A timely book on a once underrated French wine region. Natasha Hughes MW guides readers through the region, demonstrating that there is as much to get excited about in Burgundy’s southernmost outpost as there is in the north. The growing prices of wines from northern Burgundy have put them out of the reach of many wine lovers and attention has turned instead to Beaujolais, where food-friendly wines with freshness and perfume can be found in increasing number. As the wines have become fashionable, producers from outside of Beaujolais have been drawn to the region, leading to further investment in producing quality wines.
Hughes begins with a brief history of Beaujolais, examining how the region came to focus on red wines and why Gamay is the only red grape grown there. She charts the rise and fall of Beaujolais Noveau and examines the parts played by negociants and boutique producers as well as looking at the growing importance of natural wine for the region.
An entertaining visual journey through the most iconic cocktail parties, with nostalgic black and white images and vibrant colour photos of celebrities, entertainers and models in luxurious settings. With chapters on destinations, people, fashion and art & design, this book delves into the world of cocktail culture, showcasing dazzling nightlife, sumptuous pool parties and opulent yacht events. An additional section with classic cocktail recipes provides plenty of inspiration for your own party.
High-quality photography captures the essence of a fascinating lifestyle full of beauty and prestige.
“A new sort of literary gumption arrived on the scene with Andrew Jefford; a powerful blend of science and poetry. Here is a writer who does his interviews, delves deep into motives and methods, and then lets fly with whatever imagery he finds winging by.” Hugh Johnson (2019)
Poet, philosopher, author, radio presenter and journalist, Andrew Jefford lives in France; but buried deep in one wine country what does he miss most about the rest? The answer: “Drinking young port. It’s the wine drinker’s equivalent of zorbing, wing-walking, base-jumping … you won’t fully understand it unless you have tasted it young, in its ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ stage, when it comes hurtling out of the glass and puts the screamers on you…”
Andrew is the ideal companion for anyone wine-curious. In this collection of his essays, opinions and articles he shares his fascinating observations from half a century of discovery. For Andrew, wine should be listened to and admired, wherever it comes from; old-school pretensions turned on their head; style-points disdained; stellar prices dismissed; questions asked…
Great sports figures are the modern equivalent of heroes. An history of sport is necessarily a story of individuals: tales of redemption and emancipation from modest upbringings, stories of sacrifice and success. Each volume of WATCH, We are the champions, the new series from Officina Libraria, will narrate the history of a sport through 30 engaging biographies of its great champions. And since the publishing house is specialised in high-quality illustrated books, the riveting stories written by Giorgio Martignoni are illustrated by the masterful hand of Roberto Ronchi, in a colourful explosion of energy, icons of those magic moments in sports, from the goal that assigns a Champions League in the last minutes to the climb on the famous Alpe d’Huez, from the three-pointer that decides a collegiate championship to the knockout hook of a boxing match. The biographies of thirty great champions are exciting as a run toward the goal posts, they keep you holding your breath as in those seconds that precede a penalty kick, and in each of them there is a curious aspect, an heroic moment and a touch of poetry. The books starts with the great footballers of the pre-war era, such as Sindelar and Meazza, to finish with today’s idols, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and those of all the champions that have gifted us with those unforgettable moments, at the stadium or in front of the small screen. Who doesn’t remember Pele or Maradona? Who has never heard of George Best or Cruyff? Beckenbauer or Jascin?
The Brothers Grimm collected some of Europe’s most popular folk tales, immortalising stories whose origin goes way back in time. This book, with beautiful watercolours by the imaginative illustrator Francesca Rossi, gathers ten of their most famous and magical works. Children will love meeting such favourite characters as Cinderella, the Brementown musicians, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Ages: 6 plus.
This volume, edited by Antonio Aimi and Antonio Guarnotta, offers a new, up-to-date study of the most important cultures of Mesoamerica and of the Peruvian Area, through magnificent artefacts held by the MIC (Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza) and various other Italian museums. The cultures of the Aztecs, Mayas, Incas and other populations of ancient America are analysed in light of the most recent archaeological and ethnohistorical research. Themes of prime importance are examined in depth: the conquest of America as seen from the point of view of the conquered, the status of women, the systems of calculation of ancient Peru, and pre-Columbian art presented as art, not only as archaeology.
