New York, New York – a crazy quilt of evolving neighbourhoods, trends, and tastes, and home to natives and newcomers of every nationality, ethnicity, and outlook. New York City’s history and grand ambitions live in every street, park, and hidden alleyway. This unusual guidebook invites the adventurous and curious to explore a wildly diverse selection of little-known places, including: a trapeze school, a giant Buddha in a former porno theatre, a Coney Island sideshow, Louis Armstrong’s home, a Central Park croquet court, a Gatsby-era speakeasy, and a secret balcony where slaves worshiped 200 years ago. Play chess with the masters on a Midtown office-tower wall; have a pint at a legendary prizefighter’s hangout in Soho; whisper messages across a crowded train station. Unexpected and quirky, most of these destinations are so under-the-radar they will astound even longtime New Yorkers who thought they knew it all!
Revised and updated edition.
If you really want to get to know Washington, DC, you have to go out and get walking. Beyond the bounty of the National Mall and well-known historic sites, DC is a vibrant city full of unusual places, stories, and experiences that both avid and casual urban explorers will want to seek out.
DC insiders and adventurers Paige Muller and Andrea Seiger take you on 22 self-guided walks that blend the city’s rich history and vibrant culture, with some dishy tidbits thrown in for good measure. You’ll discover lesser-known facts behind popular icons and uncover wonderful spots, often hiding in plain sight.
There is a secret royal connection that lurks in an upper Northwest neighbourhood, and a historic building that stands in for the White House in multiple Hollywood movies. See if you can spot the hidden graffiti on a well-known memorial. Discover what inspired Kate Winslet’s famous pose on the Titanic’s bow. And find out all about the Civil War officer whose missing leg is allegedly entombed in a wall.
Graffiti Blackbook: Process, Letters, and Control is a focused, in-depth look at the working methods of Dutch artist DOES, one of the world’s leading contemporary graffiti writers and a former professional footballer who came through the youth academy and first team at Fortuna Sittard.
Combining sketchbooks, finished works, and direct commentary from the artist, the book breaks down how his lettering is built, from early ideas to large-scale walls. It looks closely at process, technique, and decision-making: how compositions are structured, how colour is used, and how precision and energy are balanced in practice. The discipline shaped by football runs quietly through the book, adding another layer to DOES’s evolution from writer to internationally recognised artist.
Part visual archive, part practical study, this is a rare insight into how a distinct visual language is developed, refined, and sustained over time.
In 2016, ‘The Crystal Ship’ docked in the Belgian coastal city of Ostend. The street art festival quickly grew to become the largest in Europe. Eleven years on, the list of participating artists is long and impressive. ROA, Jaune, David Shrigley, Broken Fingaz, Aryz, Escif – almost every big name in the world of public art now adorns a façade or wall in Ostend. This book provides a chronological overview of all the artworks still on display (almost 100!) and features interviews with eleven artists, one for each year: 2016: Guido van Helten; 2017: Strook; 2018: Erin Holly; 2019: Escif; 2020: Helen Bur; 2021: Medianeras; 2022: Broken Fingaz; 2023: Jaune; 2024: Marina Capdevila; 2025: Megan; 2026: Zenith.
Text in English and Dutch.
111 Places Along the Tyne and Wear Metro That You Shouldn’t Miss takes readers beyond the region’s famous landmarks, from Hadrian’s Wall to the iconic Tyne Bridge, and reveals the stories that make Tyne and Wear unique. Following the Metro’s 60 stations, this guide uncovers incredible tales of local characters, from eccentric residents and wild Victorian industrialists to imprisoned kings and missing bones. Readers can discover bizarre follies and hidden histories: the miner who dynamited a cave home into a cliffside to avoid paying rent, the warren of tunnels built beneath Newcastle in just two years, and the Wearside links to American independence. They can visit a Greek-style temple outside Sunderland, the site of the first incandescent lightbulb demonstration, the world’s oldest operating railway, atmospheric monasteries, haunted castles, historic waggonways and the secrets of Tyneside’s seaside towns. From city to coast — and even a vampire rabbit — every place is reachable by Metro.
