The robin was hardly understood when David Lack – Britain’s most influential ornithologist – started his scientific observations. This book is a landmark in natural history, not just for its discoveries, but because of the approachable style, sharpened with an acute wit. It reads as fascinatingly today as when it was written.
For almost 300 years, pocket watches were important accessories for the nobility and middle-classes. In order to store the watches securely and stylishly, artfully designed stands that matched the wearer’s interior were developed and were an impressive reflection of the history of European art and culture from the Baroque to the early 20th-century. The stands ranged from miniature versions of grandfather and mantle clocks to one-off works of art made from wood, ceramic or metal.
Until now, research on pocket-watch stands has attracted little attention. This publication provides a first representative overview of more than 800 objects from a unique private collection in southern Germany, documenting its wealth of designs, which encompass a large repertoire of Christian, mythological and political themes. Scholarly texts on the history of the objects, their designs, and restoration issues make this an indispensable standard work in this field.
Text in English, German and French.
Enzo Mari was an inventor of languages, a constructor of grammars – intended as methods or sets of rules -, deeming these instruments necessary to “communicate knowledge with improved quality and efficiency”.It is impossible to define his discipline or his profession: he is an artist, an industrial designer, a graphic designer, an architect, but also a theorist, a pedagogue, an intellectual, possibly a philosopher, certainly a utopian who knew how to programme quiet revolutions which are, even today, often misunderstood when not totally unknown; these are some of the many facets of a complex and revolutionary personality.
The root of his design methodology, which characterises the process of all the studies he later conducted, originates in his initial research into the field of visual arts, i.e. the research into the perceptual ambiguity of three-dimensional space that he undertook in the early 1950s, when he was still a scenography student at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
What characterises Mari’s design process is a “scientific” method made up of codes, theorems, theses, the construction of tools and instruments, tests, the comparison of models and the transcription of results deriving from his observations.
This volume intend to return to the public a mnemonic atlas, a mapping system that can be used to explore and understand the complex nuances of the research conducted by Mari. Semantic research and verifications that have resulted in the programming of art, and which constitute the basis of the method that defines a process common to all the research, disciplines and utopias he pursued.
Text in English and Italian.
“Generous colour illustrations throughout the book, often full-page, complement her elegant text. As an exhaustive guide to the genre’s evolution in Ireland, it merits warm welcome.” — Apollo Magazine
“…a meticulously researched and beautifully-illustrated publication which is impressively comprehensive in its scope.” — The Irish Times
“Drawn from nature is an illuminating pot-pourri paying tribute to the women and men, few of them professional artists, who have portrayed plants from Ireland and elsewhere since the eighteenth century.” — Archives of Natural History
For centuries, artists of all disciplines have expressed delight in nature through the highly skilled and captivating medium of botanical art.
The distinguished contributions of Irish botanical artists include records of plants from 17th-century Ireland, early illustrated floras and botanical art found in the field of design. Drawn from Nature: The Flowering of Irish Botanical Art also covers the importance of botanical art to the Ordnance Survey of Ireland during the 19th century, as well as the vital plant portraits produced by Irish women. These portraits assisted generations of botanists in understanding and describing the natural world but received scant recognition.
Published for the first time, these outstanding examples of Irish botanical art, from both public and private collections, demonstrate a shared desire by botanical artists to observe, illuminate and record Ireland’s unique flora. This book finally affords them the recognition they deserve.
Blackheath and Greenwich, in the southeast of London, proved to be an unusually fertile ground for modern architecture in the decades following WWII. Housing in particular became the prime field of work for many architecture firms, who designed a large number of residential buildings of various typologies, using new concepts and trying new solutions, inspired by the spirit and political developments of the time.
Modern Buildings in Blackheath and Greenwich is based on an extensive research project by architect Ana Francisco Sutherland. It analyses and celebrates outstanding buildings by well-known architects such as Eric Lyons, Patrick Gwynne, Peter Moro, Walter Greaves, and Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, alongside works by lesser-known firms. A total of 65 individual buildings and housing developments by 38 architects are featured with images, plans, and concise texts.
Sutherland also takes a broader look at the evolution of modern English architecture in the context of social and housing policies of the time. Brief biographical portraits reveal personal connections between protagonists that made Blackheath and Greenwich such an extraordinary field of design experimentation over five decades.
An enclosed map with suggested routes makes the volume also a guide of extraordinary detail for architects and architecture lovers alike.
