A Year in the Vineyard is a tribute to the cycle of the vine. From winter pruning to vine leaves capturing the energy of the late autumn sun, the narrative is spun through vignettes about activities in vineyards around the globe, accompanied by photographs and background paintings. The book honours seasonal rhythms and rituals without glossing over potential risks, such as hail piercing acres of nascent chardonnay in Champagne or wildfires in the Napa Valley. The hope is that each spread captures a gesture, a step in a dance with the natural world, thus providing an experiential understanding of the axiom ‘wine is made in the vineyard’ and of the notion that fine wines are achieved in tandem with nature, not through triumph over the elements. It also shows wine growers as operating on the front line of the climate crisis, posing questions and offering potential remedies in response to the earth’s changing ecology.

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 career of architect Sergei Tchoban, born 1962 and educated in St. Petersburg, follows multiple yet closely linked trajectories in his native Russia and in Germany. He is a founding partner with the Moscow-based firm SPEECH as well as with Tchoban Voss Architekten, with offices in Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden. His designs reflect a deep interest in local and historical contexts of a project rather than an aim to create singular iconic structures. His design process is deeply rooted in sketching and drawing by hand. In 2009 he established the Tchoban Foundation and in 2013 opened the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin as a home to his vast collection comprising ancient and modern masterpieces from around the world.

In four conversations with Kristin Feireiss, Tchoban offers very personal insights into his design process, his understanding of architecture, and his engagement as a collector and museum founder. An essay by the British writer and broadcaster Deyan Sudjic as well as some 130 illustrations round out this beautiful volume.

Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 was one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. The name of Egypt’s ‘boy king’ is now synonymous with the glories of this ancient civilisation, and the spectacular contents of his tomb continue to capture the public’s imagination. This book tells the story of the search for Tutankhamun’s tomb and its discovery using Howard Carter’s original excavation records that were deposited in the archives of the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford. The meticulous recording process and conservation work on the thousands of objects took Carter and his team an astonishing 10 years and for its time the entire enterprise was a model of archaeological investigation.

Against this backdrop of painstaking scholarship, the book also explores the phenomenon of ‘Tut-mania’, when the world was gripped by all things Tutankhamun, from jewellery and clothing to dance music and curses. In the final section, the authors re-evaluate what the tomb’s contents can tell us about the king and his time, and explore various projects that have in recent years sought to ensure the preservation of Tutankhamun’s tomb and its contents for future generations. For all of these projects, the Howard Carter archive in the Griffith Institute remains an invaluable resource.

This publication accompanied a 2018 exhibition by the British painter and printmaker Christopher Le Brun. The body of work explored here develops his long-standing interest in the ‘double’ – conceptual and embodied duality. The arresting diptychs and single paintings provide a direct continuation of his series of prints Composer (2017), which explores the musical form of distinct yet related movements and the essentially layered structure of both painting and music.

Working directly on the woodcut proofs, these new oil paintings extend Le Brun’s lifelong preoccupation with colour – in his words, ‘experiencing rather than seeing a property of the world we delight in for itself’ – and represent radical experiments in the juxtaposition of colour, tone, transparency and form.

The book features an essay by exhibition curator Anna Dempster exploring dualities across a number of disciplines.

Building on his interest in evolution, philosophy, and society, in his project A Gift From Him Maximilian Prüfer (b. 1986) explores the destruction of natural habitats to make way for agriculture in China. To this end, Prüfer took two trips to the Szechuan Province, where the fruit trees need to be pollinated by hand due to insect deaths caused by the increased use of pesticides. These developments are attributable to Mao’s campaign to “Destroy the Four Olds,” which entailed the killing of around two billion sparrows in order to restore the natural equilibrium. Prüfer documented the entire manual pollination process in photos, collected items, and films which make for an ambivalent exploration of the cultural evolution of humankind.

