Yaozhou ware is one of the finest Chinese celadons, made in north China over a period of 700 years, from the 7th to the 14th centuries. Their style developed and changed over time. In the Tang dynasty (618-906) black, brown, lead glazed and black-on-white painted ceramics were made. During the Five Dynasties period (907-960) a technical peak was achieved, and white-bodied wares with beautiful blue-green glazes appeared. During the Northern Song and Jin dynasties (906-1279) more olive-toned celadon glazes became the norm, their intricate decoration and lustrous surfaces supplying a unique aesthetic. At the end of the Jin dynasty the kilns declined and started to manufacture folk ware.
Yaozhou Wares from Museums and Art Institutes Around the World gathers illustrations and descriptions of some of the finest Yaozhou wares in private and public collections around the globe. The account considers ceramics in sections, according to their form and decoration, and includes the finest-quality ‘official wares’ requisitioned for imperial use. Copious illustrations are augmented by a scholarly essay. Highlighting over 400 pieces of Yaozhou ware, the book contains 711 color and 3 black-and-white illustrations from 56 major museums and art institutes, and will inspire collectors, students and anyone with a love for Chinese ceramics.
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.
“Alongside the detailed studies, there are plenty of beautiful photographs as well as diagrams and plans.” — Homes & Gardens
“Over the years I have watched the physical and emotional evolution of JDDA’s work and it is truly evident in this monograph. I have marveled at the consistent quest for refinement and sophistication and admired their ever-evolving and maturing palette. In all their landscapes they respect the elements and the integrity of nature, as well as embellishing the space with their own particular style. They create a joyous juxtaposition between the sophisticated architectural elements and the reassuringly organic mood of the planting, with the occasional sculptural addition.
The joy of walking within a JDDA landscape affords us both a mental and physical calm. The evolution of the body of work is an inspiration to us all.”
From the Foreword, by David Harber
This stunningly illustrated monograph represents the evolution of James Doyle Design Associates (JDDA), its thought processes, and the exciting ever‐changing world of landscape architecture. For JDDA, the path of its design work is reflective of a new generation of landscape architects. A connection with nature is in demand now more than ever, whether the space is urban or rural, grand or intimate. JDDA believes that the art and practice of designing the outdoor environment should not be devoid of a respect for nature and its impact on change and growth.
This work reflects the intersection of nature and art; the juxtaposition of the designed and the natural; with bold, contemporary, dynamic gestures in the form of sculptural plant material, innovative hardscaping and an infusion of landscape art. JDDA cares about the world we live in and that our landscapes have the power to become our sanctuaries, to be uplifting, relaxing and thought provoking, with an appreciation for nature.
Walter Irvine’s account places his personal experiences against the political and cultural changes that surrounded the Lao and Cambodian revolutions of the 1970s and 80s, giving particular attention to refugee movements and the impact. Irvine’s professional involvement as teacher in Laos, social anthropologist in Thailand and UNHCR official in Argentina gives him an insiders understanding of the specificity of culture, the dynamics of political change, the realities of forced exile, and the challenges of refugee work. His description of revisiting Indochina in 2016 puts the account of the early period into perspective.
Photographer Monika Rittershaus is regarded as an inspiring interpreter of today’s musical theater in all its diversity, opulence, and drama, but also in its human profundity, uniqueness, and veracity. As a highly sensitive observer, she looks out over the on-stage activity, uncovering gentle, touching, and peripheral moments. Barrie Kosky: “I have often observed Monika at work through the corner of my eye as I sit behind the production desk … She seems to sense the inner world of a moment and to know at exactly the right moment when to click her camera.” In her highly stringent visual compositions, Rittershaus depicts in a personalized and decisive way many influential directors and operas such as:
DAS RHEINGOLD, Richard Wagner, Los Angeles Opera (2009), director: Achim Freyer
COSI FAN TUTTE, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Salzburger Festspiele (2020), director: Christof Loy
TANNHÄUSER, Richard Wagner, De Nationale Opera, Amsterdam (2019), director: Christof Loy
CARMEN, Georges Bizet, Oper Frankfurt (2016), director: Barrie Kosky
SALOME, Richard Strauss, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow (2021), director: Claus Guth
ELEKTRA, Richard Strauss, Staatsoper Hamburg (2022), director: Dmitri Tcherniakov
IPHIGÉNIE EN TAURIDE, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Opernhaus Zurich (2020), director: Andreas Homoki
CENDRILLON, Jules Massenet, Opéra National de Paris Bastille (2022), director: Mariame Clément
Text in English and German.