“Moonwatch Only is certainly one of the best books ever written about a single watch model.” – William Massena – Timezone.com
“It is an indescribable reference work and a true must-have for every Speedmaster collector.” – Forbes
“This book sets a new standard. Not only for books on the Omega Speedmaster, but for watch books in general. I’ve never seen anything like it, and believe me when I tell you that I could fill an impressive sized wall with books on watches. Authors of other books or publishers should take a look at Moonwatch Only as well to see how it should be done.” – Robert Jan Broer – FratelloWatches
“The OMEGA Speedmaster Professional – the Moonwatch – has done things that no other timepiece has done and it’s been worn in places that only a few human beings have been.” – Captain Eugene Cernan, ‘Last man on the moon’
There are very few timepieces in the world that deserve a definitive and comprehensive book such as this one. The OMEGA Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch is one of them. Initially designed for automobile racing teams and engineers, the Omega Speedmaster embarked on a very different trajectory when NASA chose it to accompany astronauts heading for the Moon in 1965. Its involvement in the space adventure has propelled the Moonwatch to the top of the list of celebrated timepieces. After years of research and observation, the authors present a complete panorama of the Moonwatch in a systematic work that is both technical and attractive, making it the inescapable reference book for this legendary watch. This fourth edition has been enriched with much new material and illustrations.
VIVID by Joke Raes is an immersive exploration of the dynamic relationship between art, nature, and human perception. Drawing on organic forms and natural motifs, Raes creates tactile, large-scale installations that blur the boundaries between sculpture, drawing, and environment. The works in VIVID invite viewers into a contemplative space, revealing hidden layers of colour, texture, and form while reflecting on humanity’s impact on natural ecosystems. Utilising re-appropriated materials and intuitive gestures, Raes constructs visual narratives that evoke both wonder and introspection. The book accompanies her eponymous exhibition at Zebrastraat, Ghent, presenting her oeuvre across two floors of expansive installations, including wall sculptures, delicate figures, and immersive environments. Richly illustrated, VIVID captures the interplay of light, material, and organic shapes, offering readers an intimate encounter with Raes’ vision. An essay contextualises her practice within contemporary environmental art, emphasising her unique ability to harmonise human creativity with ecological awareness. VIVID is essential for collectors, curators, and enthusiasts of contemporary visual culture, sculpture, and ecological art.
Text in English and Dutch.
This volume unveils the refined artistry of Jiangnan gardens through an in-depth exploration of Yangzhou’s Ho Family Garden. Featuring captivating photography, delicate sketches, and rare archival images, it traces how the garden’s unique architecture—its layered walkways, wall-backed rockeries, and harmonious synthesis of northern grandeur, southern elegance, and subtle Western influences—emerges from the local cultural heritage and aesthetic traditions. Blending visual richness with scholarly insight, the book rediscovers the often-overlooked cultural values and the profound, place-specific wisdom embedded within this landscape. Organised around the engaging framework of “stories, routes, and appreciation,” it invites readers to wander its pages. Ideal for landscape architects, garden enthusiasts, cultural scholars, and travellers, this journey reveals why Ho Garden is celebrated as a pinnacle of late Qing dynasty garden design and an enduring jewel of Chinese horticultural art.
Text in English and Mandarin.
A great American novelist, illustrated by a great American artist – now available in a collectable two-volume set.
In 1936, the Heritage Press, a publisher of fine editions, commissioned Norman Rockwell to illustrate Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer; four years later, they asked him to illustrate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well. For each book, Rockwell created eight full-colour paintings and numerous pen-and-ink drawings, the product of extensive on-the-ground research in Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. Famously, Rockwell even tried to buy some Hannibal residents’ old clothes, to dress his models in.
For years, the Rockwell editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have been unavailable in stores. Now, Abbeville Press is proud to reissue them as a handsome new clothbound set. The colour plates are reproduced from new photography of Rockwell’s original paintings, the typesetting has been done anew to a high standard, and new introductions – illustrated with Rockwell’s rarely seen preliminary sketches – examine this unique encounter between two legendary chroniclers of America.