Text in English and German.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the relationship between fashion and motherhood, a topic that is explored in detail for the first time. Mothers, mother figures, mentors and family ties are intimately intertwined with fashion history. Many designers reach back to the style of their mother’s day, but mums themselves are also a big source of inspiration. Symbolic fashion mothers, such as Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet and Sonia Rykiel, made an artistic mark on the creations of their contemporaries and are still influencing present-day designers. From 1900 onward there was a growing appreciation of the cultural identity of mothers, both in fashion and in society. In 20th and 21st century fashion, this culminated in a veritable celebration of mothers and mother figures.

In Edo Japan, woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the Floating World”) captured the entertainment culture of the urban elite and eventually many other subjects as well. These beautiful prints were the result of a meticulous craft process, in which an artist’s initial drawing was translated by expert carvers into multiple printing blocks for different colours. In this attractive volume, Sarah E. Thompson, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, provides a highly readable overview of the cultural and artistic history of ukiyo-e, showcasing 120 exceptional prints from the museum’s world-class collection, by masters including Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. She explores each of the principal genres in turn: beauty and fashion, the kabuki theatre, landscape, nature, history and literature, and fantasy. Pictures of the Floating World features a traditional Japanese stab binding and is housed in a durable slipcase together with three remarkable prints, suitable for framing. It will be a must-have for all art lovers.

The collection of drawings in the Ashmolean is one of the greatest treasures of the University of Oxford. It began spectacularly in 1843 when a group of drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo that had previously belonged to the portrait painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence, was bought by subscription. Lawrence’s collection was one of the greatest collections of Old Master drawings ever assembled and its dispersal was much regretted. The Raphaels and Michelangelos, however, were the jewels in its crown. Following their arrival in Oxford, their fame attracted a number of gifts and bequests of drawings and watercolours by Dürer, Claude Lorraine, Brueghel, J. M. W Turner, Henry Moore and many others.

This is a story not only of Old Masters but of benefactors – Francis Douce, Chambers Hall, John Ruskin and their successors – whose different tastes account for the variety of the drawings in the modern Print Room. It is a story also of the curators who bought them. In particular, it is the story of Sir Karl Parker who arrived at the museum in 1934 and left a collection when he retired in 1962 that comprehensively covered the history of the art of drawing in Europe from its origins to the present day. The exhibition, Master Drawings: Michelangelo to Moore, celebrates this history. It includes many of the finest drawings in Oxford, representing the work of many different artists: Raphael and Michelangelo; Dürer and the artists of the Northern Renaissance; Guercino and Rubens; Boucher and Tiepolo; German Romantics; J. M. W. Turner; Degas and Pissarro; the artists of the Ballets Russes; British twentieth-century artists from Gwen John to Hockney; and much else.

Qu Leilei now stands as a technically accomplished master, capable of handling brush and ink with the utmost competency and photographic-like quality. His visual language is well established, and it represents a fusion of east and west. Some ink painters have chosen to push boundaries by making traditional styles more abstract or ornamented. By contrast, Leilei has sought to blend the descriptive, realistic styles of the European Renaissance with Chinese ink painting. Moreover, he has constantly worked to achieve profound concepts in his work, ideas that have universal application.

This catalogue is a retrospective, an overview of the body of work Qu Leilei has produced up to the present day. Certain broad themes can be divined: a burning interest in the history of China, and what can be learned from it; a loving concern for human beings and their individual achievements; an absorption in the anatomy and depiction of the human body; an urge to warn against the perils of the world; and a heartfelt desire to integrate Chinese and western art practice and techniques. These themes have been pursued with ever-growing skill throughout the years.

For more than four decades, jewellery artist and educator Laurie Hall has been making stories the subject of her work. Her playful, often whimsical jewellery made with found objects is about the places she lives, the landscapes that fill her imagination, her family history, and her ideas of what it is to be an American. As a jeweller, Hall never plays it safe, preferring to fly by the seat of her pants and push her skills and technical knowledge. Her work is part of numerous private and public collections including The Museum of Art and Design in NYC, The Tacoma Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is a product of the jewellery histories that make the Pacific Northwest unique within the larger story of American contemporary jewellery. Featuring 58 images of Hall’s jewellery spanning the period from 1974 to 2019, this book explores why she is an important maker whose practice deserves to be more widely known.