Text in English and Italian.
Anyone that has a cat will recognise the truth of this tender biography by The Gentle Author.
“I was always disparaging of those who doted over their pets, as if this apparent sentimentality were an indicator of some character flaw. That changed when I bought a cat, just a couple of weeks after the death of my father.”
Filled with sentiment yet never sentimental, The Life & Times of Mr Pussy is a literary hymn to the intimate relationship between humans and animals.
Traditional thought fused with modern science when Hiroshima’s nuclear annihilation on August 6, 1945, proved the interdependence of space and time. Since the war, Japanese architects have probed the relativity of spacetime through critical debates, pivotal theories, and consequential buildings. The Hypospace of Japanese Architecture pushes past clichés of an exotic Japan to confront the modernity of an island nation whose habit of importing foreign ideas is less about assimilation than transformation, less a process of indigenisation than one of cultural invention. The realisation that buildings are dynamic events — phenomena of space-in-time, not inert objects outside time — continues to inform Japanese architecture and suggests how we can rethink the history, theory, and practice of architecture more generally.
The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide series is written in collaboration with Club Oenologique, with comprehensive listings of restaurants, hotels, cafés and bars, points of wider cultural interest such as art galleries and museums, which wineries you can visit, how to read a Swiss wine list, Swiss winemakers’ favourite restaurants and more.
Building Community: The Work of Eskew+Dumez+Ripple celebrates the 25th anniversary of the New Orleans-based firm. Eskew+Dumez+Ripple believes that a building is an expression of both the process by which design decisions are made, and the program to which the building must adhere its size, function, and context, as well as cost and construction time. The text will trace the development of EDR s progressive architecture practice operating in the deeply traditional American Gulf South, and discuss the rich architectural heritage of both New Orleans and surrounding regions. Eskew+Dumez+Ripple is a design-driven studio which produces diverse projects in architecture and planning by blending a signature collaborative process with professional talent, creative thinking and emerging technologies. Based in New Orleans, the firm uses the cultural and architectural heritage of the city as a platform for a practice of national range and recognition. The result is a vibrant portfolio that includes aquariums, research laboratories, marine facilities, interpretative centers and museums as well as office buildings, academic and health care facilities. Five Firm Directors lead the studio of professionals, promoting design excellence, efficient project delivery, and mastery of technical construction systems. We advocate environmental sustainability, elegant craftsmanship of materials and spirited collaboration with each one of their clients.
The Bauhaus was distinguished neither by function nor by use but rather by symbolism. Whether square, triangle, or circle; whether Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s lamp, Oskar Schlemmer’s ‘Kopf’ (head), or white cubes with flat roofs: the Bauhaus created iconic visual symbols and a style that is neither functional nor social but visually striking.
Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, from the outset sought to develop the school into a brand – and he succeeded. More than eight decades after its forced closure, the Bauhaus is more present than ever before in consumerism, politics, and culture alike. It has become a participative brand that escapes centralised control entirely. It has been, and continues to be, forged collectively by countless designers, manufacturers, and consumers. Yet its founders’ initial pledge for functionality and social commitment remains unfulfilled.
In this book, Philipp Oswalt, former director of Foundation Bauhaus Dessau, explores the development of the Bauhaus brand and its use around the world, illustrated with some 950 images that highlight the vast range of Bauhaus appearances from a century.
Pieter Brugel the Elder – Fall of the Rebel Angels argues that many of the hybrid falling angels are carefully composed of naturalia and artificialia, as they were collected in art and curiosity cabinets of the time. Bruegel’s much noted emulation of Hieronymus Bosch was thus only part of his wider interest in collecting, inspecting, and imitating the artistic and natural world around him. This prompts an examination of the world at the time that Bruegel painted the Fall of the Rebel Angels, locally, in the urban and courtly centres of Antwerp and Brussels on the eve of the Dutch revolt, and globally, as the discovery of the New World irreversibly transformed the European perception of art and nature. Painted as a tale of hubris and pride, Bruegel’s masterpiece becomes a meditation on the potential and danger of man’s pursuit of art, knowledge and politics, a universal theme that has lost nothing of its power today.