Also available: Treasure Island and Kidnapped boxed set ISBN 9780789214089
The National Galleries Barberini and Corsini contain paintings and sculptures of exceptional historical and artistic value. Page after page, through the masterpieces of many of the greatest Italian artists from the Middle Ages to the 18th century (Angelico, Raphael, Piero di Cosimo, Bronzino, Lotto, Tintoretto, Cortona, Caravaggio, Bernini, Reni, Guercino, Batoni, Canaletto) the reader can follow the development of art history. The collections also include artwork by Holbein, Murille and Van Dyck, besides a few antique pieces. In addition to the 100 entries, there are descriptions of particularly important elements that are part of the palaces’ architecture, such as Borromini’s spiral staircase, Bernini’s main staircase and the huge ceiling frescoed by Pietro da Cortona.
This is the story of the Reeves Collection of botanical paintings, the result of one man’s single-minded dedication to commissioning pictures and gathering plants for the Horticultural Society of London. Reeves went to China in 1812 and immediately on arrival started sending back snippets of information about manufactures, plants and poetry, goods, gods and tea to Sir Joseph Banks. Slightly later, he also started collecting for the Society but despite years of work collecting, labelling and packing plants and organising a team of Chinese artists until he left China in 1831, Reeves never enjoyed the same degree of recognition as other naturalists in China. This was possibly because he had a demanding job as a tea inspector. Reeves himself never claimed to be a professional naturalist and the plant collecting and painting supervision were undertaken in his own time. Furthermore, fan qui (foreign devils) were restricted to the port area of Canton and to Macau, so that plant-hunting expeditions further afield were impossible. Furthermore, Reeves never published an account of his life in the country, unlike Clarke Abel and Robert Fortune, but he left us some letters, notebooks, drawings and maps. The Collection is held at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library in Vincent Square, London. It is a magnificent achievement. Not only are the pictures accurate and richly coloured plant portraits of plants then unknown in the West, but they stand as a record of plants being cultivated in nineteenth-century Canton and Macau. In John Reeves: Pioneering Collector of Chinese Plants and Botanical Art, Kate Bailey reveals John Reeves’ life as an East India Company tea inspector in nineteenth-century China and shows how he managed to collect and document thousands of Chinese natural history drawings, far more than anyone else at the time.
Davide Balliano (Turin, IT 1983) is an artist whose research operates on the thin line of demarcation between painting and sculpture. Utilising an austere, minimal language of abstract geometries in strong dialogue with architecture, his work investigates existential themes such as the identity of man in the age of technology and his relationship with the sublime.
Through a practice that is self-described as monastic, austere and concrete, Balliano’s meticulous paintings appear, upon first glance, clean and precise. However, closer inspection reveals scrapes and scratches that uncover the organic wooden surface underneath the layers of paint, as a decaying façade of abandoned modernistic intentions.
In addition to painting, Davide Balliano is also known for his sculptural work, which translates the visual vocabulary found in his paintings into solid objects, often in stainless steel or ceramic.
The volume, which offers a wide selection of works that offer a complete overview of his production, contains a conversation between Osman Can Yerebakane and the artist, and a critical text by Michele Robecchi.
Text in English and Italian.
Although Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610) painted on an almost miniature scale and died very young from, it was said, the overwork that resulted from the intensity of his methods, his paintings remain some of the most strangely poetical in the history of Western art. They were also extremely influential: Elsheimer’s often recondite subject matter, his astonishing ability to render night scenes, his uniquely lyrical use of landscape deeply affected generations of artists; one of the first to fall under his spell was Rubens. Most of what we know about Elsheimer’s life and sadly curtailed career comes from the biographies reprinted in this volume, which also includes personal reminiscences by friends and other painters. Unavailable for many years, these writings bring Elsheimer’s extraordinary art to life. A new introduction by Claire Pace sets the paintings and these writings into the context of their times.
Wolfgang Beltracchi is a phenomenon of the international art world. His name is inextricably entwined with one of the greatest upheavals in the global art market. Emulating numerous world-famous artists, he developed and painted new paintings, continued their narrations and biography, and concluded them with a forged signature. His wife Helene Beltracchi then smuggled them onto the art market. Many experts were deceived by Beltracchi’s stupendous skill and auctioneers cast many doubts aside in the interests of insatiable market demand, selling the paintings as authentic works by the purported artists.