The Wilshere Collection offers a remarkable insight into one Englishman’s enthusiasm for the early Christian church. A wealthy landowner travelling frequently to Italy, Charles Wilshere (1814-1906) saw it as his mission to acquaint the British with the then brand-new subject of early Christian archaeology and art. Newly discovered documentation, including correspondence held at the Vatican Library and the Biblioteca San Luigi, Posilippo, recount Wilshere’s acquisition of a remarkable collection of early Christian, Jewish and pagan gold-glass, sarcophagi and inscriptions, shipped to England for public display.

Previously unpublished evidence presents the reader with intriguing new information about the provenance of the collection. In addition to this, recent scientific analysis of the objects, now in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, allows major new insights, notably into the origin of gold-glass and its use in fourth-century Rome.

This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Baur Foundation that brings together work by the French painter Pierre Soulages (b.1919) and the Japanese master bamboo artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV (b. 1973). Soulages, still working at 102 years old, has painted almost exclusively in black since 1979 and is known as the “master of luminous blacks”. Tanabe Chikuunsai IV is a renowned bamboo artist, known for his twisting organic sculptures and room-sized installations made from tiger or black bamboo. The aim of this exhibition is to explore how their work resonates, despite different approaches, in the dark and light effects of their materials.

Text in French and English. 

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Baur Foundation in Switzerland, a museum of Far Eastern Art, from November 2021–March 2022.

How many cubic metres does the little Michelin man actually take up? What insurance value does the potato peeler Rex have and how fragile is Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s Dr. Komplex? The designer pack of cards The Happy Collector shows 52 objects from the design and decorative arts collection at the Museum of Design Zurich. Playfully – as a classical card game or top trumps – it presents not only the favourite objects and collection highlights of the museum, but also conveys important aspects of the collection procedure: from purchase, storage and handling to insurance and documentation. The Museum of Design Zurich is the leading museum for design and visual communication in Switzerland. The collection of international importance comprises around 500,000 objects from the areas of decorative arts, textiles, graphics, typography, as well as poster, furniture and product design. Sabine Flaschberger and Renate Menzi are its curators.

Aenne Biermann (1898–1933) was one of the leading figures of photography in the 1920s and 1930s. Today, she is considered one of the most important avant-garde photographers of the 20th century. In just a few years of practice, the self-taught artist became a well-known representative of German photography, participating in almost all the important exhibitions of her time. She captured plants, objects, people, and everyday situations in pictures that have to this day lost none of their allure and poignancy. By means of clear structures, precise compositions of light and contrast, as well as narrow framing, she drew a special kind of poetry out of the motifs of her personal environment and developed her own, distinctly modern pictorial style.

This is the first substantial new book in English on this exceptional artist since the 1930s, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in fall 2021. The large-format volume features some 100 of Aenne Biermann’s photographs in colour and duotone reproduction, several of them published here for the first time ever. This impressive selection is complemented by essays on Biremann’s photography in art-historical context and on selected aspects of her oeuvre.

Text in English and Hebrew.

An exhibition featuring the work of Aenne Biermann is taking place at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art from 5 August 2021.

Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, located next door to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam’s Museumpark and designed by MVRDV, is the first art depot in the world to be fully accessible to the public. Visitors can see the result of over 170 years of collecting: more than 151,000 objects of art and design, housed in 14 storage spaces, are arranged by material, size, and sometimes chronology or geography. All the activities involved in the management and conservation of a collection are also on view. This is a fascinating account of a unique new type of museum building and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen collection.

This book covers all the phases in its creation, from the first crazy ideas to the last work of art to be rehoused. It takes you on a journey through the building and provides brief glimpses of the storage compartments on each floor. The essays describe the growing collection, its storage conditions over the last 172 years, and the Depot’s design and construction process. And includes details of the designers and artists involved about their contributions to the building.