In this series of ink paintings, we get a significant peek at the working methods of the celebrated contemporary abstract artist, Ganesh Haloi. Like the Taoist and Zen masters of East Asia, Haloi’s reduction of color reveals the pure asceticism of his structural method. The sensory presence of the riparian landscapes of Bengal are referents of memory manifest entirely in monochrome. At the same time, these referents are analyses, reduction to elementary forms, or rhythmic punctuations evoking music. These patterns and elements, dashed strokes, squiggles, crosses and triangles — large and small — occupy a plane of symbolic memory, where the unconscious is structured like a visual language.
Published in association with Akar Prakar, Kolkata.
In line with the works on decorators of the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, this book plunges us into the world of ’80s and ’90s. These have witnessed unprecedented experiments in the world of design and architecture. Composed of a rich introduction which gives a synoptic vision and 38 monographs that describe its many faces, this book makes an exceptionally creative period, and reveals through an abundant iconography, often unpublished, its formidable aesthetic richness.
A new generation of designers stands out, among them Shiro Kuramata, Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Bob Wilson, Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti. All regenerate creation by refusing the elitism of their predecessors and by favoring the use of new materials. Some turn to recovery, such as the Creative Salvage group, and offer inventive and provocative furniture thanks to welding and assembly. Others, gathered in Italy around Ettore Sottsass and Memphis, combine unexpected colors and patterns to the playful use of plastic laminate. Sliding until the end of the ’90s, the achievements presented in this book mark the desire for a dialog between artistic references with a new relationship to the industrial aspect, at the dawn of the 21st century and its technological innovations.
Text in English and French.
This elegant exhibition catalog is presented by The San Diego Museum of Art to accompany the 2023 major exhibition O’Keeffe and Moore, which explores the evolution of Modernism through the work of Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore. Featuring essays from prominent scholars, including representatives of both the Henry Moore Foundation and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the catalog’s richly illustrated text delves into each artist’s motivation and methodology, and the parallels between them, in particular, the inspiration both took from nature and organic forms, such as bones and seashells. The publication serves as an essential companion to the exhibition. In addition to explorations of the artists’ studios that provide further insight into their working methods, the catalog presents drawings, paintings, and sculpture that illustrate the organic roots of Modernism developed independently, yet concurrently, by O’Keeffe and Moore. Thematic sections of the catalogue include the Real and the Surreal; The Artists’ Studios; Bones; Stones; Seashells, Flowers, and Internal/External Forms; and Landscapes of Forms. Essay topics include Henry Moore: Modernism, Nature, and National Identity; “A Revelation of the Perfect Relation”: The Influence of D.H. Lawrence on the work of Henry Moore and Georgia O’Keeffe; and Finding the Form and the publication will also include a comparative chronology of the lives and careers of the two artists.
In this evocative new book, historian David Kynaston tells the fascinating story of Anthony de Rothschild (1887–1961). Through access to never previously consulted diaries and letters, a three-dimensional picture emerges of a complex and thoughtful man guiding the City’s most famous merchant bank through the turbulent years between the 1920s and 1950s.
In politics he was open-minded and constructive whilst in his philanthropy, not least through his leading role in helping Jewish refugees (especially children) to leave Nazi Germany for England, he was thoughtful and generous. Austere on the surface but warm beneath, impatient equally of fools and idealogues, always searching for how he could contribute to make a better world – Anthony de Rothschild deserves, arguably more than almost anyone else in the 20th-century City, to be known properly by later generations.
‘To critics who said that the full-lipped so-called ‘Beardsley mouth’, which adorned many of his women, was ‘inexpressive and ugly’, the artist countered, ‘Well, let them criticise. It’s my mouth and not theirs. I like big mouths. People like the little mouth – the “Dolly Varden” mouth, if that describes it better. A big mouth is the sign of character and strength. Look at Ellen Terry with her great, strong mouth. In fact, I haven’t any patience with small-mouthed people.’ ‘The popular idea of a picture is something told in oil or writ in water to be hung on a room’s wall or in a picture gallery to perplex an artless public.’ ‘To my mind, there is nothing so depressing as a Gothic cathedral. I hate to have the sun shut out by the saints.’ ‘What a nice ample creature George Sand is: like a wonderful old cow with all her calves.’ And other witty, urbane insights on life, art, and culture, illustrated with selected drawings from his Grotesques series.
Following on from the success of her large book, Tasting Georgia: A Food and Wine Journey in the Caucasus, award winning food, wine and travel writer and photographer Carla Capalbo is launching a new series of pocketbooks on Georgian food, wine and culture. The first in the collection, Khachapuri and Filled Breads, focuses on this popular mainstay of Georgian cuisine, giving the recipes for 10 of the country’s most delicious regional breads. In addition to the many versions of cheese-filled khachapuri, the fully illustrated book will include breads filled with greens, meats and potatoes.