Learning comes best through experience, even better if children can do it at home. With simple and easy-to-find ingredients, yet safe and highly educative, children will unravel the secrets of science through funny and real practice. Two characters will accompany children in this colourful series: the Professor will teach them the scientific explanation and the Little Robot will guide them in the practice. For each experiment there is also a “mess- o-meter” for parents to know how messy the experiment can be! Scientific explanations follow each experiment, to learn what goes on behind the spectacular effects. Disgusting chemistry, refraction of light, magnetism and optical illusions will have no more secrets! Slime, mould, germs, lights, foam… every child will feel the urge to start experimenting and…learning science! Ages: 8 plus
Learning comes best through experience, even better if children can do it at home. With simple and easy-to-find ingredients, yet safe and highly educative, children will unravel the secrets of science through funny and real practice. Two characters will accompany children in this colourful series: the Professor will teach them the scientific explanation and the Little Robot will guide them in the practice. For each experiment there is also a “mess- o-meter” for parents to know how messy the experiment can be! Scientific explanations follow each experiment, to learn what goes on behind the spectacular effects. Disgusting chemistry, refraction of light, magnetism and optical illusions will have no more secrets! Slime, mould, germs, lights, foam… every child will feel the urge to start experimenting and… learning science! Ages: 8 plus
Learning comes best through experience, even better if children can do it at home. With simple and easy-to-find ingredients, yet safe and highly educative, children will unravel the secrets of science through funny and real practice. Two characters will accompany children in this colourful series: the Professor will teach them the scientific explanation and the Little Robot will guide them in the practice. For each experiment there is also a “mess- o-meter” for parents to know how messy the experiment can be! Scientific explanations follow each experiment, to learn what goes on behind the spectacular effects. Disgusting chemistry, refraction of light, magnetism and optical illusions will have no more secrets! Slime, mould, germs, lights, foam… every child will feel the urge to start experimenting and… learning science! Ages: 8 plus
Learning comes best through experience, even better if children can do it at home. With simple and easy-to-find ingredients, yet safe and highly educative, children will unravel the secrets of science through funny and real practice. Two characters will accompany children in this colourful series: the Professor will teach them the scientific explanation and the Little Robot will guide them in the practice. For each experiment there is also a “mess- o-meter” for parents to know how messy the experiment can be! Scientific explanations follow each experiment, to learn what goes on behind the spectacular effects. Disgusting chemistry, refraction of light, magnetism and optical illusions will have no more secrets! Slime, mould, germs, lights, foam… every child will feel the urge to start experimenting and… learn science. Ages: 8 plus
This book is an extraordinary journey into the universe of wine, a journey of images and words that follows the history of a noble product. Enhanced by the photographs of Fabio Petroni, a master of still-life shots, this book reveals all the facets of wine: its ancient origins, the migration of historic grapevines, the phases of wine production (grape cultivation and harvesting, winemaking, aging and conservation), the principles of wine tasting, and the presentation of the principal wines and winemaking areas on a world level. An important section of the book provides 40 in-depth descriptions of the world’s most prestigious wines–their origin, the organoleptic characteristics, and the best pairings of varietals with certain dishes. Wine Sommelier also illustrates the secrets of cellar management and storage, the rules regarding serving temperature and decanting, and how to read the label and select the right bottle.
“One of the most important books in botanical history” – The Botanist’s Library, Carolyn Fry
“Amazing” – New Scientist
“A book that vividly illustrates why plants remain so endlessly fascinating” – Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland
Seeds are tiny parcels of life, poised to give rise to anything from ephemeral herbs to giant trees that can live for thousands of years. A close look at these tiny miracles of nature through a scanning electron microscope opens up a view into a fascinating and breathtakingly beautiful microcosm few people, even scientists, have ever seen before. The range of sizes, shapes, and patterns plants have evolved over 360 million years to perfect their one and only chance in life to travel is beyond our wildest imagination.
In this astonishing book, artist Rob Kesseler and world-renowned botanist Wolfgang Stuppy, previously of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, present a unique and highly unusual natural history of seeds. The story of how seeds evolved to ensure the survival of their species and how they adapted to their natural environments including the animals they share them with is stunningly illustrated, combining close-up photography with digitally enhanced scanning electron micrographs.
This book not only captivates and enlightens those interested in the natural world, but also will appeal to artists, designers, architects, and everyone else drawing inspiration from the wonderful and endlessly fascinating world in which we live.
Beautiful and moving … Stunning images of our frozen Earth” – New Scientist
We live on a planet where up to a third of the land area is covered by snow and ice during the winter. This frozen world, known as the cryosphere, is captured in all its remarkable beauty by the spectacular photography within this book. Our Frozen Planet is a celebration of these frozen realms, inviting readers to embark upon a stunning photographic journey through the cryosphere.
