the wrought iron railings in her Parisian pied-à-terre, to the pattern on a scarf or the print on a dress, which we find – modified, adapted, varied – on the velvet of a couch, the arabesques of a carpet or wallpaper, made to measure by remarkable teams of Egyptian artisans. Indeed, in the footsteps of the famous French interior designers of the twentieth century – Ruhlmann, Arbus, Leleu, Quinet, Old and Raphaël – Dora El Chiaty, assisted by a team of more than fifty, creates a large part of the furniture, seats, lights, carpets and textiles of the decors herself. How to describe her style? In the beginning Dora preferred furnishing that drew its inspiration from the forties, with references to the Louis XVI and Directoire styles – their straight and slender lines, and materials typical of the time, like mahogany and bronze. She now leans towards a greater contemporaneity, with which she blends a joyful fantasy, like her nods towards the baroque. An excellent colourist, her favourite shades include all varieties of beige and grey, embellished with a few bright touches, such as the deep reds and bordeaux she particularly favours. What is her dream as a designer and decorator? To have greater resources for her decoration and three years to decorate a hotel! All the decor would not only be created, as always, by Dora El Chiaty, but she would also design every piece of furniture, light and accessory. Knowing her taste and talent, we look forward to her dream becoming a reality. Text in English and French.

Artisans of Israel is a very special book on crafts. Author Lynn Holstein is in search of a national identity in the artisanry of the still young country – and she finds it in the unifying pursuit for innovation. Forty artists, including Jews, Muslims and Christians, tell their stories and show in five different trades how emancipation can be promoted through creativity. Working with one’s hands stands unfailingly at the centre of this reflection. From the hybrid of cultural and religious backgrounds emerges a unique compilation that brings together the fields of metalwork and jewellery, ceramics, textiles, paper and wood. This compilation portrays a sensitive and inspiring portrait of Israel and its inhabitants. This book accompanies an exhibition at The Open Museum, Tefen (IL), in January 2018.

Text in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

A sphere encrusted with reindeer antler tines, an intricate bone-laden tapestry and sculptural flora integrating domestic textiles are only three of the many works unveiled in this first ever comprehensive look at tactile works by Norwegian artist Aslaug M. Juliussen (b. 1953). Self-reflections upon her life and everyday experiences with the Arctic landscape shape the imagery in her work, as evidenced by her choice of materials and techniques. Juliussen explores materials that speak to culture and tradition in Northern Norway, and the Sami culture in particular.

The publication comprises engaging cross-disciplinary essays that illustrate the multifaceted aspects of Juliussen as an artist. Scholars from such diverse fields as biology, philosophy, gender studies and art history look at Juliussen’s art from multiple perspectives and thus enable a new dialogue on art in the context of a European indigenous culture. Published to accompany the exhibitions at Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø (NO), 20 October 2018-31 March 2019 and at Blaafarveværket, Modum (NO), Summer 2019 and at Anchorage Museum, Alaska (USA), Autumn/Winter 2019.

Tibetan Buddhist art is not only rich in figural icons but also extremely diverse in its symbols and ritual objects. This first systematic review is an abundantly illustrated reference book on Tibetan ritual art that aids our understanding of its different types and forms, its sacred meanings and ceremonial functions. Eighteen chapters, several hundred different implements are documented in detail, in many cases for the first time and often in their various styles and iconographic forms: altar utensils and amulets, masks and mirrors, magic daggers and mandalas, torma sculptures and prayer objects, vajras and votive tablets, sacrificial vessels and oracle crowns, stupas and spirit traps, ritual vases, textiles, furniture, and symbolic emblems. These are accompanied by many historical and modern text sources, as well as rare recorded oral material from high-ranking Tibetan masters. This long-awaited handbook is a must-have for all those with an interest in Buddhist art and religion.

Chunghi Choo (b. 1938 in South Korea) is a world-renowned metalsmith and jewellery artist who is best known for her works that incorporate such techniques as electroforming and electro-applique. Choo’s artwork is represented in major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (US), the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK) and the Musée des Arts décoratifs (FR). In addition, she is professor emeritus of the University of Iowa (US), where she established a metals programme, which she brought to international prominence during her more than thirty years of service. Many of her students have since become critically acclaimed artists in the fields of fine arts, jewellery, textiles, metalsmithing and sculpture. This volume reviews Choo’s remarkable career, showing selected pieces from the last six decades of extraordinary craftsmanship that earned her status as Elected Fellow of the American Craft Council. Works by thirty former students reveal Choo’s influence on a subsequent generation.