Reading the artistic handwriting of a painting requires an exceptional willingness and ability to be able to empathise and identify with the artist, until you “can feel what the other feels” (Wolfgang Beltracchi). Through extensive discussions with the painter and his wife, the psychoanalyst Jeannette Fischer explored this capability that is so pronounced for Beltracchi. In her new book, she places this in relation to the disappearance of Beltracchi’s own signature. As with her previous highly successful book about the performance artist Marina Abramović, Jeannette Fischer has created an exceptionally insightful portrait of a fascinating artist personality.
In this lavishly produced volume, authors Virginia and Lee McAlester explore outstanding landmark houses that exemplify America’s major architectural and interior design styles from Colonial times to the mid-20th century. These 25 houses are illustrated with more than 350 specially commissioned full-colour photographs of interior and exterior views, 125 black-and-white line drawings and floor plans, historical paintings, and vintage photographs.
The text not only discusses the houses architectural innovations and design elements but also profiles the architects and their clients. The featured houses were built by many of the country’s leading architects – from Alexander Jackson Davis, Richard Morris Hunt, Henry Hobson Richardson, and McKim, Mead and White to Frank Lloyd Wright, the Greene brothers, and Walter Gropius – and owned by some of its most celebrated citizens, including Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Jay Gould, the Guggenheim’s, the Phippses’, and the Vanderbilt’s. As a result, the book is as much a cultural history as it is an architectural study. The authors also include an informative discussion of each style as it can be seen in vernacular versions around the country.
Located all over the United States, most of the featured houses are open to the public, and the book provides their addresses and other helpful information for visitors. Great American Houses and Their Architectural Styles will be irresistible to all house lovers, architects, and designers, and will give readers a deeper understanding and appreciation of our rich architectural heritage
“This beautifully produced book will be inspiring to botanical artists and all those who are captivated by the orchid.” — Leisure Painter
“Through these paintings, stories of high stakes orchid breeding and exhibiting are explored, with a cast of characters who helped shape the horticultural world we know today, alongside the dedicated artists who still support their endeavours.” — Lovely Books
Orchids have long held a place of esteem and fascination in the horticultural world. In the 19th century, orchid collecting reached new fanatical heights, with explorers dispatched to every corner of the globe in search of new varieties that could be auctioned at extravagant prices, and orchids are still one of the most popular flowers to breed and buy to this day. These beautiful, diverse flowers are one of the two largest families of flowering plants, with over 30,000 species and over 181,500 hybrids and cultivars.
The RHS Orchid Committee have commissioned watercolours of over 7,000 award-winning hybrids that demonstrate particular value in their fabulous array of colours, patterns, sizes and shapes. Through these paintings, stories of high stakes orchid breeding and exhibiting are explored, with a cast of characters who helped shape the horticultural world we know today, alongside the dedicated artists who still support their endeavours.
In Venice, on the Grand Tour in 1731, the future fourth Duke of Bedford met with the great art agent, Consul Joseph Smith. The commission he placed resulted in 24 of the greatest and most typical works of Canaletto. First installed in Bedford House London, they were moved to their splendid position in the Dining Room at Woburn in 1800, where they have remained ever since. Fully illustrated with many details, this publication marks the first time these paintings have been reproduced in colour. An extensive introduction by the leading Canaletto scholar Charles Beddington puts these works into perspective.
Larry Poons (b. 1937) shot to fame while still in his twenties, on the strength of his “dot paintings,” in which dots or ellipses were meticulously arranged on brightly coloured fields, creating a rhythmic, pulsating effect. But within a few years, Poons first loosened the hard-edged precision of the dot paintings and then abandoned them entirely for an organic mode of abstraction based on vertical drips of flung paint. This marked the beginning of an uncompromising five-decade evolution that has finally led the artist back to a more intimate mode of painting with brushes — and his own hands. At every stage, Poons’s career has compelled the attention of critics and, in particular, other artists.
This handsome volume, the first full-length biocritical monograph on Poons, reproduces more than 140 of his most important works in full colour, some as spectacular gatefolds. The incisive text — a collaboration between four leading critics and historians — traces the development of the artist’s extraordinary career. Larry Poons is a necessary addition to the library of anyone with an interest in American art.
