King Stag is a play originally written in 1762 by Italian playwright and champion of Commedia dell’arte Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806). It is about love and conspiracy at the court of King Deramo. In search of a bride, Deramo falls victim to the intrigues of his adversary Tartaglia and is temporarily transformed into a stag.

In 1918, on the occasion of a major art exhibition staged in Zurich by the modernist association Swiss Werkbund, Swiss dramatist René Morax (1873–1963) and director Werner Wolff (1886–1972) produced a modern adaption of Gozzi’s fairy-tale play that turned it into an amusing parody of Sigmund Freud’s and Carl Gustav Jung’s psychoanalysis, which had caused much controversy in Zurich at the time. The production was conceived as a puppetry, for which avant-garde artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) designed the stage sets and created an ensemble of 17 radically abstracted marionettes that broke with every tradition of the genre.

This book offers the first English translation of Morax and Wolff’s adaption of King Stag. The text is supplemented with photographs of a restaging of the puppetry, produced especially for this volume, featuring Taeuber-Arp’s striking marionettes. Essays by distinguished scholars explore the genesis of the original 1918 production and place it in historical context, shed new light on the play and its model, the Commedia dell’arte, and highlight its significance for Switzerland’s avant-garde.

Abstract and mysterious, the sculptures of Lisa Seebach (b. 1981) are reminiscent of industrial objects like gas cylinders or oil drums, which she transforms into autonomous actors in a poetically enigmatic staging filled with associative meta-narratives. In the labyrinth of postapocalyptic science fiction, dark utopias, and posthuman aesthetics, they point to potential threats in the face of dystopian escalation and explore ways of escaping them.

Earthy Liquids and Heavy Metal [Hypersleep] is Lisa Seebach’s largest solo museum exhibition to date and shows numerous works from the last 10 years alongside works specially conceived for the exhibition space at Lechner Museum in Ingolstadt. The publication of the same name brings together numerous images of the installation and accompanying texts.

Text in English and German.

The Many Faces of Kabbalah: the joint exhibition of the Jüdisches Museum (Jewish Museum) in Vienna and the Joods Historisch Museum (Jewish Historical Museum) in Amsterdam presented the various facets of Kabbalah, from the historical development and early Jewish mysticism, to practical Kabbalah and magic, to modern manifestations in art and popular culture. It followed the traces that Kabbalah has left in the most diverse forms of modern art: in painting, sculpture, design, literature, film, and music. Published to accompany the exhibition, this book provides an astonishing look behind the scenes of this “hidden world”. Artists: Ghiora Aharoni, Mordecai Ardon, Michael Berkowitz, William Blake, David Bowie, Rachel Brown, Moshe Castel, Rene Clemensic, Belu Simion Fainaru, Victoria Hanna, Louis Kahn, Isidor Kaufmann, Anselm Kiefer, R. B. Kitaj, Sigalit Landau, Paul K. Lynch, Madonna, Barnett Newman, Leonard Nimoy, Mark Podwal, Dan Reisner, Hanna Rovina, Gabriele Seethaler, Harry Smith, Rudolf Steiner, Roman Vishniac, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jacques Zucker.

Text in English and German.

The term ‘craftsmanship’ is associated with individuality, uniqueness, decorative potential, artistic quality, attention to material and to process. But what does craftsmanship mean today? This exhibition catalogue of nearly 600 pages explores the meaning of craftsmanship in the context of the outstanding collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt, Germany) in a monumental survey of 700 items dating from 1945 to the present. Scale reproductions of plates, furniture, cutlery, jewellery and vases highlight their surprising variety of form. In their essays, the ten authors take diverse approaches to the broad terrain of craftsmanship: from the relationship between East Asia and Western ceramics, via the handicrafts of the Romantic period, to the adventure that is arts and crafts today. The title plays on the perceived parallel between the ability of the cactus to survive and thrive in adverse conditions, and the future of the hand-made object in an industrial world.

RESIDENSITY: A Carbon Analysis of Residential Typologies is the culmination of a seven-year study analysing nine building typologies to understand the relationships between building densities and the amount of land and infrastructure required to support them.

The book investigates how much embodied and consumed carbon is used in each typology and how it affects density and open space from the viewpoint of sustainability, carbon emissions, and carbon sequestration. The study determines which building typology is the most sustainable on a comparative basis. Nine prototypical buildings were designed – Megatall, Supertall, High-Rise, Mid-Rise, Low-rise, Courtyard, Three-Flat, Urban Single-Family, and Suburban Single-Family – set within nine prototypical communities. The study designates an archetypal residential community of 2,000 units with an average unit size of 150 sm as a reasonable and representative cross section of different housing typologies.

