Joaquin Sorolla’s catalogue raisonné is the culmination of a project that was initiated by Francisco Pons-Sorolla and Blanca Pons-Sorolla, which assembles all the work of the painter known so far (over 4,000 works). The aim of this project is the publication of five volumes in which the works by Joaquin Sorolla Bastida (1863-1923) will be presented by themes: 1. Sorolla Museum; 2. The Sea and the Beach; 3. Portraits; 4. Landscapes; 5. Composition Works. Within these themes, the works will be presented chronologically, so that the evolution of the painter can be observed in each case.

This first volume of the catalogue is dedicated to the collection of the Sorolla Museum, which houses the largest collection of the artist’s works. It displays a comprehensive panorama of the painter’s oeuvre through 1,300 pieces.

The project is currently being financed by the Sorolla Museum Foundation, and is being carried out by Blanca Pons-Sorolla, with the collaboration of Teresa Jiménez-Landi and Mónica Rodríguez Subirana. Since the beginning of the project in 1987, a profoundly better understanding of Sorolla’s work has been achieved.

María Campos Carlés de Peña, a leading expert in furniture history, has undertaken an exhaustive project of research into the large and varied production of furniture made in Peru in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the colonial period – for churches, convents, monasteries and private collections. Over eleven chapters she provides a thorough description of this type of furniture, which was inspired by artistic styles ranging from Mannerism to Neoclassicim, with their many variants and creators.

Her analysis allows for an appreciation of the way vice-regal furniture in Peru is a valuable witness to its time: an example of a syncretism of varied and different cultures, endowed with symbolism, iconographic meaning and enormous beauty.

The 1960s and 1970s marked a sharp turning point in the history of decoration and furniture. Until that point, the world was confined to national and elitist forms of expression. At the beginning of the 1960s, the sector took its inspiration from Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Italian and French decoration. Genres were combined in a frenzied desire to live in symbiosis with one’s time. The progress of technology strengthened the conviction that the individual had unlimited freedom and aroused the desire to inhabit in a new manner. Forms became rounder, furniture was in sync with a warm, playful, and anticonformist universe. Colors and decorative motifs took on the brilliance and fantasies of Pop Art and psychedelia. The living environment was transformed into a waking dream in which luxurious furniture in original materials and surprising objects were mixed, associated, for the first time, with early furniture. The end of the 1970s marked the advent of a period in which beauty and classic elegance gave way to a host of expressions that were unclassifiable and rejected any hierarchy. The postmodern period had arrived. Composed of a long introduction that provides a synoptic view and 32 monographs that describe its many faces, this book invites the reader to discover an exceptionally creative period and revels in an abundant iconography.

The first book to examine the rich jewelry traditions of the Batak people in Indonesia is a gorgeous tribute to a vanishing way of life. Batak jewelry is characterized by a wide variety of materials and forms, and has many functions: Jewels can be status symbols, badges of rank, attributes of membership of a certain age group, amulets and talismans, or simply ornaments. Men, women, small children, and even babies were once adorned with gold, silver, brass, bronze, or the gold-and-copper alloy known as suasa. Today, the Batak wear traditional jewelry only for celebrations like weddings, and these stunning works are rapidly disappearing, being melted down or sold.

The Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian art, recently auctioned at Sotheby’s, is the most comprehensive collection of its kind. Comprising some 300 works from Mexico, Central, and South America – wood and stone sculptures, ceramics, textiles, and ritual objects – it spans 1200 BC to AD 1500. The Barbier-Mueller Collection, one of the most important and wide-ranging art collections in the world, was begun by Josef Mueller in Paris in 1908 with the purchase of works by Hodler and Cézanne; the Swiss Mueller then looked beyond Western art and bought his first pre-Columbian piece, an Aztec stone water goddess, in 1920. Today, Mueller’s daughter and son-in-law, Monique and Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, continue to collect Western, African, Oceanic, and Cycladic art, which is frequently on loan to museums around the world. Text in English and French.

Adorned on the outside with a magnificent marble entrance, the Libreria Piccolomini possesses on the inside a jewel-like cycle of frescoes painted by Pinturicchio. For the first time this fresco cycle – of remarkable pictorial quality – is fully illustrated in all in inexhaustible narrative and chromatic richness. Mirabilia Italiæ is a unique series. It owes its existence to an innovative and ambitious project: an atlas of the great monuments of Italy that will display them in all their details, from the best known to the least. This series represents a completely new way of documenting art.

Mirabilia Italiæ provides a guided tour of each monument, fully and accurately explained. Each atlas contains hundreds of color photographs, arranged in a precise topographical sequence and accompanied by diagrams showing the exact location of each detail. The atlas is complemented by a volume of texts edited by the premier scholars in the field, consisting of critical essays and descriptive notes. Essays examine the monument from the art-historical point of view, and record the alterations it has undergone over time. Descriptive notes analyze the content and significance of the images. Extensive cross-references link the essays and notes to the images, facilitating consultation of the work. The General Editor of Mirabilia Italiæ is Salvatore Settis, Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.

