From the end of the 19th century onwards, jewelry became an important vehicle for the formal experimentation and plastic innovation of its time, thanks to the development of knowledge about stone, the techniques used to produce it and the development of the art of jewelry. Books and exhibitions showcase this leading decorative art, which accompanied Romanticism in all its forms. It accompanied Romanticism in its final stages before adopting the emerging Art Nouveau repertoire.

Text in English and French.

Master printmaker Liu Chunjie is renowned for his beautiful woodcut art. Born to land reclamation workers in Heilongjiang Province’s 856 Farm, Lui began life in a remote part of China that was deemed to be a place of cultural exile. But it is here that a vibrant chapter in the history of contemporary Chinese printmaking, known as Beidahuang Prints, was born.

Living and breathing woodcut art, Liu takes the reader on a personal journey through his life’s work. Written in beautiful poetic prose, Liu describes how his art and the techniques he uses have developed over time, culminating in a stunning body of work that has made him the celebrated artist he is today.

Having experimented with colored ink, installation art and mixed-media painting, it is the spirit of woodcut that remains the foundation of Liu’s art. Using ancient tools and materials, he creates works that embody modern concepts, elevating the essence of woodcut art to a new level.

The Art & Times of Daniel Jocz presents the entrancing and challenging work of American jewelry artist and sculptor Daniel Jocz. There is a spontaneous quality to the work, yet it is always rich with meaning. His open spirit is fully embodied in the 2007 neckpiece series An American’s Riff on the Millstone Ruff. Inspired by the extravagant scale of 17th-century Dutch ruffs at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, he decided to update them with automobile paint.

Jeannine Falino takes an in-depth look at the twists and turns of Jocz’s long career, from his early geometric sculptures to the fashion-forward flocked Candy Wear collection, and from his ruminations on Marlene Dietrich in the form of necklaces featuring enamel smoked cigarettes to the wall reliefs he explores today. Wendy Steiner considers Jocz’s place in the avant-garde through the lens of fashion and culture, while Patricia Harris and David Lyon explore his involvement in the rollicking Boston jewelry scene of the late 20th century.

The Bradley Collection comprises the core of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s holdings of modern art. With nearly 400 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, it features works by groundbreaking artists across the 20th century, including Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Helen Frankenthaler, Barbara Hepworth, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Gabriele Münter, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.

This book tells the story of how Peg Bradley built the collection—and then how she gave it away, transforming her hometown museum and community. The first comprehensive catalog of the collection, it brings together new research and insights by international scholars to shed light on works that have been long admired but little studied. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with highlighted works and an illustrated checklist, allowing readers to visualize every work in the collection. In addition to focusing on this extraordinary gift, the essays will appeal to anyone interested in the larger arc of modern art. 

Art pushes boundaries and so does skateboarding. This book explores this philosophy by showcasing skateboard-inspired artists and their work from around the world. From artists working in the skateboard community to freelancers being influenced by it. From traditional pencil to digital drawing. They all have one thing in common: skateboarding. Skate & Art, following bestseller Surf & Art by Veerle Helsen, is curated and written by Michele Addelio, editor of Backside skate magazine who explores the skate scene outside the mainstream. In his online publication he has interviewed over 50 skateboard-inspired artists. This experience laid the foundation to continuously discover the diversity and beauty of the two art forms colliding.  

The Ashmolean is fortunate in having the finest collection of Indian art in Britain outside London, one which includes many works of great beauty and expressive power. For this we are indebted above all to the generosity, knowledge and taste of our benefactors and donors from the 17th century to the present. This book offers a short account of how the collection developed and a selection of some of its more outstanding or interesting works of art. While it is written mainly for the general reader and museum visitor, it includes many fine objects or pictures, some of them unpublished, that should interest specialist scholars and students.

Since 1987, the Ashmolean has made many significant new acquisitions of Indian art and these are highlighted in this collection. As the book’s title implies, it also ventures beyond the bounds of the Indian subcontinent by including works from Afghanistan and Central Asian Silk Road sites as well as many from Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia. From the early centuries AD, Indian trading links with these diverse regions of Asia led to a widespread cultural diffusion and regional adoptions of Buddhism and Hinduism along with their related arts. Local reinterpretations of such Indic subjects, themes and styles then grew into flourishing and enduring artistic traditions which are also part of the story of this book.

The selection of works ends around 1900. By the 16th century and the early modern period in India, growing European interventions and Western artistic influences under Mughal rule saw a significant shift in sensibility and the practice of more secular and naturalistic forms of court art such as portraiture. By the late 19th century, fundamental cultural changes under British rule and the advent of new technologies brought about a gradual decline in many of India’s traditional arts.