Blake engaged with the legacy of Milton all his life. These watercolors, made around 1816-20 to illustrate the most perfect of Milton’s shorter poems, are some of the finest of all his works. All 12 watercolors are reproduced here in actual size.
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Victorian Britain’s greatest thinkers, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, the distinguished Ruskinian Robert Hewison introduces Ruskin’s ideas and values through revelatory studies of the people and issues that shaped his thought, and the ideas and values that in turn were shaped by his writings and personality. Beginning with an exploration of the rich tradition of European art that stimulated his imagination, and to which he responded in his own skilful drawings, Ruskin and his Contemporaries follows the uniquely visual dimension of his thinking from the aesthetic, religious and political foundations laid by his parents to his difficult personal and critical relationship with Turner, and his encounters with the art and architecture of Venice. Victor Hugo makes a surprising appearance as Ruskin develops his ideas on the relationship between art and society. Ruskin’s role as a contemporary art critic is explored in two chapters on Holman Hunt, one focussing on the Pre-Raphaelite’s The Awakening Conscience, one examining his later Triumph of the Innocents. The development of Ruskin’s role as a social critic is traced through his teaching at the London Workingmen’s College and his foundation of the Guild of St George, a reforming society that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde came under his personal influence, as did Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust. The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin are shown to have been deeply unsettling to Ruskin’s worldview. The book concludes with a demonstration of the profound influence of the Paradise Myth on all of Ruskin’s writings, followed by an exploration of the concept of cultural value that shows why Ruskin’s ruling principle: ‘There is no wealth but Life’ is as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 19th.
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Victorian Britain’s greatest thinkers, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, the distinguished Ruskinian Robert Hewison introduces Ruskin’s ideas and values through revelatory studies of the people and issues that shaped his thought, and the ideas and values that in turn were shaped by his writings and personality. Beginning with an exploration of the rich tradition of European art that stimulated his imagination, and to which he responded in his own skilful drawings, Ruskin and his Contemporaries follows the uniquely visual dimension of his thinking from the aesthetic, religious and political foundations laid by his parents to his difficult personal and critical relationship with Turner, and his encounters with the art and architecture of Venice. Victor Hugo makes a surprising appearance as Ruskin develops his ideas on the relationship between art and society. Ruskin’s role as a contemporary art critic is explored in two chapters on Holman Hunt, one focussing on the Pre-Raphaelite’s The Awakening Conscience, one examining his later Triumph of the Innocents. The development of Ruskin’s role as a social critic is traced through his teaching at the London Workingmen’s College and his foundation of the Guild of St George, a reforming society that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde came under his personal influence, as did Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust. The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin are shown to have been deeply unsettling to Ruskin’s worldview. The book concludes with a demonstration of the profound influence of the Paradise Myth on all of Ruskin’s writings, followed by an exploration of the concept of cultural value that shows why Ruskin’s ruling principle: `There is no wealth but Life’ is as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 19th.
Insurgency and the Artist explores not merely how Indian printmakers and artists responded to the freedom struggle but also how the art they fashioned invoked their own conception of the nation, their sense of the past, and the contors of the movement for India’s emancipation from the yoke of colonial oppression. Recent scholarly work has been almost entirely riveted on nationalist prints, and much of it has focused on the idea of Bharat Mata, but this book seeks to furnish a more rounded account of the artwork — including etchings, paintings, woodblocks prints, and cartoons — contemporary to the freedom struggle and also highlights the work of neglected artists such as Babuji Shilpi, S.L. Parasher, Zainul Abedin, and M.V. Dhurandhar, among others. The author considers how the Indian past was rendered as one of martial resistance to ‘foreign’ rule, the manner in which artists worked with mythic material, and, of course, the treatment of the larger-than-life figures of Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Subhas Bose, and other patriots in nationalist art. This gloriously illustrated work simultaneously offers a narrative history of the freedom struggle and the rich interplay of text and images is designed to offer insights that neither conventional histories nor images can offer in isolation. Insurgency and the Artist is also an inquiry into how ideas travel across borders, the porousness of culture, and the relationship of art to politics.
Lancaster and Morecambe are like chalk and Lancashire cheese. So near, yet so far apart in what they offer. Morecambe, the traditional seaside resort, its ‘Bring me Sunshine’ favorite son Eric Morecambe and Victoria Wood’s ‘two soups’ cafe. Plus, its awesome 1930’s Art Deco Midland Hotel, haunt of Coco Chanel and Laurence Olivier.