Despite its consistent presence in architectural practice throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, collage has never been considered a standard form of architectural representation like drafting, model making, or sketching. The work of Marshall Brown, an architect and artist, demonstrates the power of collage as an architectural medium. In Brown’s view, collage changes the terms of architectural authorship and challenges outdated definitions of originality.
Published in conjunction with the exhibition The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the book features some forty collages by Marshall Brown. These works come from four of his collage series, including Chimera, Je est un autre, as well as the previously unpublished Prisons of Invention and Piranesian Maps of Berlin. Additionally, there are photographs of Ziggurat, an outdoor sculpture with a design based on a collage from Chimera. The full-color plates are supplemented with essays by critic and curator Aaron Betsky, scholar of art history and archaeology Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s curator James Glisson, and Marshall Brown that outline the conceptual foundations of Brown’s intriguing exploration of an intersection of architecture and art.
The 500 Hidden Secrets of Rome helps you set out to discover the most attractive, fun and unique places in Italy’s capital. Luisa Grigoletto and Christopher Livesay share 500 addresses and facts that many tourists don’t know, sometimes off the beaten track, but always loved by the locals and worth a visit.
This book lists, among other things, the 5 best gelaterías, the 5 most beautiful historic shops, 5 breathtaking palazzi which played an important role in art history and 5 sites where major Italian films were shot. It is the perfect book for those who wish to discover the city, but avoid all the usual tourist haunts, as well as for residents who are keen to track down the city’s best-kept secrets.
The magazine for classic and contemporary nude photography returns with a vibrant compilation of the most beautiful works from the field of the most intimate form of portrait photography. In selecting the works, it was important to the editor Matthias Straub to curate a bridge between the traditional approach to the human body and new, unusual perspectives. In the current edition, there are therefore both abstract works and also very classical nude studies. The familiar structuring of the magazine into the five acts of the opera, according to Gustav Freytag, guides viewers through the photos selected as a content-related leitmotiv.
In 2014, Xu Tiantian, founder of Beijing-based studio Design and Architecture (DnA) began to work in Songyang County, in China’s Zhejiang Province. Her exemplary holistic planning concept of Architectural Acupuncture, which has gained the support of local administrative and political leadership, aims at revitalising rural areas and comprises the renovation of production plants and of tourist and technical infrastructure as well as the creation of venues for culture and education and of social housing. Each of Xu’s small-scale interventions at local level is unique, only the small budget is common to all of them. Moreover, they are all inter-related with each other and in their entirety serve the broader goal of mutual enhancement.
This book introduces Xu’s concept of Architectural Acupuncture and discusses the influence of architecture on cultural self-understanding and economic renewal in 21st-century rural China. It features some 20 new buildings and conversions of existing structures with diverse functions. Published alongside are essays by international economists, sociologists, and curators as well as by the secretary of the Songyang County Party Committee, examining the social, political, and economic implications of sustainable planning and collective action in the Chinese province.
All-round artist Kamagurka started his career as a cartoonist for the Belgian magazine HUMO. Soon after, his multi-talented, discernable style, razor-sharp pen and absurdist humour attracted the attention of other media, resulting in worldwide exposure in newspapers and magazines including NRC Handelsblad, Playboy, Esquire| (the Netherlands); Charlie Hebdo, Hara Kiri (France); Squibb, The Spectator, Deadpan (UK); Titanic, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Zitty, Eulenspiegel (Germany); Die Presse (Austria); The New Yorker, National Lampoon, RAW (USA) and many more. Kamagurka wrote and acted in several radio, television and theatre shows, often performing alongside Herr Seele, his lifelong partner in crime. Next to that Kamagurka released more than 25 comic books, from Bert and Bobje to Cowboy Henk. The Holy Kama is a best of, compiling over 1000 cartoons from this master of absurdity. The Holy Kama is an unholy bible, an indispensable on every Kama devotee’s bedside table. Also available: Kamarama ISBN: 9789058564078
In 2005, to mark the first anniversary of the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean that took so many lives, the BBC commissioned Tew Bunnag, along with other authors from the affected countries, to write a short story to be broadcast on Radio 4. Tew wrote the moving Lek and Mrs. Miller. Exceptionally well-received he decided to write a collection of stories surrounding the Tsunami. These were inspired by his experiences working in the South of Thailand for an NGO helping and talking to those who were suffering from the aftermath, and who suffered the devastation at first hand and dealing with the loss of their families and friends, as well as, in some cases, their livelihoods. Though their themes are tied to the tragedy that took place the stories touch on universal issues that go beyond the actual event such as loss, recovery and continuation after a tragedy. The collection, published to commemorate the tsunami in 2004, is a deeply moving and poignant read for all contemporary fiction readers.
