The Vatican Museums is one of the most important museum complexes in the world, housing incredible masterpieces from the Egyptian Age to the late Renaissance.

The Vatican Museums hold a treasure trove of art and history, as well as an inestimable patrimony of our culture and our civilisation. This volume focuses on the paintings to be found in the collection – including The Sistine Chapel.

Text in English and Italian.

The jewellery department at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris comprises some 3,500 pieces and is the only national collection of its kind in France. This book presents bijouterie and joaillerie masterpieces from this high-profile collection which ranges from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period and shines a particular spotlight on the 18th century and the age of Art Nouveau.

Daytime or evening jewellery and art jewellery pieces in the form of tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, pendants, hair or tie pins, rings and stomacher brooches illustrate the boundless creativity of designers.

The greatest artists are represented: Sandoz, Vever, Falize, Boucheron, Lalique, Fouquet and Gaillard for Art Nouveau, Raymond Templier and Jean Després for Art Deco, Georges Braque, Jean Lurçat, Line Vautrin, Jean Schlumberger, Torun, Dinh Van, Jonemann and Claude Lalanne for the post-war period, and a number of contemporary designers. The collection also features pieces by the great jewellery houses: Cartier, Boucheron, Chanel, Van Cleef & Arpels and, more recently, JAR.

This richly illustrated book accompanies the display in the Galerie des Bijoux at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which features the collection’s highlights.

“A beautiful coffee table book you will actually read from cover to cover, over and over again.” — Homes & Gardens

“Blue Carreon’s latest book, The Gardens of the Hamptons, takes us behind the hedges into some of the East End’s most spectacular properties.” — Hamptons Cottages & Gardens

” …With richly hued photography and evocative storytelling, Carreon artfully reveals the soul of each garden, unearthing the personal philosophies of the owners behind the blooms.” — Modern Luxury

The Gardens of the Hamptons is an awe-inspiring collection of vibrant, luxurious, full-colour photography amid personal profiles of individuals who have shared the story behind their private garden with lifestyle writer and photographer Blue Carreon, who is also the author of bestseller Equestrian Life in the Hamptons.

The Hamptons is a well-known destination for sunshine, luxury, and fun, especially during the summer. This book embraces the well-established, beloved, and aesthetic qualities of the glorious Hamptons communities by showcasing over 50 wonderful examples of lush gardens, ranging from bespoke private oases to public offerings and also larger garden estates, inspired by renowned gardens overseas.

Each individual speaks of their personal interest and purpose when envisioning and designing the garden of their dreams. Blue effortlessly conveys each gardener’s sense of pride and the reasons behind the choices of landscape design and architecture, as well as colour scheme and flora selection—whether the garden be the source of an intimate escape or a space to activate family laughter and glee.

Blue captures the heart of the Hamptons by showcasing the friendly people and elegant portraits of nature at its best.

“The subtle forms and modelled curves and planes in a skeleton were to George Stubbs what a symphony is to a musician.” — Oxford Companion to Art

“The most unique thing of its kind ever compiled. This heroic effort, an epic of the eighteenth century, is as great and unselfish a work as anything could be.” — Sir Alfred Munnings

George Stubbs was one of the most original artists Britain has produced, and it is easy to forget how much his success was based on rigorous scientific observation. In 1756 he rented a farmhouse where he erected scaffolding to hold the cadavers of horses as he dissected and drew. After 18 months, Stubbs produced the drawings for The Anatomy of the Horse, which he later etched. The result was sensational. Scientists from all over Europe sent their congratulations, amazed at the perfection of the work. The Anatomy remained a textbook for artists and scientists for over a century, and its strange, spare beauty continues to fascinate.

This edition is taken from the 1853 printing, the last to use Stubbs’ original plates. The full Stubbs’ commentary is included for the veterinarially minded. Extensive texts by Constance Anne Parker and Oliver Kase place Stubbs’ work in the context of his life and times, and of 18th-century medical science.

Dismissed by contemporaries as the ravings of a deluded enemy of modernity, The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century is an eerily prescient denunciation of capitalism’s assault on the atmosphere – and the profound danger for the earth but also the spiritual well-being of humanity. It is one of Ruskin’s final writings, conducted with both rigorous scientific observation and a sense of Biblical prophecy.

Ruskin’s call to action is even more urgently needed today. His rallying cry, There is no Wealth but Life, is implicit throughout the Storm Cloud. How his thought developed through a conflicted relationship with the professional science of his day, and what we can take from his writings, are examined by Peter Brimblecombe, Professor of Atmospheric Pollution at the University of Essex, in his Introduction. A foreword by the Master of the Guild of St George, Ruskin’s association for social and spiritual reform, sets out what Ruskinians today can do and are doing.