Text in English and Italian.

The modifier b+b Auto, founded in Frankfurt, 1973 by Rainer Buchmann and his brother Dieter, caused a stir in the European and international car scene of the ’80s. Their technical innovations and spectacular design made them stand apart from the crowd.

Initially focussed on Porsche cars, b+b established themselves as a name to be remembered when they presented their Porsche Turbo Targa with prismatic coloured varnish at the Polaroid stand on Fotokina 1976 Cologne. At IAA Frankfurt 1979 they launched b+b CW 311, a contemporary modification of the legendary Mercedes 300 SL. Mercedes-Benz was so enthusiastic about the car that they allowed Buchmann to continue using the Mercedes star as a brand logo. During the 1980s, b+b was one of the most successful modifiers of production cars. They transformed off-the-line automobiles into individualized luxury vehicles for those who could afford it – customers from the Arab world, celebrities from the Jet-Set, and many more…

However Buchmann’s real passion belonged to the area of electronic innovations. The money he earned with his tuning activities was invested into research in this field. He was the first to think about centralized door locking by means of remote control as well as park distance control and he invented the first car computers. In 1983 his multi-function steering wheel was protected by patent. This comprehensive book, produced in close cooperation with Merck Group, one of the world’s leading chemical companies for whom Buchmann popularized a new and special kind of bright enamel varnish, presents the complete history of Rainer Buchmann’s technical and entrepreneurial achievements.

“One of the world’s most complete, resonant art mediums (which) submits to spectacular skill and structural concepts” – Roberta Smith, New York Times These are exciting times for Japanese bamboo art. May 2017 saw the opening of Japan House São Paulo, whose inaugural exhibition ‘Bamboo: The Material That Built Japan’ drew over 300,000 visitors. From June 2017 to February 2018 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted another bamboo show that was seen by about 400,000. From 27 November, the Musée du quai Branly in Paris will present the largest-ever exhibition on the subject. This authoritative catalog of 323 works from the Naej Collection thus appears at a moment when a new global audience has emerged. The Naej Collection is especially strong in works by leading artists from 1850 to 1950, when great craft dynasties were established and first Osaka and then Tokyo emerged as major centers of artistic basketry. The catalog breaks new ground by combining dramatic photography with precious documentary information drawn from signatures and inscriptions, making it not merely the visual record of a great collection but the essential reference work for a developing field of connoisseurship.

Text in English, Japanese and simplified Chinese.

Phase 3 of digitalization has started. A phase of artificial intelligence has revolutionized the buying behavior of customers: collecting information, the buying process and customer service have changed dramatically. This book explains the impact of the ‘internet of things’, virtual assistants, bots and client data. But first of all this is a book about customers. In a world of automatization the most important question remains: how can I be customer-oriented? “Steven is a much asked for keynote speaker for our events, always a highlight. He has a unique and authentic style: with a combination of academic depth and well-built cases he spices up his presentations with a tremendous amount of humor.” – Anthony Belpaire, Google Website: stevenvanbelleghem.com Youtube: StevenVanBelleghem/videos Twitter: @StevenVBe

“Belgian solutions is first of all a title, that became a way of speaking: ‘Look, a Belgian solution.’ It all started with me stopping to take pictures of situations that I later began publishing on Facebook under this title. After some time people were sending me more and more photos, not only from Belgium of course, but from all over the globe, pictures that in very different and individual ways always kept saying: ‘Look, a Belgian solution.’ or simply: ‘Look, a solution.'” David Helbich Not every solution is an answer to a problem. The Brussels-based artist David Helbich started collecting ‘Belgian Solutions’ in 2006. Once he started to share his photos online on Facebook in 2008 (the Belgian Solutions page has over 23,000 fans), the project gathered speed, with contributions by Belgian Solutions spotters all over the world. Luster is publishing the third, updated and improved edition of the original publication.

Heaven on Earth: The Universe of Kerala’s Guruvayur Temple is a remarkable and unique record enhanced by photographs that not only portray all aspects of life within the temple, but its atmosphere of intangible divinity. It is a temple whose elaborate poojas have survived the many vicissitudes of history, of wars and changing times, always adhering to the rules that Adi Sankaracharya is said to have laid down a thousand years ago.

Kathakali Dance-Theatre records the art of Kathakali comprehensively, right from the scenario that paved the way for Kathakali’s origin and development to its present history. The book chronicles its various facets – the acting, music and costumes, crucial contributions of the masters, momentous incidences, evolution of styles, riveting anecdotes, and related socio-political issues affecting Kerala. The firsthand personal rendition of the author’s experience and the detailed glossary make it immensely readable. Full of photographs depicting the masters of the art, green room activities and the vibrant theatre of Kathakali, this book will be a treasure trove of information for uninitiated readers, arts scholars, theater buffs, potential researchers and students keen about the art and its future.

Together, images and conversations portray the underlying motivation, orientation and stances of some of the most prominent young architects, photographers, artists and filmmakers whose body of work gravitates around the world of architecture.