Path of Gold traces the significance and use of gold as an art historical phenomenon, from early cultures to the present day. In periods of fundamental shifts in value and spiritual reorientation, gold appears consistently as a meaningful element: the ultimate precious metal always symbolised temporal as well as spiritual values. In painting, gold always indicates a change, liberation, and transmutation.
Gold as a colour and means of artistic expression of utmost importance also links Swiss artists Heinrich Eichmann (1915-1970) and Barbara Diethelm, born in 1962. Eichmann created numerous plates and murals in different architectural contexts, of which the best-known are his “Gold Paintings.” In her work, Diethelm, who also works as a colour researcher, pursues the creative forces of nature and developed a new gold-coloured substance. Her paintings refer to concrete places where layers of human cultural development overlap and come to the fore.
In this book, published in conjunction with an exhibition at Helmhaus Zurich in spring 2022, full colour reproductions of Eichmann’s and Diethelm’s works are supplemented with texts by artist Barbara Diethelm, art historian Guido Magnaguagno, curator Daniel Morgenthaler, and the South African author and conservationist Linda Tucker.
Text in English and German.
In an age of fast-changing technologies, offering numerous ways of generating images, Elias Wessel challenges the conventional definition of a painting: he creates his “paintings” without resorting to traditional painting techniques and eschews classical genres. The artist’s abstract paintings – which in many ways show connections to painterly practices – are in fact made up of photographs and digital material.
Wessel, for example, takes photos of smartphone displays to produce monumental abstract compositions from the fingerprints left behind on them. He also documents his scrolling behaviour on social media platforms by using long-time exposure to superimpose accessed profiles and their contents: the result is visual and decontextualised structures. His other works present painterly-looking details of damaged displays: where else in the digital world can we experience such a close relationship with the canvas?
Above all, the quality of Elias Wessel’s working method lies in the way he links the fundamental discourses in the history of photography with the latest technology and current social debates. In so doing, he skilfully observes and questions the social consequences and instruments of digitalisation.
Text in English and German.
The tale of the shepherd girl Radha and the Hindu god Krishna is probably the most famous love story in India. Written by Jayadeva at the end of the twelfth century, the Gitagovinda narrates the highs and lows of Radha and Krishna’s relationship. As a vivid metaphor for the human yearning for god, the work is today closely associated in India with the religiosity of Krishna. In the eighteenth century, in the former princely residence of Guler, the artist family of Nainsuhk and Manaku created the outstanding picture series of the second Guler Gitagovinda of 1775/80, which recounts the love story with an unparalleled elegance. This book retells the story using selected pieces from this series (printed in original size) and whisks the reader off into the atmospheric world of Indian miniature painting and poetry. This book accompanies an exhibition at Museum Rietberg, Zurich, 24 October 2019 – 16 February 2020.
Text in English and German.
Painting and graphic prints are the preferred mediums of the Norwegian artist Hanne Borchgrevink (b.1951), who over the course of time has focused her attention on the house as the leitmotif of her work. She reduces it to its elemental forms, which forever encounter new constellations. At the intersection of figuration and abstraction, of the verbal and non-verbal, the artist explores in her reduced language of forms colour, surface and perception in a methodical and analytical way. Borchgrevink has long occupied a prominent position in the contemporary art of Norway, for in the repetition of her painterly and motivic vocabulary she always manages to find ever new and surprising as well as provocative answers.
Text in English and Norwegian.
The Norwegian painter Bjørn Ransve (b. 1944) is one of the best-known contemporary Scandinavian artists. Very few painters indeed express themselves so brilliantly in two dimensions, thematically, technically and formally. The third volume of the catalogue raisonné is devoted to Ransve ‘s graphic oeuvre: in over 1,300 illustrations it documents prints and multiples, created from the 1960s to 2013. This book is not only an indispensable standard reference for all scholars, art dealers and collectors, it also provides insights in the complex interrelations between prints, paintings and drawings in Ransve ‘s artistic work. The accompanying text by Lars Eisenlöffel investigates the changing and recurrent groups of motifs and places the works in their art historical context.
Since each page of the book has been designed individually in close collaboration between Ransve and the graphic artist and book designer Silke Nalbach, Bjørn Ransve ‘s development as an artist can be traced in a way that is particularly illuminating.
Text in Norwegian.