On 5 February 1916, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, together with Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, and Jean Arp, inaugurated the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. The evening marked the birth of Dada as an artistic movement, and Cabaret Voltaire with its legendary performances became a place of historic significance. It was soon to be followed by the short-lived, while no less significant, Gallery Dada in Zürich, where the Dadaists staged four exhibitions over the course of half a year. Dada’s further evolution was significantly shaped by these two spaces, each with its own particular atmosphere, constituting the differing poles of the Dada movement. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Spring 2016 to celebrate the Dada centenary, this new book for the first time tells the full story of Dada’s genesis. It sheds light on the early years of 1916 17 in Zürich in historical context and, from today’s point of view, and also explores the intellectual and social background that informed Dada, considering aspects such as the Great War, psychoanalysis, or the art scene of the time. Genesis Dada illustrates how Dada turned into a worldwide phenomenon with which artists and intellectuals such as Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau, or Man Ray were associated, and which has lost nothing of its momentum and topicality over time. Also available: Dadglobe ISBN 9783858817754

This is the exceptionally rich story of Rembrandt’s fame and influence in Britain. No other nation has witnessed such a passionate – and sometimes eccentric – enthusiasm for Rembrandt’s works. His imagery has become ubiquitous, making him one of the most recognised artists in history. In this book, some of the world’s leading experts reveal how the taste for Rembrandt’s paintings, drawings and prints evolved, growing into a mania that gripped collectors and art lovers across the country. This reached a fever pitch in the late 1700s, before the dawn of a new century ushered in a re-evaluation of Rembrandt’s reputation and opportunities for the wider public to see his masterpieces for themselves.

The story of Rembrandt’s profound and inspirational impact on the British imagination is illustrated by over 130 sumptuous works by the master himself, as well as by some of Britain’s best-loved artists, including William Hogarth, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Eduardo Paolozzi and John Bellany.

Foreword; Introduction; 1 Rembrandt’s Fame in Britain, 1630 1900: An Overview- Christian Tico Seifert; 2 Rembrandt and Britain: The Modern Era – Patrick Elliott; 3 ‘The Finest Possible State’: Cataloguing and Collecting Rembrandt’s Prints, c.1700 1840 – Stephanie S. Dickey; 4 From Studio to Academy: Copying Rembrandt in Eighteenth-century Britain – Jonathan Yarker; 5 Regarding Rembrandt: Reynolds and Rembrandt – Donato Esposito; 6 Rembrandt: Paragon of the Etching Revival – Peter Black; 7 Rembrandt and Britain: A ‘Picture Flight’ in Three Stages, 1850 1930 – M.J. Ripps; Catalogue; Bibliography.

Switzerland has been globally connected and entangled with colonies established by the seafaring European nations in Africa, the Americas, and Asia since the 16th century. Colonial — Switzerland’s Global Entanglements offers a timely overview of this highly topical matter, placing a wide range of aspects in historical context and addressing as well questions of colonial continuities.

Contributions by distinguished scholars and experts from various disciplines investigate questions such as the involvement of Swiss companies in the trade with enslaved people, Swiss mercenaries in the service of colonial powers, the colonial legacy of the country’s missionary societies, and the research and collection of artefacts by Swiss scientists in former colonies. Light is shed also on the involvement of anthropological institutes at the universities of Zurich and Geneva in scientific racism.

Conceived as an illustrated reader, this volume is both an invitation and a stimulus to explore and to engage critically with Switzerland’s history of global interdependence.

Text in French.

Chemical Alterations presents a photographic series by Doug Fogelson (b. 1970) that reflects the range of impacts caused by climate change around the planet. Using a process that combines traditional landscape photography with a chemical bath of toxic cleaning products to alter the original analogue film, Fogelson illustrates what are often invisible changes to the environment. Such changes culminate as disastrous events like fire, flood, drought, increasingly powerful storms, and overall global warming. Images of natural spaces that include mountains, deserts, volcanoes, jungles, oceans, rivers, and forests become represented in a state of flux. Through the processing of the film, traces such as bubbles, crystals, fingerprints, and dust are integrated into the images, probing the borderline of abstraction.

The Chemical Alterations series has been in-progress over a decade and exhibited through various iterations internationally at both galleries and museums including: The Royal Geographic Society, United Kingdom, Museum Belvedere, Netherlands, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Alpenium Produzentengalerie, Luzern, SFO Museum, San Francisco, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Sasha Wolf Projects, NYC, Klompching Gallery, NYC, The Arts Club of Chicago and others. It has been covered by The Brooklyn Rain, Humble Arts Foundation, Ain’t Bad, The OD Review, Great Lakes Writers Corps, and others.