Maple, birch, walnut, lemonwood and palisander are just a few of the woods from which Liv Blåvarp (b. 1956) creates exceptional one-off jewellery pieces. The rigidity or softness of the wood plays just as much of an important role in the selection process as its structure or texture. The works are comprised of numerous single elements, which fuse together to become sculptural volumes tactile creations that come alive when touched. Yet at the same time Blåvarp’s expressive and colourful pieces remain flexible and wearable. Their forms are not clearly defined; associations to organic growth, animals and plants, light and shade, water and waves all come to mind. With around 55 works from 2002 to 2017 Liv Blåvarp presents the first comprehensive review of her creative output. Text in English and German.

The largest surviving portion of the first major collection of Classical antiquities in Britain – the sculptures and inscriptions collected in the early 17th century by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel for his London house and garden – is in the Antiquities Department of the Ashmolean Museum. This handbook tracks their eventful history before they came to rest in Oxford.

The Fondation Baur, Musée des Arts d Extrême-Orient, Geneva, Switzerland, houses one of the most important collections of Asian art in the world: some 9,000 works from China and Japan. This new book celebrates the 50th anniversary of the museum and the 150th birthday of Alfred Baur (1865-1951), whose collections are housed in the museum’s elegant nineteenth-century townhouse. Lavishly illustrated with stunning new photographs, most full page, the book showcases the diversity and quality of Baur’s collections, which span netsuke, lacquerware, saber fittings, prints, jades, imperial ceramics, textiles, and much more. Precious Japanese objects, meticulously worked and technically perfect, reveal the outstanding skills of Japanese craftsmen; the simplicity of the forms of Chinese monochrome ceramics displays the contemporaneity of the visionary master ceramists of the Song dynasty.

The fashion, history, and development of Jewish dress tells a story that spans the globe and crosses many cultures. In this colourful volume, Jewish communities – particularly those established for centuries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa – are revealed through their garments. Stunning photographs spin tales of family traditions and religious devotion, with a special section dedicated to jewellery worn by brides and grooms. Superb photographs of specific garments, with many close-up details, are juxtaposed with rare contextual photographs from The Israel Museum’s archives to create a tapestry of a people revealed through textiles, costume, and images. More than 350 revelatory illustrations tell us how these precious articles of dress were originally worn.

The Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian art, recently auctioned at Sotheby’s, is the most comprehensive collection of its kind. Comprising some 300 works from Mexico, Central, and South America – wood and stone sculptures, ceramics, textiles, and ritual objects – it spans 1200 BC to AD 1500. The Barbier-Mueller Collection, one of the most important and wide-ranging art collections in the world, was begun by Josef Mueller in Paris in 1908 with the purchase of works by Hodler and Cézanne; the Swiss Mueller then looked beyond Western art and bought his first pre-Columbian piece, an Aztec stone water goddess, in 1920. Today, Mueller’s daughter and son-in-law, Monique and Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, continue to collect Western, African, Oceanic, and Cycladic art, which is frequently on loan to museums around the world. Text in English and French.

This guide to the arts and crafts of fin-de-siècle Vienna is an excellent introduction to the subject in all media – from architecture, furniture, ceramics, and glass, to silver, fashion, and textiles, bookbinding, toys, painting, and the graphic arts – as well as a survey of the cultural development of this pivotal period. Features the work of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Josef Hofmann and Dagobert Peche amongst many other.

Published on the occasion of an important international loan exhibition at The Azerbaijan National Museum in Baku, this multi-author book is much more than a mere catalogue. Containing previously unpublished research and a wealth of previously hidden material from museums and private collections around the world, and written by a team of international museum professionals and independent scholars, it is the first co-ordinated and detailed study of the West Caspian region’s characteristic silk embroideries. The book traces the history of embroidery in the Caucasus, the multi-cultural sources of domestic embroidery, iconography and designs in which the textile traditions of the Iranian and Turkic worlds meet, materials and needlework techniques, as well as the relationship between embroidery and the pile carpet weaving tradition in the region.