The largest and the smallest creatures of the animal kingdom meet in two books so closely linked as to become a single volume! In fact, the mini book of the smallest animals, which resembles its characters also in the format, fits perfectly into the enormous cover of the book of the largest animals. In both volumes the animals are presented by texts full of information and amusing curiosities, and poetic and funny illustrations by Francesca Cosanti, an artist able to draw both ironically and sensitively these extraordinary examples of Nature. Ages: 4 plus

The Tekkieh Moaven is a significant religious monument in Kermanshah and one of the most important national memorials in Iran. Following the building’s destruction in the early 20th century, it was rebuilt and furnished with exclusive tiles, the focal point of this publication. Since 1975, it has also been a popular museum visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year. The tiles illustrate the fascinating world of art in the Persian empire and Islamic era and are distinguished by colourful illustrations featuring floral, calligraphic, and also figurative motifs. Author Hadi Seif weaves the recollections of the ancient guardian Sojdehpur into his narratives, contributing valuable insights into the evolutionary history of these impressive tiles. This is the first major English-language publication dedicated to this outstanding cultural monument.

Maria Lai (Ulassai, September 27, 1919 – Cardedu, April 16, 2013) is without doubt one of the leading figures in the history of contemporary Italian art. Not only on account of the content of her works, but also thanks to the diversity of her artistic approach, ranging as it does across many media – public art, embroidery, weaving, sculpture, drawing, and writing: all are grist for her poetics. The book is published to coincide with the exhibition at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, which is presenting to the general public over one hundred works by the Sardinian artist, from the early 1960s to her very last works, and explores the various themes dear to the artist with the contributions of experts in their fields: the locations, the creation, and publication of art books, her public art events and her relationship with the written word and her own writing. Her entire oeuvre is distinguished by its powerful visual impact, revealing a ‘way of doing art’ that is nothing other than an instrument of thought. The book’s structure reflects the exhibition’s own sections, arranged by theme, whose titles are paradigmatic of Lai’s oeuvre as a whole: Essere è tessere. Cucire e ricucire; L’arte è il gioco degli adulti. Giocare e raccontare; Disseminare e condividere; Il viaggiatore astrale. Immaginare l’altrove; L’arte ci prende per mano. Incontrare e partecipare.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the MAXXI Museum, Rome, 19 June 2019-12 January 2020.

Text in English and Italian.

“My approach is simple. It is nothing other than what I am thinking at the time I make each piece of clothing…The result is something that other people decide.” – Rei Kawakibo, Interview Magazine, 2008

“Kawakubo’s will matches that of Coco Chanel and her influence goes perhaps even further; she is a designer who sees a bigger picture and has impacted the very shape of fashion, moving its foundations.” – Terry Newman

The Genius of Rei Kawakubo: The woman who founded Comme des Garçons celebrates a designer that is revered as the most avant-garde and experimental in the world. Having created a fashion label that is a global inspiration and one of the few independent brands still run by its founder, Kawakubo infuses her designs with the philosophies of Mu-Ma and Wabi-Sabi to create clothes that are truly special.

Beginning with Kawakubo’s early days when she began developing her brand in Japan, The Genius of Rei Kawakubo: The woman who founded Comme des Garçons goes on to look at her principles of anti-fashion and the art of imperfection, including seminal design details from some of her key collections. With chapters on Kawakubo’s collaborations with other designers, her shops, perfumes, and lots more, this book presents the brand and its founder in all its glorious detail.

Written by Terry Newman – the bestselling author of Marilyn Monroe Style – we learn just how canny a businesswoman and creative an artist Kawakubo is and how, through various avenues and alliances, she has created a vast Comme des Garçons empire.

Albert Dros has a passion for landscape photography. Although he travels the world in search of the most beautiful images, the Netherlands is still his favourite subject. After all these years, Albert has created extremely atmospheric, colourful and almost romantic photographs of the Netherlands. His dream images in this book show everything that makes the Netherlands the Netherlands: from tulips to windmills, from purple moors to vast river landscapes and from picturesque towns to animals in meadows and in the wild. The Beauty of the Netherlands is the result of ten years of craftsmanship by an internationally renowned photographer who captures a Netherlands that few people will ever see with their own eyes.

There are many reasons to plan a visit to The Hague. It is the international city of peace and justice, the only large Dutch city by the sea, one of the greenest cities of the Netherlands, and it boasts a long and rich history.
For this book, Tal Maes listed her 500 favourite places and tips, presenting them in original and interesting lists such as 5 historic houses of famous Dutchmen, 5 fun boat trips, the 5 best spots for Dutch “maatjes” herring, 5 museums around the Binnenhof, the 5 best lifestyle and concept stores, and much more. This guide encourages you to look further than the usual hotspots. Walk to the far end of the beach to find peace and quiet, try a beer from a hidden monastery, discover cutting-edge art in a former power plant. Of the highlights included, lesser-known aspects are revealed.