Together with the Indigenous communities of the Wanjina Wunggurr – comprising the Ngarinyin, Worrorra, and Wunambal peoples – we look back at the Frobenius Expedition to the Kimberley Region of North West Australia in 1938-39. Organised by the former Institute for Cultural Morphology and the Frankfurt Museum of Ethnology (today: the Frobenius Institute and the Weltkulturen Museum), it was the first comprehensive ethnographic research expedition to a region still today characterised by a vibrant rock art tradition. The publication accompanying the exhibition of the same name is the result of a joint exploration of the expedition’s research history and includes contemporary interpretations of the collections acquired at the time.

Exhibition: Country bin pull’em at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. From 1 November 2024-31 August 2025.

The bilingual book comes in two volumes – one in English with 295 images and the other in Chinese. A well-researched and lavishly illustrated book, that offers a wealth of new facts, images and insights into the subject in a broad context.

This book has detail research into saddle rugs from China and related areas like Inner-Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. The research includes images of saddle rugs published in books, magazines and on the internet. The literature research the author conducted has not been exhaustive. The author has used major manuals, museum-collection and exhibition catalogues, auction catalogues, magazines and other publications.

Simply a must for anyone who loves textiles, horses or the history of China’s military, sports or culture.

Text in English and Chinese.

Anna Reivilä (b. 1988, Helsinki) is a land artist and photographer living and working in Porvoo, Finland. In her book Nomad she studies the relationship between humanity and nature by referring to the Japanese bondage tradition. She explores the symbolism of bondage, regarding connections among people and the divine. The Japanese word for bondage, kinbaku-bi, literally means the beauty of tight binding. It is a delicate balance between being held together and being on the verge of breaking. In Reivilä’s photographs the ropes outline the shapes of the objects while exploring the boundaries of humanity.

Karl Fritsch (b. 1963), master of extravagant rings, returns with a publication that lures us deep into his world. Ruby Gold is a “no-frills” pared-back book, without pagination, without essays. Instead it comprises 81 rings from the past 20 years featuring embedded gemstones and such memorable slogans as “Fuck Off” and “Nudelsuppe” (Noodle Soup).

The jewellery artist’s unmatched mastery of material and expression is apparent in every single ring, and every piece possesses tremendous energy as a result of the delicate yet archaic handling of the precious metals: Karl Fritsch carves in silver, shapes in gold, sets rubies and zirconias as a child would decorate a cake – with self-confidence and with no regard for waste.

In between the detailed illustrations, Fritsch brings the rings and fingers into ironic dialogues with each other: “Ring: I am art. / Finger: Oh come on…” And: “Ring: I am a ring. / Finger: You are unwearable.”

Published to accompany an exhibition at Galerie Zink, Waldkirchen, Germany, 12 September – 20 December 2020. 

Text in English and German.

Lam Partners has blazed the trail in architectural lighting design for more than 60 years. The visionary team of designers, architectural imaginers, and technical gurus have illuminated prominent and prestigious buildings, landmarks, and spaces across the United States and around the world.

William Lam founded his eponymous studio in 1961, pioneering the field of modern lighting design and establishing the core philosophies and principles that continue to lay the foundation for Lam Partners and the lighting industry today. Now led by its third generation of principals, Lam Partners collaborates closely with architects to develop custom lighting designs that bring their vision to life. Their passion for architecture and lighting is evident in the energy and enthusiasm injected into the design process, and the technical and creative strategies that enrich architecture and space, and elevate the human experience.

This beautifully presented monograph showcases 25 architectural lighting projects by Lam Partners, including the United States Institute of Peace, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Yad Vashem Memorial Museum, The TOWER at PNC Plaza, Salt Lake City Public Library, and SoFi Stadium. It also features a selection of legacy projects, such as the Washington D.C. Metro and Union Station, and the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, considered to be some of Lam’s greatest contributions to architectural lighting.

For ten years, Abbie Zabar – artist and bestselling author of The Potted Herb – had unique early-morning access to the Great Hall at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each week, from 1994 to 2004, she drew the magisterial bouquets that adorned the soaring neoclassical entrance to one of the world’s most visited art institutions.

Published for the first time, Abbie’s exquisite colour pencil drawings of these floral masterpieces are presented in a beautifully fashioned gift book. Each drawing showcases her signature flair, her understanding of botanical elements, and her subtle use of colour. Whether a Christmas arrangement with magnolia leaves, red berries and flyaway branches, or a summer fiesta of palm leaves, red hot pokers, and birds of paradise, in the hands of their secret chronicler, these floral arrangements are alive with all the beauty and joy of nature. A timeless treasure for patrons of the museum; anyone drawn to florals and botanical art; gardeners and long-time fans of Abbie’s work. The perfect gift for any occasion.