Contents:
1 Silk Treasures of Azerbaijan, Alberto Boralevi & Asli Samadova
2 Historical Azerbaijan, Murray L. Eiland III
3 Caucasian Embroideries in Context, Penny Oakley
4 Safavid-style Domestic Embroideries from Historical Azerbaijan, 1550-1800, Michael Franses
5 Silk Culture in the Caucasus, Irina Koshoridze
6 Azerbaijan Embroidery Techniques, Jennifer Wearden
7 What Went Before to Make It as It Was? Caucasian Embroidered Textiles from The Textile Museum Collection, Sumru Belger Krody
8 Busily Engaged on Embroidery : Collecting and Curatorship for the V&A, Moya Carey
9 An Early Museum Collection: Azerbaijan Embroideries in the V&A, Penny Oakley
10 A Shared Design Lexicon: Azerbaijan Embroideries and Rugs, Brian Morehouse

“When there’s a lot going on, it is the simple things in life that are the most powerful.” – Bonnae Gokson. Following the success of her first book, Butterflies and All Things Sweet (ISBN 9781939621016, Goff Books), which won a number of important international design awards, style icon Bonnae Gokson is back this time focusing on weddings from different cultures, and celebrating beauty, creativity, individuality, artistry, and love in all its forms. Weddings, Butterflies & The Sweetest Dreams is a book like no other. With contributions by Vera Wang, world-renowned couture wedding gown designer, and Iris Apfel, iconic fashion industry personality, it is a unique visual feast, exploring couture wedding celebrations in a completely fresh and unexpected manner. Through exquisite, sophisticated and surprising imagery – from Paris haute couture to a ranch in Montana – it reveals the way Bonnae sees the world, inspired by everything from poetry to fine art resulting in a timeless, contemporary aspirational journey through a treasure trove of multi-cultural artistry.

Josef Frank, born 1885 in Baden near Vienna, ranks among Europe’s most significant architects of the twentieth century. His designs for furniture and textiles also make him one of the eminent figures of modernist interior design. Born into a Jewish family, growing anti-Semitism forced him to emigrate in 1933. He first went to Sweden and in 1939 to the USA, returning to Sweden again in 1947, where he lived and worked until his death in 1967.

Josef Frank – Spaces is the first comprehensive book on Frank’s single-family houses. It explores the evolution of his designs over the years and investigates the influences that shaped his work: Adolf Loos’s spatial plan concept, Le Corbusier’s ideas, and Hermann Muthesius’s seminal book The English House. It also looks at Frank’s own architectural concepts of movement and stairs in residential buildings. The second part features six of Frank’s houses in greater detail, including images and plans, and in descriptive texts that also interpret their characteristics. The selection comprises the villas Claëson and Wehtje in Falsterbo, Sweden, the villas Wien XIII and Beer in Vienna, the House MS in Los Angeles, and the unrealised Fantasy House 9 (Accidental House). A complete catalogue of Frank’s single-family houses rounds out the book.

House of Maskati chronicles a unique textile legacy, weaving together pan-Asian cultural threads and shifting patterns of trade over five generations and 160 years. The story begins in 1856, when Abdul Tyeb Maskati started a small business exporting block-printed cloth from India to Siam (as Thailand was then known). Before long, the cloth was being made to order, with Indian block-makers carving intricate designs especially for the Siamese market. Known as saudagiri in India and pha lai in Siam, this unique art form blends South Asian and Southeast Asian artistry and design. As one of its first and biggest producers, the Maskati firm expanded from Siam to Singapore, Cambodia, and Burma, and the name ‘Maskati’ became synonymous in Southeast Asia with this type of block-printed cloth. After consolidating his initial legacy, the descendants of Abdul Tyeb Maskati responded to diminishing opportunities in the pha lai market by diversifying their trade networks, products, and expertise. Under the leadership of his grandson, Abdultyeb Maskati (pictured on the cover), the family firm was transformed and extended its reach as far afield as Japan. Later still, after years of prudence under challenging political circumstances across the region, the business was transformed once more. Today, it continues with his great-great-grandsons at the helm and is run as two separate entities in India and Thailand – a geographical legacy of his initial idea to ship textiles from India to Siam 160 years ago.