“It’s such a good read…” — Decanter
“Rocks and soils haunt our thinking about wine. We see links, sniff origins, taste connections, digest differences. Is this cause and effect — or fantasy? Alex Maltman is ghostbuster-in-chief. This wide-ranging and clearly reasoned book shines a torch through the cobwebs.” — Andrew Jefford

Burgundy thrives on the limestone remnants of a warm, shallow sea while Sancerre and Pouilly wrap their roots around flint. The finest Pomerols bloom in a ‘button’ of blue clay, and Beaujolais famously begins life in granite. Cabernet Sauvignon loves just about any sandstone and Champagne gets on gloriously with chalk. But is the secret to great port really schist? Alex Maltman, Emeritus Professor of earth sciences at Aberystwyth University, finds himself between a rock and a vineyard place as he explains how a wine’s flavours relate to the geology at foot, and discovers that there is more to ‘minerality’ than mud, rocks and the earth’s stark materials… 

Terroir is as intrinsic to the quality of a wine as the grapes it comes from or the intentions of the wine maker. This beautifully produced and illustrated book looks at the many factors that influence, or don’t, how a wine tastes. Professor Maltman poses lots of questions and answers, while busting some myths along the way. 

This lavishly illustrated book records the high profile restoration of Rembrandt van Rijn’s 17th century masterpiece, The Night Watch, one of the world’s most famous paintings. Many questions about the creation of this work have been answered by extensive technical studies done in conjunction with the restoration. The popular Dutch TV program The Secret of the Master has documented the restoration of The Night Watch in four episodes, assisted in this by various external specialists. This book, by the producer of that series, reveals the many secrets of this fascinating and important work.

architekturbild, the European Architectural Photography Prize, has been awarded on a two-yearly basis since 1995. The theme for 2021 is “The Urban in the Periphery”.

Migration between conurbations and rural areas, their respective attractiveness and independence, but also dependence and interdependence with one another: What would be more predestined to trace the subtle or even obvious effects of the urban-rural movement than architectural photography?

Text in English and German.

The research in the field of vision conducted from 1919 by the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, founded by Vittorio Benussi at the University of Padua, had a remarkable and innovative impact. This research went beyond the academic and disciplinary sphere and, starting in the 1960s, helped to stimulate a ground-breaking cultural and artistic scene, launching the city of Padua and its artists internationally.

This volume explores the relationship between the works, milieux and exhibitions of the Gruppo N – Alberto Biasi, Ennio L. Chiggio, Toni Costa, Edoardo Landi, Manfredo Massironi – active in Padua from 1960 to 1964, and the studies of Vittorio Benussi and the first scholars of his School: Cesare Musatti, Fabio Metelli and Gaetano Kanizsa, who was born in Trieste but graduated in Padua. Marina Apollonio’s art and research occupy a special place in this dialogue between science and art.

Texts by: Rossana Actis-Grosso, Elisa Baldini, Guido Bartorelli, Paolo Bernardis, Marco Bertamini, Giovanni Bianchi, Ivana Bianchi, Andrea Bobbio, Nicola Bruno, Elisa Caldarola, Marnie Campagnaro, Barbara Luciana Cenere, Alberto Cibin, Elena Clara, Osvaldo da Pos, Andrea Dissegna, Carlo Fantoni, Giovanni Galfano, Walter Gerbino, Enrico Giora , Massimo Grassi, Laura Messina-Argenton, Giulia Parovel Tamara Prest, Marta Previti, Lucia Regolin, Sergio Roncato e Baingio Pinna, Federica Stevanin, Giorgio Vallortigara, Ian Verstegen, Giuseppe Virelli, Daniele Zavagno.

Text in Italian with English translations in the appendix.

The Ashcan School and The Eight are now recognised as America’s first modern art movement: rejecting their academic training and the practices of the National Academy of Design, they forged a new art that represented America’s shifting values. By focusing on urban streets scenes, the lives of immigrants, popular entertainments, and the working poor, this loosely affiliated group of artists became synonymous with ordinary, everyday subjects — in the words of one critic, “pictures of ashcans.” Yet this is only part of their story: they also experimented with complex colour theory and embraced scientific studies about movement and perception, while also creating scenes of bourgeois leisure and society portraits in attempts to reconcile their high-art practices with their populist reputations.

This catalogue features nearly 130 works across media, including paintings, drawings, pastels, and prints — rarely seen objects and popular favourites. Collectively these works emphasise the Ashcan School’s and The Eight’s valuable contributions to the formation of American modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.

The collection of 18th- and early-19th-century French silverware brought together by Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian is the most important of its time and one of the most significant sections of the Gulbenkian Museum’s collection. Amassed between 1900 and 1950, these pieces constitute a unique group due to their diversity and quality. The collection comprises over 150 works, including several world-class masterpieces that represent the collector’s taste.