Marking the remarkable century of Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, from humble beginnings in London’s East End in 1915 to a fully-fledged mainstream art museum, under its banner ‘Art, Identity and Migration’, this publication vividly illustrates rarely-seen masterworks from its collection by some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, including Soutine, Chagall, Auerbach, Bomberg, Kitaj and Kossoff. Further highlights include the ‘Whitechapel Boys’; Les Peintres Juifs de L’Ecole de Paris, Official War artists from both conflicts; mid-century émigrés influencing the direction of the arts, and contemporary artists making ground-breaking work across new media. This unique collection, primarily of artists born into the Jewish faith, many shaping modern British, European and American art history, represents a distinct visual survey of artistic and social life in Britain and the cultural heritage of British Jewry. A range of texts provides a fascinating context for a collection born ‘Out of Chaos’.

“When you land on this book, if you do not yet have an appreciation of butterflies or Chan’s workmanship, after reading, it will leave you in awe of both.”—Beth Bernstein, Forbes
“When I was a young boy, butterflies were flying colours – I knew not their name. Then butterflies became the Butterfly Lovers: a tragedy, a love story, a symbol of eternal love. As I grew older, I found them to embody the words of a great philosopher: life is but a dream; only we need to decide whether we want it to be the dream of a man, or the dream of a butterfly. I could not decide, and so I became The Butterfly Man.” – Wallace Chan

Father of The Wallace Cut – an illusionary three-dimensional gemstone carving technique – and The Wallace Chan Porcelain – a ground-breaking material five times stronger than steel – Wallace Chan is a guiding light in the world of jewellery design. Always innovating, always testing boundaries with his materials and technique, Chan’s creations are as stunning as they are intricate. Compiled by jewellery experts, this book explores the cultural and personal significance of Wallace Chan’s most famous emblem: the butterfly.

Winged Beauty: The Butterfly Jewellery Art of Wallace Chan features approximately 30 of his finest pieces. Enter a butterfly house of colourful gems, with brooches and necklaces so delicate they might have flown down and alighted on the page.

In the wake of its 30th anniversary, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint‐Etienne Métropole wishes to publish a large‐scale retrospective catalogue, intended to offer a fresh look at its collection. This substantial work is in line with the two previous catalogues, published on the occasion of the 10th and 20th anniversaries of MAMC +. Aimed at a large audience, it aims to become the institution’s new reference work. It will also be sent to the museum’s many partners and collaborators (artists, curators, curators, art critics and historians, journalists, institutional and political leaders). The MAMC + wishes to approach the collection through its strong axes, constituting markers of the museum’s identity, such as American art or post‐war German art. But it also intends to make visible groups that are less well known: the Symbolist collection, the collection of primitive art by Victor Brauner, the photographic collection of Raul Hausmann or the collection of contemporary drawings, will thus be the subject of substantial developments. The book will also be punctuated by short focuses intended to deepen certain aspects of the collection.

Text in English and French.

Diamonds tell stories that are captivating and timeless. On the one hand, they are just stones, pieces of pure carbon with optical properties that make them glitter and sparkle like stars.  On the other, they are mystical entities hypnotically drawing the viewer into a time machine as it were, wherein a cinematic montage of their journey unfolds. Diamonds Across Time presents a sweeping overview of diamonds across time and space, featuring ten essays by world-renowned scholars in love the stone. Here, these authors present new discoveries; explore extraordinary collections; investigate histories, science, and trade; the nature of diamonds; legendary gems, jewellery collections, and great designers. Above all, they tell the human stories that underpin the adoration of diamonds.

Diamonds Across Time is a richly illustrated publication with high-quality images of gems and jewels, archival documents, rare drawings, and fabulous photographs. The volume places diamonds in the context of the time in which they were discovered, and on the political, social, and cultural stage on which their histories were etched. In a rapidly changing world, diamonds are eternal. They were created by nature and grew in the womb of the earth. They tell stories, and they record history. With this book, diamonds will finally have their own storytellers.