For six generations the Haukohls have collected art, rare books, drawings, sculpture and textiles. It has been the fulfilling result of a Milwaukee-based American Midwestern family who has had equal determination and always with an eye towards acquiring fine art for the benefit of the future generations. This book presents masterworks of Italian painting and sculpture from the 16th through 18th centuries drawn from the largest private American collection of Florentine Baroque painting, featuring works by key artists such as Cesare Dandini, Jacopo da Empoli, and Francesco Furini.

This is the catalogue of the 2018 Leeds exhibition celebrating the tercentenary of Thomas Chippendale’s birth. It covers all 95 exhibits including furniture, drawings, engravings, textiles and wallpaper, together with other contemporary and later material. Each entry is illustrated in colour, with supporting images in both colour and black and white. Also included are introductory essays to each section of the exhibition, covering Chippendale’s life and career, his furniture styles, his relationships with customers, and his legacy from the 18th century to the present day.

The KingsHaven Design team is skilled at transforming timeworn interiors and exteriors into breathtaking spaces for inspired living by sharing with their clients the spectacular work of artisans and artworks from around the world, and by developing strong fair-trade relationships with artists that benefit them, their families, and their communities. Be it working with a stonemason to salvage the granite façade of a historic estate, collaborating with blacksmiths on a lighting fixture or custom piece of furniture, meeting with artisans who create gorgeous handcrafted baskets in the designs of their tribal ancestors, or searching hidden markets in Europe and South America for art pottery, antique mirrors, prints, and textiles, Lauren Wylonis and the studio’s objective is to reclaim, restore, and revitalise their client’s residential interiors and exteriors. In many senses of clever design, they create spaces that reflect a sharp and sophisticated twenty-first-century aesthetic for today’s energetic lifestyles, yet never lose sight of the past. Rejuvenation of character, charm and architectural significance combined with the creation of cutting-edge luxury and style are the hallmarks of the design studio’s ethos, which also can be seen in the handcrafted light fixtures, furnishings, and accessories found at Wylonis’s irresistible retail showroom in Paoli, PA, just outside Philadelphia. The pages of this book are resplendent with luscious photography and insightful texts that together showcase Wylonis’s unique practice and meticulous attention to detail in designing lighting, furniture, and home décor that takes each space to a higher level in art, architecture, beauty, and function. The useful tips for use in a new home or renovation are diverse and range from mindful design to achieving authenticity in an older home renovation. A must-have book for a connoisseur of interiors and design, or anyone looking to build or renovate a home or space.

This beautifully designed book is a celebration of one of the world’s most creative, dynamic and fascinating cities: Tokyo. It spans 400 years, with highlights including Kano school paintings; the iconic woodblock prints of Hiroshige; Tokyo Pop Art posters; the photography of Moriyama Daido and Ninagawa Mika; manga; film; and contemporary art by Murakami Takashi and Aida Makoto. Visually bold and richly detailed, this publication looks at a city which has undergone constant destruction and renewal and it tells the stories of the people who have made Tokyo so famous with their insatiable appetite for the new and innovative – from the samurai to avantgarde artists today. Co-edited by Japanese art specialists and curators Lena Fritsch and Clare Pollard from Oxford University, this accessible volume features 28 texts by international experts of Japanese culture, as well as original statements by influential artists.

This catalogue presents masterpieces of calligraphy, painting, sculpture, ceramics, lacquers, and textiles from two of America’s greatest Japanese art collections, which are featured in a landmark exhibition at the Asia Society in New York, from February to April, 2020. Impermanence is a pervasive subject in Japanese philosophy and art, and recognising the role of ephemerality is key to appreciating much of Japan’s artistic production. The dazzling range of art and objects in this beautifully photographed exhibition catalogue show the broad, yet nuanced, ways that the notion of the ephemeral manifests itself in the arts of Japan throughout history. Insightful contributions from noted scholars explore the aesthetics of impermanence in religion, literature, artefacts, the tea ceremony, and popular culture in objects dating from the late Jomon period (ca. 1000-300 B.C.E.) to the 20th century.

Contents:
The Art of the Ephemeral;
Works in the Exhibition:
I. Retrieving Lost Worlds; II. Buddhism: Perpetual Impermanence; III. Tea: Choreographed Ephemerality; IV. Transforming Impermanence into Art.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Asia Society Museum, New York, between 11 February and 26 April 2020.