This book considers how and why people bought, sold, donated, and received works of art during Japan’s Edo period (1600-1868), when opportunities to obtain art increased as audiences for art expanded. Many urbanites enjoyed money in their pockets and access to information, which allowed them to emerge as influential consumers. With this, patronage of art by a small cohort of powerful and wealthy individuals gave way to support of art by a broader audience and, concurrently, exchanges between those making art and those acquiring art developed into new and dynamic interactions. The study of Edo-period art acquisition is comparatively new, but important to those seeking greater knowledge about art objects, as well as many others looking to understand the social life of visual forms. Some contributors to this volume examine broad themes like art and the marketplace, or art and political dissent; others explore cases of ownership by ranking officials, imperial ladies, temple abbots, and business entrepreneurs. As a whole, the book allows for a deeper understanding of Edo-period acquisition practices, as well as a fuller comprehension of the vital connections between Japanese art and its audiences.

The Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course is a complete reprint of a famous, late nineteenth century drawing course. It contains a set of almost two hundred masterful lithographs of subjects for copying by drawing students before they attempt drawing from life or nature. Consequently it is a book that will interest artists, art students, art historians, and lovers and collectors of drawings. It also introduces us to the work and life of a hitherto neglected master: Charles Bargue.

The Drawing Course consists of three sections. The first consists of plates drawn after casts, usually of antique examples. Different parts of the body are studied in order of difficulty, until full figures are presented. The second section pays homage to the western school of painting with lithographs after exemplary drawings by Renaissance and modern masters. The third part contains almost sixty académies or drawings after nude male models, all original inventions by Bargue, the lithographer. With great care, the student is introduced to continually more difficult problems in the close observing and recording of nature.

Practiced professional artists will see at once the problems of representation that are approached by Bargue, and they will delight in his solutions. Figure painters will copy the plates to keep in tune; so to speak, much as pianists practice the exercises of Czerny before performing Beethoven. Art students will find it a practical and progressive introduction to realistic figure drawing. Art historians can learn by studying these drawings just what was prized in late nineteenth century figure painting. They will recognize the reliance upon tradition by the use of antique sculptures as models in the first part: Antiquity is here used, not to impose a classical style, but as an aid in seeing the structure of the human body with clarity and intelligence. The result is a convergence of Classicism and Realism. There are no numerical proportional charts, perspective boxes or geometrical schemata to memorize. All the techniques and schemata are developed out of and for the object or person in view.

The drawings are splendid; beautiful; not simply products of assiduity, but of careful observation and the wish to transcribe and communicate the beauty of nature and light, as well as the manifold appearances of the human body. These are objectives that will touch and move any careful reader of drawings, and the figurative arts.

Text in French.
The Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course is a complete reprint of a famous, late nineteenth century drawing course. It contains a set of almost two hundred masterful lithographs of subjects for copying by drawing students before they attempt drawing from life or nature. Consequently it is a book that will interest artists, art students, art historians, and lovers and collectors of drawings. It also introduces us to the work and life of a hitherto neglected master: Charles Bargue. The Drawing Course consists of three sections. The first consists of plates drawn after casts, usually of antique examples. Different parts of the body are studied in order of difficulty, until full figures are presented. The second section pays homage to the western school of painting with lithographs after exemplary drawings by Renaissance and modern masters. The third part contains almost sixty académies or drawings after nude male models, all original inventions by Bargue, the lithographer. With great care, the student is introduced to continually more difficult problems in the close observing and recording of nature. Practiced professional artists will see at once the problems of representation that are approached by Bargue, and they will delight in his solutions. Figure painters will copy the plates to keep in tune; so to speak, much as pianists practice the exercises of Czerny before performing Beethoven. Art students will find it a practical and progressive introduction to realistic figure drawing. Art historians can learn by studying these drawings just what was prized in late nineteenth century figure painting. They will recognize the reliance upon tradition by the use of antique sculptures as models in the first part: Antiquity is here used, not to impose a classical style, but as an aid in seeing the structure of the human body with clarity and intelligence. The result is a convergence of Classicism and Realism. There are no numerical proportional charts, perspective boxes or geometrical schemata to memorize. All the techniques and schemata are developed out of and for the object or person in view. The drawings are splendid; beautiful; not simply products of assiduity, but of careful observation and the wish to transcribe and communicate the beauty of nature and light, as well as the manifold appearances of the human body. These are objectives that will touch and move any careful reader of drawings, and the figurative arts. Text in French.