However, this book also carries a stark warning: although the cryosphere represents a significant component of Planet Earth, it is rapidly declining in response to global warming. The next few generations of humanity will see unprecedented change in ice and snow cover. Now is the time to place on record the magical beauty of such areas.
Experts in their field, authors and photographers Michael Hambrey and Jürg Alean have each studied glaciers for half a century. They have worked in both polar regions, and several of the world’s major mountain ranges. Their work has led them to examine ice and snow on all scales, from the mighty glaciers and ice sheets that still cover ten percent of Earth’s land surface, to frozen puddles and fluffy snow. In this book, they explore how a myriad of snowflakes are transformed into glacier ice, how this then flows under the influence of gravity, and finally disappears through melting. They discuss how glaciers have eroded Earth’s surface to produce some of our most stunning landscapes, and the importance of deposition of debris to the provision of rich soils. They investigate ice in the ocean, on lakes and in rivers, and illustrate the delicate beauty of frost and snow. Finally, they show some of the myriad ways in which plants, animals, and humans interact with the cryosphere.
Replete with breathtaking photography ranging from the tiniest icicle to the most mammoth glacier, this book is a vibrant celebration of this fascinating and breathtaking world in which we live. Our Frozen Planet serves as a reminder of what we are at risk of losing, and, in doing so, gives us the courage to tackle the global climate emergency.
Provenance research for non-Western heritage in Europe is now a must in the field of museum studies and cultural policy studies, yet no scholarly work has scrutinised the collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (Belgium) as a whole.
While the institution’s history and some of its scientific sections or collections have already been investigated, at times in great depth, this book provides new frameworks for interpretation in the light of current debates. Structured around two lines – the heritage field in historical and contemporary Belgo-Congolese contexts, and the more specific case of the Tervuren museum’s collections (which, moreover, are neither solely cultural nor Central African) -, this collection of texts gives a broad overview in the form of recent and previously unpublished research, updated summaries of prior investigations, interviews, and artistic contributions.
The book also explores new trends in provenance research for colonial collections and evaluates both the possibilities and the limitations of such research, its implications for our understanding of colonial history as a whole, and the challenges facing museums today.
Text in English and French.
James VI & I, the only child of Mary, Queen of Scots, has often been overshadowed by the dramatic lives of his mother and son, Charles I. This book seeks to redress the balance by centering the first monarch to reign over both Scotland and England and uncovering the artistic treasures created during his extraordinary reign.
The cultural riches of James’s court are showcased, revealing his diverse roles as ruler, scholar, politician, father and patron of the arts. His court’s passion for jewellery and fine clothes is illustrated in the vivid portraits and miniatures by John de Critz and Nicholas Hilliard – just two of many artists and craftspeople who thrived in its artistic and intellectual climate.
Five richly illustrated chapters demonstrate James’s impact on early modern Britain, while reconsidering the reputation of a king traditionally presented as preferring hunting and drinking to the duties of daily governance. Packed with exquisite art works and sumptuous objects, this book brings James’s court vividly to life.
Petra Rephotographed represents an exploration of time and change across the iconic archaeological city of Petra, Jordan, through repeat photography––meticulously replicating historic images of the landscape and monuments a century later.
In the early 1920s, retired civil engineer Sir Alexander Kennedy set out to explore and photograph the archaeological wonder of Petra, an ancient city of ruins nestled in the striking Jordanian Highlands. Armed only with a field camera of the day, Sir Kennedy captured the Rose Red City’s magnificent features: dramatic stone façades, sweeping vistas, and hewn carvings—shedding light on what was then a mostly untouristed region. One hundred years later, Dr. Kaelin Groom, a noted heritage scientist and geographer with over a decade of experience in Petra, retraces Sir Kennedy’s footsteps with a modern field camera, meticulously rephotographing his 100-year-old images in the contemporary landscape. Studying Petra a century later, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, Dr. Groom visualises the profound resiliency of the indomitable Rose Red City through modern imagery and observes the influence humans have had on the landscape for generations. Petra Rephotographed takes the reader on a historic photographic journey, incorporating meticulously replicated images of the past which help the reader visualise changes and evolution of the archaeological city’s iconic monuments and timeless landscapes.