Lancaster, with its Roman remains, its impregnable ‘John O’Gaunt’ castle and characterful Georgian buildings, built in part from slave-trade profits. Notorious Lancaster, known as the ‘Hanging Town’ for its use of the noose, with its fearsome castle cells that held Quaker maker George Fox.
Leave the crowds behind and embrace the true character of this story-filled region, one special place at a time.
Longquan wares were made mainly in Zhejiang province over a period of over sixteen hundred years, from the 3rd to the 19th centuries. There are two outstanding features of the beautiful Longquan ceramics, one is that the body is made of porcelain, and the other, that the glaze contains kaolin in its composition. This gives Longquan ware unique color and quality. The body is smooth and dense, the glaze either unctuous or shiny, the color a myriad shades of kingfisher blue and jade green. The result of development of porcelain technology at Longquan was a tough, attractive, and versatile celadon material that was ideally suited for export. Longquan vessels found their way to a variety of markets around the world, from royal palaces to common dwellings. During the Yuan dynasty a peak in quantity was reached, with more than 150 kiln sites overall. Many new decoration techniques and forms of mass production for global exports emerged, until production almost expired entirely during the late Ming dynasty, due to a range of still-debated reasons. It is readily apparent that the Longquan kilns in Zhejiang province produced a wide range of wares, in vast quantities, over a period of more than 500 years. During the Southern Song period premier kinuta ceramics glazed with shimmering pale bluish-green colors attracted the highest approbation. During the early Ming dynasty the Daoyao kiln manufactured superlative imperial ceramics for the imperial household. However, despite their great beauty and perceived worth, Longquan ceramics have never been regarded as one of the “Five Great Wares”. This book combined some of the rarest and most exquisite Longquan wares of over 270 pieces from museums and Art Institutes around the world.
Italian artist Ugo Rondinone was invited by the Musee d’Art et d’Histoire (MAH) in Geneva to curate a show that invites a dialog between his work and the works in the permanent collection. The show he created centers around two emblematic figures of 19th and 20th century Swiss art – Felix Vallotton and Ferdinand Hodler – and considers the importance of love and desire in our relationship with art and creation. This book documents the museum’s halls and the exhibition, which includes works by Rondinone and art from the MAH Collection.
Text in English and French.
Most people go to Napa and Sonoma in Northern California for the wine, and rightly so. The trove of 111 unexpected treasures in this guidebook, however, vastly broadens the possibilities for exploring and experiencing this region in a whole new way. The area is filled with natural wonders, from giant redwood forests and rolling hills, to cliffs and beaches, and even a secret spot to see 20,000 migrating grey whales. Discover the history of Native people who lived here for millennia. Walk in the footsteps of titans of literature, film, and design. Linger in museums featuring fine art, culinary history, and a hubcap collection. You’ll find a sense of whimsy here, too, as you hunt for fairy doors or stroll through a pygmy forest. Visit restaurants, gardens, music venues, gravesites of people who made an impact here, and more places you never imagined existed – and, yes, a few truly unique wineries too.
In 1851 John Ruskin came to the defence of the young artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by writing two letters to The Times, refuting widespread criticism of their paintings. Soon afterwards he published a pamphlet entitled Pre-Raphaelitism, beginning almost a decade of public support for the work of William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and their associates.
Already established as one of the leading writers on art, he took a personal risk in defending the Pre- Raphaelite cause, but saw a parallel in the hostile reaction to the paintings of his artistic idol J. M. W. Turner. In Millais especially, Ruskin hoped to nurture a worthy successor in landscape painting, arguing that the Pre-Raphaelites’ attention to truth and detail offered the opportunity to establish a “new and noble school” of British art.
This is the first compilation of all of Ruskin’s published writings relating to the Pre-Raphaelites, beginning with the celebrated passage in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843) exhorting young artists to “go to nature in all …. rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing,” later claimed by Hunt to have been an inspiration. As well as Pre- Raphaelitism (1851), rarely reprinted since, and the fourth of the 1853 Edinburgh lectures, it includes all the comments on paintings in the annual Academy Notes (1855-9) which pertain to Pre-Raphaelitism, underlining Ruskin’s significant contribution to the movement’s popular success and the widespread acceptance of its principles. From the period after 1860, when Ruskin was concentrating more on social issues, come the the little-known articles published in the Nineteenth Century magazine under the title The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism (1878), and a number of lectures, including the last of his Slade Lectures, The Art of England (1883), delivered just a few years before his mental faculties failed.
Edited with a commentary and preface by Stephen Wildman, Director of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre, University of Lancaster, and with an introduction by Robert Hewison, one of Ruskin’s successors as Slade Professor of Art at the University of Oxford.