The catalogue is dedicated to a selection of silver works of different typologies, such as centrepieces, tureens, salt cellars, candelabras and candlesticks, made by renowned silversmiths such as François-Thomas Germain, Antoine-Sébastien Durant, Robert-Joseph Auguste and Martin-Guillaume Biennais. Despite this diversity, these works all share the characteristics that make this collection unique: quality and authenticity combined with original designs, technical expertise and distinguished provenances, with former owners including members of European aristocracy and the Russian imperial family. These works were mostly purchased in Paris, but there is also an important group of works from the Hermitage collection, acquired through negotiations made between Calouste Gulbenkian and the Soviet government between 1928 and 1930.

After an initial text about Calouste Gulbenkian’s passion for 18th-century French silverware, the most prominent pieces of the collection are presented in chronological order of acquisition and are accompanied by comprehensive descriptions and analyses, as well as detailed information on hallmarks, inscriptions, provenances and historical and bibliographical sources. An excellent photographic survey, carried out specifically for the purpose, illustrates the 43 catalogue entries.

At the end of the publication, the reader can find a list of secondary silverware, an index of names and the group of archive documents and bibliography consulted.

Images Credits: Panorama

During the German occupation, a Jewish Dutch couple had to sell a painting to go into hiding. Their daughters were placed in a children’s home, but were rounded up in early 1944 and deported to Auschwitz, where they died. The parents survived the war and did not discover their children’s fate until 1946. The search for the painting also remained fruitless for a long time, until Origins Unknown Agency discovered that it had ended up in a German museum. The museum had previously tried unsuccessfully to trace its provenance. Thanks to the Origins Unknown Agency, the heirs of the original owner were found. The German museum and the heirs agreed that the painting, an 1882 work by Camille Pissarro, would remain at the museum. As part of the compensation, the painting will be kept on display from November 2024 to February 2025 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The Bari people, who settled on the banks of the White Nile, remained closed off from the outside world until the dawn of the 19th century. The earliest contact dates back to the “scientific” expedition commissioned in 1840 by Ismail Pascha, followed by repeated forays by explorers in search of the sources of the Nile during the closing decades of the Ottoman period in Egypt, interspersed with the often competing efforts of slave hunters.

This book places the collection of Bari statues known today in the historical context of the Egyptian Sudan, from the earliest contacts with explorers Joseph Pons d’Arnaud and Wilhelm Werne in 1841 to the final stages of the pre-colonial era described by Wilhelm Junker. Many museums founded during the 19th century embarked on a frantic scramble to collect ethnographic objects, relying in particular on explorers, but also on traders and adventurers. This book catalogues the roughly 63 Bari statues that are known today and offers a comprehensive overview of historical sources and current knowledge of the Egyptian Sudan that provide the context for these works, their use and stylistic diversity.

Text in English and French.

“Mesmerizing and unputdownable – a virtuoso translation of what must surely be one of the best Thai novels to make it into English.” – Lawrence Osborne, author of Hunters in the Dark and Only to Sleep

”At its core, this novel from Veeraporn Nitiprapha has a simple dynamic: the tension between two sisters, and the young man whose life interweaves with each of theirs. What makes this novel unique is its attention to the granular, whether it’s the music that several of its characters obsess over or its author’s tendency to fill in the history or future of a specific character at a moment’s notice.” – Words Without Borders, February 2019

Watchlist On the day Chareeya is born, her mother discovers her father has been having an affair with a traditional Thai dancer. From that moment, Chareeya’s life is fated to carry the weight of her parents disappointment. With her sister, Chalika, she grows up in an insular world, until joined by the laconic orphan, Pran, and together they navigate the labyrinth of their own making, each trying to escape their fate.

The need for a pillow, a headrest or a neck rest is one of the most widely spread among humans, as is the need for a seat. They may not be an exclusively African invention, but the oldest known carved headrests nonetheless come from Africa, for the most part from the Egypt of the Pharaohs. Their use is attested in prehistoric times in the Neolithic Sahara and several centuries ago in West, Central and Southern Africa. It continued until the early 20th-century in the savannah and the forested regions along the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, in the Congo and Zambesi basins and until nowadays in the Horn of Africa, in the regions of the Omo Valley and the Jade Sea. In this work, the author sets out to tell its history spanning several millenia. He takes the opportunity to invite himself to the controversy regarding the links and relations between Ancient Egypt and Black Africa, a controversy that has been livening up the world of Egyptologists and historians of Africa for more than a century.

Furthermore he sets about breaking down a few generally accepted ideas regarding the actual use of these magnificent objects. The author illustrates his words with an exceptional election of items chosen from the finest public and private collections.

Text in English and French.