Summer Blue is a field exploration. The setting is summer, the feeling is blue. Peter H. Waterschoot works his way around romantic scenery using l’heure bleue and blue neon, turning the real into the unreal. More and more exotics pop up, the aesthetic becomes uncanny, and the garden becomes unkempt until it finally blurs into impenetrable wilderness. The quiet voyage reminds us of a theatre backdrop, a midsummer night’s dream, Alice, or even Where the Wild Things Are, but at its core, a personal story lies hidden. The book contains 96 images with field notes by the photographer and an essay by Prof. Jürgen Pieters (Ghent University).
Text in English and French.
Eternal Jewels celebrates the World Jewellery Museum’s 20th anniversary, inviting readers into the poetic vision of founder Lee Kangwon, whose museum is known as the ‘Jewel of Seoul’. Published here for the first time, the book presents extraordinary pieces alongside Lee’s untold stories from her diplomatic travels across four continents.
For Lee Kangwon, a collector and poet, each acquisition represents a spiritual journey transcending borders. The museum’s aesthetic presentation reflects her poetic sensibilities, rooted in Korean traditions of meditation on beauty as a path to spiritual purity. From Colombian emerald mines and Tibetan temples to her family’s royal heirloom jewels, the collection spans centuries and civilisations. Each piece – whether a ceremonial headpiece or intimate talisman – carries profound cultural significance and human connection. Through this carefully curated anthology, Lee fulfills her museum’s mission to spread light full of beauty and wonder through jewellery, creating bridges between cultures, past and present, material and spiritual realms.
Homelessness is one of the most pressing social challenges of our time, and is closely linked to issues of urban design and architecture. Homeless people are part of urban society and depend on accessible public spaces and urban infrastructure. Yet, in cities around the world, local governments use policies and urban planning to ward off street people, aiming at making them invisible in the cityscape and deliberately impeding certain forms of stay. Urban design always reflects power structures—it can exclude or open up avenues for participation.
The Roofless Truth brings together contributions by international researchers and practitioners from the fields of architecture, urban development and design, sociology, ethnology, social work, and education. It offers academic analyses and essays, field reports, and student proposals for interventions in public space, and features award-winning projects and initiatives in Canada, Germany, Iran, Switzerland, and the US.
The book highlights how public spaces should be designed to offer protection, dignity, and opportunities for homeless people, and to facilitate encounters and interaction. The featured examples impressively demonstrate that even the smallest spatial decision can determine inclusion or exclusion. The Roofless Truth paints a multifaceted picture of planning and design as a social practice beyond representation and prestige.
José Bedia: Inner Circle Journey 1976 – 2026 is a rich exploration of the career and work of Cuban artist – José Bedia. From being a formative member of the “Volumen Uno” Cuban art renaissance, Bedia’s international outreach continually grew from the 1980’s onward, reaching worldwide acclaim – spanning from his participation in the monumental exhibit Magiciens de la Terre in 1989 to winning First Prize at the Beijing Biennale in 2010. His unique artistic craft focuses on organic elements, tribal symbology, and shamanism from diverse cultures. Bedia’s work and artistic creations are deeply informed by living and past ancestral communities everywhere and his personal interactions with them, while simultaneously using a “field work” approach of an ethnographer or anthropologist to create his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. Anchored by his 5-decade retrospective at the MARCO Museum of Monterrey, and also accompanied by text from various art scholars, this book will look at his trajectory focusing on his different styles and periods throughout the years, as well as images from his personal travels, and tribal collection, that directly impact his artistic output.
This comprehensive volume recounts the history, daily life, and art of Pompeii, from its origins to the tragic eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Curated by archaeologist Marisa Ranieri Panetta with contributions from field specialists and the Archaeological Superintendencies of Pompeii and Naples, this overview blends scientific rigor with engaging historical narration. Spectacular photography by Araldo De Luca leads readers through streets, frescoed houses, workshops, theatres, and necropolises, capturing the vitality of the buried city and its key role in understanding Roman civilization. This museum-level visual overview is inviting for lovers and learners of archaeology, ancient history, and cultural heritage.
Stunning Visual Representation: Includes exclusive photography by Araldo De Luca of Pompeii’s sites, frescoes, and sculptures.
Wide Appeal of Pompeii: Ideal for lovers of archaeology, Roman history, art, and cultural travel.
Immersive Experience: Allows readers to explore Pompeii in depth, beyond the typical tourist experience, and reveals daily life, architecture and the human stories of the buried city.
The Prague City Gallery (founded on 1 May 1963) is one of the key exhibition and collecting institutions in the Czech Republic; it manages approximately 16,000 items dating from the 19th to the 21st century. Today, its role is much broader than has traditionally been customary for institutions of this kind.
Among its additional responsibilities is the care of the buildings entrusted to it, many of which are heritage properties of the highest quality. It also plays an important role in the field of education, organising around 900 programmes each year for children, young people, teachers, senior citizens, and people with special needs.