With vivid memories of his first visit to the Scottish National Gallery in the 1970s and his initial encounter with Hugo van der Goes’ The Trinity Altarpiece, Rembrandt’s A Woman in Bed, Velázquez’s An Old Woman Cooking Eggs and Degas’ Diego Martelli, Robert Storr discusses the shifting balance of museum collections from historically ‘certified’ classics to art whose status and significance remains in active contention and from singular ‘treasures’ to ensembles that speak to the larger scope of an artist’s endeavour. Also available: Unfinished Paintings: Narratives of the Non-Finito Watson Gordon Lecture 2014 ISBN 9781906270919 ‘The Hardest Kind of Archetype’: Reflections on Roy Lichtenstein The Watson Gordon Lecture 2010 ISBN 9781906270384 Picasso’s ‘Toys for Adults’ Cubism as Surrealism: The Watson Gordon Lecture 2008 ISBN 9781906270261 Sound, Silence, and Modernity in Dutch Pictures of Manners The Watson Gordon Lecture 2007 ISBN 9781906270254 Roger Fry’s Journey From the Primitives to the Post-Impressionists: Watson Gordon Lecture 2006 ISBN 9781906270117
This book details how copies of Indonesian batik, manufactured in Europe and initially intended for the South-East Asian market, enjoyed unexpected success on the west coast of Africa at the end of the 19th century. The Scottish merchant Brown Fleming introduced the first wax-printed batik imitations made by Prévinaire and produced in the Netherlands, and adapted them to the tastes of African customers.
New research based on Dutch, English and Swiss archives has enabled us not only to reconstruct the earliest collections, but also to provide an overview of the development of Dutch wax in Europe from its beginnings to the last surviving company, Vlisco, in Helmond (Netherlands), which still prints these classics today.
This book will be the first to focus on the history of wax for West Africa in the various European countries from its beginnings to the present day, drawing of course on existing literature, but above all on primary sources.
Coco Chanel revolutionised the fashion world with her timeless style that combined elegance and comfort. She was known for liberating women from the restrictive dresses of the time and offering them a new, more modern silhouette. Chanel bags are among the fashion house’s most important creations, especially the Chanel 2.55, which was launched in February 1955. This bag was one of the first to feature a shoulder strap, which made it particularly practical.
The Chicken came first, now there is Egg: the second book in the On the Menu series. Egg is a universal product, prepared around the world. It is versatile and affordable, can be found in all cultures and has endless applications. Yet you can use it in very original ways. Luc Hoornaert has collected 60 recipes from his travels around the world. What are the classics? How do other cultures use egg in the kitchen? How do top chefs make dishes based on eggs? This book reveals all. Also available: Chicken on the Menu ISBN 9789401437714
This book guides young readers on a quest for fascinating and unforgettable fantasy creatures through the diary of a young apprentice who studies information, legends and details. Two sections dedicated to the Creatures for Beginner Keepers (the most docile and sweet) and the Creatures for Expert Keepers (the most dangerous). Short, fun, approachable stories that describe each creature and explain how to catch sight of it, how to tame it and what makes it angry at the end of the story, the readers will find a short test, similar to the one the book’s narrator must take, so that they’ll get their Certificate of Fantastic Creatures Keeper, that children can detach from the book and fill. Ages: 7 plus