In previous studies, Jan Strybol pointed out that – contrary to popular belief – sculpture flourished in northern Nigeria. Wood sculptures could be found just about everywhere, with the exception of part of the Far North. In this study, the author first examines the sculptural traditions of a number of peoples in central Nigeria, more specifically from the Jos Plateau and from the Middle Benue Valley to the source area of the Taraba River. These peoples can be described as non-centralized communities where art was mainly produced in perishable materials by part-time artists, in contrast to the centralized empires in the South (Ife, Benin) where full-time specialist sculptors created complex artefacts in durable materials (stone, bronze, iron).
Perhaps the most familiar ethnic group in the Central Benue region to lovers of African art are the Mumuye. Since the end of the last century, as a result of the advance of world religions, the traditional rites of the Mumuye have rapidly disappeared and with them the Mumuye sculptural tradition so much admired in Europe and America.
In addition to wood sculptures, Jan Strybol also pays attention to objects in bronze, iron, terracotta and other materials. These art forms have been very underexposed until now and have almost completely vanished. Finally, the author also delves into the artistic achievements of some little-known remnant groups within the Mumuye territory, which can boast of a rich art tradition.

The best art isn’t just created in art schools. Scratched into cave walls, molded in clay, embroidered onto clothing, sketched in the margins, painted on scrap cardboard in time snatched after work, perhaps in secret. Art is not only made inside academies and institutions by people with money and training, though sometimes the canon suggests otherwise. From Ukrainian pansky eggs to politically charged quilts, these 65 artworks challenge our preconceptions about what constitutes art, how it should be made and who should make it. 

This delightfully illustrated volume introduces children and their families to the arts of the Indian subcontinent, spanning nearly two thousand years of artwork. Young readers will explore ancient lore, royal palaces, sacred sites, lush nature, and more, through more than sixty works from the rich collection of the San Diego Museum of Art. Interactive features provide opportunities for further investigation of the themes, history, and artistic techniques discussed in the book. Peacocks and Palaces: Exploring the Art of India is the second instalment in the “Art Unframed” series from the San Diego Museum of Art, which guides children and families toward a deeper understanding of important traditions in the history of art through works in the Museum’s permanent collection.

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.

Laure Pigeon (1882-1965) is one of the leading figures in Art Brut (Outsider Art), along with Aloïse Corbaz and Adolf Wölfli. The Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne probably possesses her entire oeuvre, amounting to over 400 works, including writings, notebooks, small-scale drawings and an extensive series of large compositions in blue ink. These are all part of the corpus of works acquired by Jean Dubuffet, the historic collection around which the museum was founded. 

In 1978, the Collection de l’Art Brut held the first and only monographic exhibition dedicated to this artist. A new exhibition in 2025 has now been devoted to her exclusively. It offers a representative selection of her striking graphic work, spanning a period of 30 years.

Like Madge Gill, Jeanne Tripier, Augustin Lesage and Raphaël Lonné, Laure Pigeon too was a member of the spiritualist fraternity – men and women who feel “selected” to receive messages from the hereafter and claim the deceased are responsible for their creations. The spiritualist’s hand is therefore guided and merely executes what the spirits dictate.

The catalog, in French and English, includes essays by several authors and a large number of color illustrations.

Text in English and French.

Caroline Broadhead (b. 1950) is a highly versatile artist who started in jewelry in the late 1970s. Since then she has extended her practice from “wearable objects” and textile works to dance collaborations and installations in historic buildings. Broadhead’s work is concerned with the boundaries of an individual and the interface of inside and outside, public and private, including a sense of territory and personal space, presence and absence and a balance between substance and image. It has explored outer extents of the body as seen through light, shadows, reflections and movement. This comprehensive overview also comprises larger scale and collaborative works that aim to elicit a particular experience or to start a train of thought.

Published to accompany the Exhibition at CODA Museum Apeldoorn (NL), 4 February – 15 April 2018 and the Exhibition at Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, London, 11 January – 2 February 2019.