In 2026, Magdalena Juříková will conclude her tenure as Director. This publication serves both as a reflection on an important period in the gallery’s history and as a personal perspective on the shaping of its current identity.
Magazine La Biennale di Venezia 3/26 Pandemonium is the third issue of 2026 of La Biennale di Venezia Magazine, which resumed publication in October 2024 after 53 years of editorial silence.
Released to coincide with the opening of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, this issue brings together contributions not only from scholars, scientists, and artists, but also from film directors and professionals working across the cinematic field. La Biennale’s many disciplines – visual arts, architecture, dance, music, theatre, and cinema – engage in a “pandemonium” of original and exclusive contributions by leading international figures.
The issue examines the age we are living in: the age of parody. For centuries, humanity’s confrontation with pain and injustice gave rise to symbolic forms capable of processing the tragic. Today, however, this mechanism appears to have broken down. The tragic is no longer worked through but suspended and neutralised, transformed into a consumable surface; the sacred is imitated and inverted; language is emptied of meaning and stripped of responsibility. This is parody: not irony or playfulness, but the systematic reduction of reality to surface, the dissipation of meaning. “I am the spirit that always wills the good and always works the evil”: this line from Goethe’s Faust captures the contemporary logic of a world that presents itself as oriented towards the good while consistently producing the opposite.
Conceived and produced exclusively in print, the Magazine stands out for its plurality of languages and freedom of expression, fostering graphic experimentation and the cross-pollination of different forms and codes. Its extensive iconographic apparatus – largely drawn from the Historical Archive of La Biennale di Venezia and from photographic research conducted both nationally and internationally – is one of the publication’s defining features.
Among the contributors to issue 3/26 are Francesco Artibani, Davide Catenacci, Giacomo Biffi, Francesco Bonami, Gian Piero Brunetta, Maurizio Cattelan, Carolina Cavalli, Sara Cosulich, Maurizio Crippa, Rossana Dedola, Nathalie Djurberg, Declan Donnellan, Bruno Forzani, Cesare Bisantis, Gelitin/Gelatin, Carsten Höller, Francesca Amé, John Landis, Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, Alberto Manguel, Diego Marcon, Flavia Fossa Margutti, Flavia Mastrella, Fabrizio Porcella, Antonio Rezza, Debora Rossi, Julian Sasha, Mariagrazia Pontorno, Carlo Sini, Bernard Tschumi, Giovanni Damiani, Jan Zwicky, Davide Brullo.
The cover features a still from François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1966).
The graphic design and layout are by Studio Tomo Tomo, Milan.
Text in English and Italian.
“a well-written, well-referenced and well-illustrated book. It provides a valuable addition to the literature and our understanding of a previously little-researched facet of the industrial midlands” British Art Journal
“Cataloguers now have an impressive volume of new information to draw on when describing anything from a simple tea tray to those suites of papier mâché furniture which remain as impressive today as when they dazzled visitors at the great international exhibitions of the 19th century” Antiques Trade Gazette
As one of the few decorative arts about which little has been written, japanning is today fraught with misunderstandings. And yet, in its heyday, the japanning industry attracted important commissions from prestigious designers such as Robert Adam, and orders from fashionable society across Europe and beyond. This book is a long overdue history of the industry which centred on three towns in the English midlands: Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Bilston. It is as much about the workers, their skills, and the factories and workshops in which they laboured, as it is about the goods they made. It tells of matters of taste and criticism, and of how an industry which continued to rely so heavily upon hand labour in the machine age reached its natural end in the 1880s with a few factories lingering into the late 1930s. Richly illustrated, it includes photographs of mostly marked, or well-documented, examples of japanned tin and papier mâché against which readers may compare – and perhaps identify – unmarked specimens. Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware draws predominantly upon contemporary sources: printed, manuscript and typescript documents, and, for the period leading up to the closure of the last factories in the 1930s, the author was able to draw on verbal accounts of eyewitnesses. With a chapter on japanners in London, other European centres, and in the United States, together with a directory of japan artists and decorators, this closely researched and comprehensive book is the reference work for collectors, dealers and enthusiasts alike. Contents: From Imitation to Innovation; Enter the Dragon!; The Lion of the District; Japanning & Decorating; Not a Bed of Roses!; Clever Accidents?; Decline of the Midlands Japanning Industry; The Birmingham Japanners; The Wolverhampton Japanners; The Bilston Japanners; Japanners in London and Oxford; Products; Other Western Japanning Centres; Appendices.