The Mingzhitang Collection of Sir Joseph Hotung is one of the finest collections in the world to capture the essence of early Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. With 20 outstanding examples, it concentrates on the first hundred years of China’s blue-and-white production, in the late Yuan (1271–1368) and early Ming (1368–1644) dynasties — a period that was never surpassed in artistic ingenuity and material quality.
The charisma and the energy of the masterly paintings on porcelain created in the Yuan dynasty at the kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, which made this genre so influential and universally admired, are represented with 12 exceptional examples, most of them unique. They demonstrate the powerful blue-and-white style developed under Mongol rule, when the artisans appear to have been working with few restraints.
The collection equally documents the much more refined and sophisticated early Ming style of the Yongle (1403–24) and Xuande (1426–35) reigns, when production was closely controlled by an imperial court with exceptionally high standards. Here, the collection illustrates two stylistic strands that existed side by side: porcelains decorated completely in Chinese taste and vessels in the shapes and patterns of Islamic metalwork from countries in close diplomatic contact with the Chinese court. The wares of this period defined imperial porcelain styles until the end of China’s last dynasty.
The book is lavishly illustrated and contains a general introduction on early Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, an extensive description, documentation and discussion of each piece, and a bibliography.
Ralph Dutton, 8th Baron Sherborne, was one of the leading taste-makers of his generation. Together with figures such as Christopher Hussey and James Lees-Milne, he helped create the perception that the apogee of English architecture and design was the 18th century; and in his own house and garden at Hinton Ampner, beloved of hundreds of thousands of National Trust visitors a year, he showed how to make that taste supremely effective in our own time. This biography, the first, explores how his achievements took shape, and how they were rooted in his circle of friends and fellow enthusiasts and scholars, all of whom played a part in creating heritage as we understand it today. John Holden, a leading cultural historian, charts Dutton’s life with warmth and critical acumen.
“… With its hundreds of beautiful photographs and outstanding research, it is a magnificent and eye-opening contribution that tells not only the story of the silver and gold items fashioned by Malay artisans but the Malay peoples themselves.’ — Seif El Rashidi, Islamic scholar, author & Director, Barakat Trust
This ground breaking new book is the first study of Malay silver and gold to take chronology and place production into serious consideration, leading to a much more nuanced understanding of developments across Southeast Asia. The exciting findings include the identification as Malay of certain exquisite gold filigree pieces held in august collections worldwide.’ — Annabel Teh Gallop, Head, Southeast Asia Department, British Library
At last, here is an excellent publication that does full justice to the scope and beauty of Malay silver and gold…’ — Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Author
This beautifully produced and illustrated book, ideal for collectors and curators, is the most comprehensive book ever published on the silver and gold ware of the Malay people of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and Brunei.
Hundreds of color photographs of previously unpublished items, and meticulous research, are used to tell not just the story of Malay gold and silver, but that of the Malay people, with reference to their princely regalia, banqueting items, betel sets, jewelry, silver and gold-encased weapons, and other items of adornment and finery. In addition, previously unrecognized gold items made by the Malays for the 18th century European market are identified, and other items of silverware now in museum collections and believed to be Malay are shown not to be.
Michael Backman also shows how 19th century collecting for museums and private collections, and colonialism itself, all distorted our view of Malay gold and silver today, if not the Malays themselves, and also influenced what was produced. He weaves a complex story, and in so doing reveals the Malays’ rich, dynamic and sophisticated legacy, one that is little understood today.
‘Malay Silver and Gold is the first book on this topic to have been published in over a hundred years. Rightly, it restores the Malays to the very centre of the commercial history and material culture setting of their region whilst placing them in the broader context of the ‘Islamic world’. With its hundreds of beautiful photographs and outstanding research, it is a magnificent and eye-opening contribution that tells not only the story of the silver and gold items fashioned by Malay artisans but the Malay peoples themselves.’ – Seif El Rashidi, Islamic scholar, author & Director, Barakat Trust
‘This ground breaking new book is the first study of Malay silver and gold to take chronology and place production into serious consideration, leading to a much more nuanced understanding of developments across Southeast Asia. The exciting findings include the identification as Malay of certain exquisite gold filigree pieces held in august collections worldwide.’ -Annabel Teh Gallop, Head, Southeast Asia Department, British Library
‘At last, here is an excellent publication that does full justice to the scope and beauty of Malay silver and gold. Michael Backman describes and illustrates the full range of Malay silver and gold work with superlative photographs. A great contribution to a very important, but hitherto not well understood Southeast Asia craft!’ -Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Author