Interviews with: Kersten Geers (Office KGDVS, architect), François Charbonnet (Made In, architect), Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (filmmakers), Junya Ishigami (architect), Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara (DOGMA, architects), Philipp Schaerer (visual artist), Go Hasegawa (architect), Bas Princen (photographer), Yuri Ancarani (visual artist) and Anne Holtrop (architect).

Text in German.

This volume shows the diverse ways in which Emiliano López and Mónica Rivera, a young architectural couple from Barcelona, have addressed the question of optimum space utilization. It includes a series of photographs that the couple took while traveling, presented alongside their own remarkable constructions and treatises on important themes within the study of architecture. Scattered in between are visual case studies dedicated to seven residential buildings, which have been precisely designed to suit their specific spatial situations. The techniques López and Rivera use are described in detail. This exciting monographic collection is complemented by four essays, written by renowned guest authors, which elucidate López and Rivera’s unique style.

Text in English and German.

What does an architectural guide look like in an age when the world’s knowledge is carried around in small devices in your pocket? The second edition of the Guide to Buildings in Zug, documenting a century of planning and construction in the canton, provides an answer: It is a large, 300-page illustrated volume that is dedicated not only to the architecture, but also to questions of spatial and landscape planning. Packed with images, the architectural guide is intended for the coffee tables of a wider audience, rather than the library.

Text in German.

Red Dot’s annual agendas have become coveted collector’s items in their own right. Published in letter-size format, the bilingual (English/German) day books present the latest design novelties. The 52 weeks of the year are each given a full page, while the facing pages feature the latest outstanding design achievements, including winners of the Red Dot Design Award. The Design Diary is a perfect promotional gift and has been on Red Dot Edition’s bestseller list year after year. Text in English and German.

This catalog assembles sumptuous photographs of the world’s leading collection of Cham sculpture, along with the most recent insights of Vietnamese and international scholars. The Champa culture thrived in magnificent temples, sculpture, dance and music along the central and southern coast of today’s Vietnam from the 5th to the 18th century. A focused exploration here uncovers this brilliant yet almost lost culture to newcomers and experts alike. The Danang Museum has been recently expanded and refurbished to house what is generally considered the world’s greatest collection of Cham Art.

Author and photographer John Lander takes the magnificent UNESCO World Heritage sites of Japan as a starting point for exploring the country’s architecture, history, customs and festivals. Lander, who has lived in Japan for 35 years, traveled to almost all the country’s UNESCO sites: from well-known places like Mount Fuji to hidden temple gardens and hard-to-reach wild islands. This book also includes cultural elements listed as intangible world heritage, providing intimate portraits of Japanese cuisine, crafts and performance arts. With a lyrical preface by Pico Iyer and illustrated with over 180 full-color photographs, World Heritage Japan is Lander’s personal photographic tribute to a diverse and ancient culture – a stunning visual journey across Japan.

Mishmash is a narrative poem about a funny mix up that happens amongst a group of animals. These animals refuse to stick to their own conventional sounds and take on the sounds of other animals instead. Here you will find kittens that ‘oink’ like pigs and ducklings that ‘ribbit’ like frogs! A truly delightful tale of animal mischief. The author Korney Chukovsky was a renowned Russian writer and poet. This book is illustrated by an award-winning artist Francesca Yarbusova, the wife and collaborator of Yuri Norstein. She was the co-creator of the animated films Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales – the films that were declared to be the Best Animated Film of All Time. Also available in the Norstein & Yarbusova Collection – a beautiful series of children’s picture books based on the art of famous Russian artists and animators Yuri Norstein and Francesca Yarbusova are: The Fox and the Hare ISBN: 9780984586714 and The Hedgehog in the Fog ISBN: 9780984586707.

There are few destinations more alluring than resorts. The combination of an evocative location, lavish rooms, exceptional service and architecture that’s designed to inspire, has long been irresistible to travelers. In the past decade, however, the global search for stylish getaways has become so intense that hospitality has now become the world’s fastest growing industry.

Few people understand the nature of resorts and the secrets of designing them more than the world-renowned architects and designers, Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo (WATG), whose mission over the last six decades has been ‘to design experiences that lift the spirit’. Having created hundreds of exclusive destinations for well-known companies such as the Four Seasons, Sheraton and Hyatt, ranging from luxurious island resorts to exotic desert getaways, sophisticated urban hideaways, and cool mountaintop retreats, WATG has become a respected name in the area of resorts and hotels. Some of their extraordinary projects include the Hotel Bora Bora in French Polynesia, The Palace of the Lost City in South Africa, The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in California, and the Hyatt Regency in Kauai Resort & Spa in Hawaii.

This spectacular volume looks at these and other world-class destinations, and also takes you behind the foyers to explore the inspiration and ideas behind the designs, which often begin from a thought on a notepad. As well, it offers insightful interviews with those involved with the projects, explains how the vernacular architecture of the region can influence the end design, and even predicts what resorts may look like in the future.