The volume Nicolas Party | L’Heure Mauve collects a vast visual epic in which Party plays a variety of roles, sometimes impersonating the artist, others the scenographer, the conservator, or the sculptor. His work, and the title of the show, are inspired by L’Heure Mauve, a piece created in 1921 by the Canadian painter Ozlas Leduc that highlights the different interpretations given to the relationship between man and nature throughout the history of art. The result is a constantly changing natural environment: it can be a place full of danger and catastrophe, a territory to be conquered, an expanse disseminated with ancient ruins, or even silences where there are no traces of human presence. Nature finally becomes the theatre for the Anthropocene, its connection with humanity by now inextricable, and the passing of time and the finiteness of existence make way for a feeling of melancholy.

Our artist interrogates the world’s image, and he does so by dialoguing very concretely with the spaces and the works belonging to the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The present volume reflects this personal evolution by employing a unique graphic framework and a packaging that is as precious as its contents.┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á

Text in English and French.

The new French art movement known as ‘impressionism’ blew through Europe like ‘a breath of fresh air’. This publication focuses on artists from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, including important representatives of the movement such as Anna Ancher, Lovis Corinth, Isaac Israels, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Peder Severin Krøyer, Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt. A selection of highlights from the collections of three museums showcases the individual varieties of ‘Northern Impressionism’. The catalogue accompanies the touring exhibition of the same name, a cooperation between the Museum Singer Laren, the Museum Kunst der Westküste, Alkersum/Föhr, and the Landesmuseum Hannover.

Text in English and Dutch.

The German-Swedish artist Ann Wolff (born in 1937) is one of the most significant and exciting proponents of the European studio glass movement. She has an expert understanding of the characteristics of glass and how to show off the complete spectrum of its diverse possibilities of expression. The publication offers an extensive overview of the period of work over the last ten prolific years. With most of her large-format sculptures, the medium of glass plays a central role, but Ann Wolff is not restricted to it alone; she also uses other materials, such as bronze, concrete or aluminium. The catalogue is boosted by additional selected drawings and pastels. Common to these is the eponymous motif of ‘persona’, the character mask, which expresses the artist’s continuous debate with philosophical and existential issues. In doubling and mirror imaging, in veiling and exposing, she revolves around fundamental questions of the Self and the Other and her bilateral perception.

Ann Wolff holds an accolade from the Glass Art Awards of the Glass Art Society, Seattle, and of the European Culture Prize Pro Europe. She is represented in numerous prestigious museums and collections in Europe, the United States and Japan, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo; Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; and Musée de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains, Lausanne.

Text in English and German.

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.

The extraordinary life of Barbara Cartlidge (b. 1922 in Berlin) – influential gallerist, curator, jewellery artist and author – together with the history of her legendary Electrum Gallery, which she founded in 1971 with Ralph Turner in London, are documented for the first time in a single publication. Pioneers and colleagues as well as around seventy internationally renowned artists of the gallery all have their say and, in anecdotes and recollections, countless illustrations and hitherto unpublished images, tell of a strong and resolute woman and the significance of her gallery as a promoter and platform for the understanding of contemporary art jewellery. Particular attention is paid to the life of Barbara Cartlidge, who fled from Germany in 1938. For over fifty years she was a driving force in what she described as the ‘the brotherhood of jewellers who make modern and thought-provoking jewellery all over the world’.

“With his technique, Casper refers to the theme ‘Vanitas’ that was often used in 17th-century painting: symbols that represent the transience of earthly existence. This places Casper in a long line of painters who have passed on inspiration from one generation to the next.” —Meta Knol, director Museum De Lakenhal

Beauty is central to the artworks of Dutch visual artist Casper Faassen. He has developed a unique visual language through the combination of photography, paint, and the application of craquelure to his canvases. He builds them up from multiple transparent layers, creating a distance between subject and viewer, highlighting the contrast between beauty and apparent decay. This first overview of his photographic work includes his Asia series, dancers from the Dutch National Ballet series, cityscapes, and still lifes in the style of Morandi.

For centuries ceramics have been a central feature of Chinese art and culture. They were employed in everyday life and served as both ritualistic and funerary objects. Dr Heribert Meurer’s pre-eminent collection of 174 high-quality pieces dating from 1050 BCE to AD 1280 – which up until now has remained unpublished – offers an impressive panorama of the artefacts’ roles, as well as the vessel forms and techniques of early Chinese ceramic art, complemented by over 30 objects from the GRASSI Museum Leipzig, where the collection was endowed in 2017. The focal points of the collection are the ceramics of the Tang and Song dynasties. Examples of the popular Sancai (tricolour) lead glaze, Celadon porcelain from Yueyao, Yaozhou and Longquan and Changsha ware, so-called Jian black porcelain from Jianyang Prefecture and Quingbai ware from the southern kiln sites of the Song era illustrate the wealth, diversity, high quality and exceptional appeal of early Chinese ceramics.

Text in German.