James Tower (1919-1988) is best known for his elegant forms in glazed earthenware. During a career spanning four decades, from the 1950s to the 1980s, he worked unceasingly in a wide variety of media to achieve an elusive harmony of shape and surface, form and decoration, inert material and active design. His personal understanding of the purpose and meaning of abstraction embodies a perpetual dialogue between the visible world and the unseen dynamics which shape it. This centenary volume of essays considers Tower’s entire output from a wide variety of perspectives, embracing paintings and drawings, as well as sculpture in bronze, terracotta and fibreglass. The contributions of leading critics and historians approach his work, situated at the junction of art, craft and design, in a broad historical and cultural context, illuminating key episodes in postwar British art, and Tower’s unique place within it. This book accompanies an exhibition at Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, UK, 21 September – 24 November 2019

Open Space – Mind Maps pursues the current development in art jewelry that is positioned far from the merely decorative in the aesthetic and artistic discourse of our era. Thirty international artists present their works in this publication, which is arranged thematically by the buzzwords inhabiting current trends, such as the nomadic aspect and the tendency towards narrative imagery to provocation that infringes on boundaries and to the poetic imagination in jewelry. All these facets as open-ended chapters illustrate the iconographic focus of each of these protagonists from across the world. Contents: Berndt Arell: Foreword; Ellen Maurer Zilioli: Open Space – Mind Maps. Positions in contemporary jewellery; Inger Wästberg: The Swedish Perspective; Philip Warkander: Art Jewellery. A reflection on terminology; Catalogue; Appendix; Artists’ biographies; Authors’ biographies

Custodians brings together for the first time, in this beautifully compiled collection, images of many of Oxford’s most prestigious buildings along with some rarely seen, but wonderful venues and their ‘Custodians’. Photographer Joanna Vestey set out to explore the extraordinary colleges and buildings of Oxford, behind the closed doors, often beyond the reach of the 9.5 million visitors a year who come here, and to meet the ‘Custodians’ playing a pivotal role in perpetuating these world renowned institutions. Rarely do we get to catch a glimpse behind the closed facades of these iconic structures and to see the spaces that lie within. All the images have been captured in the University City of Oxford, known as the “City of Dreaming Spires” and show its extraordinary breadth of architecture since the arrival of the Saxons. It includes venues such as the 17th Century Divinity School, the mid-18th century Radcliffe Camera continuing through to the most recent award winning RIBA nominated chapel at Ripon College completed last year. Venues such as the Sheldonian Theatre and Christchurch College sit alongside perhaps lesser known venues such as The Real Tennis Courts or the John Martyr Pawsons cricket pavilion portraying the breadth and diversity constituting the city. The ‘Custodians’ and their surroundings enjoy equal status in Joanna’s formal compositions; they seem to belong together, yet do not fuse into one, thereby asking us to question how we are all largely shaped and influenced by the structures around us – how defined we are by them and how much they form us. Full of unexpected venues beautifully photographed, this book will appeal to the his-torian, city visitor, people interested in architecture and interiors as well as to the extensive alumni network of the colleges themselves. It will also appeal to an audience interested in contemporary photography.

Mr. Rossi | Papik Rossi, the renowned skateboarder, contributes to Drago’s 36 Chambers series, exhibiting the cutting-edge of contemporary Roman counterculture. His images, shrouded in monochrome with luminous yellow highlights, stunningly capture the spontaneity of the streets and the magic of Trastevere, the Roman neighborhood that Rossi calls home. This neighborhood is also home to the ‘funkhouse’, Rossi’s nest and creative factory that inspires the vibrant imagery showcased in this book. The so-called King of the Roman streets is known for his skateboarding, music, street photography and the clothing brand, Trustever. He has worked on some of Rome’s most notable exhibitions such as Mania at Termini station and 30% Acrilico at the Museum of Rome in Trastevere. He has also held the position of director at the ‘Cuattro’ gallery in Rome where he worked on a series of extraordinary initiatives such as the production of the book Just Push the Button, with clothing brands Slam Jam, Stussy and Carhartt.

The first monograph dedicated to Marc du Plantier (1901-1975), allows the reader to redeciscover one of the major decorators of the 20th century. Marc du Plantier began his career in 1928. From his earliest projects he began to implement his architectural vocabulary, characterized by precision of line, working with color, indirect light and the interplay of mirrors. His art reached its apogee in the rue du Belvédère, where Anne and Marc du Plantier welcomed the Parissmart set of the 1930s. This was followed by the apartment overlooking the Bay of Alger, considered to be one of the high points of interior decoration of its time, the palaces in Madrid where, from 1938 to 1949, he developed a remarkable form of neoclassicism, his Parisian apartments of the 1950s, and the drawing room of the French embassy in Ottawa. In the 1960s, the disappearance of private commissions drove the designer to settle in Mexico, where he founded the Artedecor Company, and then in Los Angeles, before returning to Paris via the Orient. His contact with American Pop Art inspired the work he developed in 1968, creating models with new materials edited by the Lacloche gallery and for the dining room of Maurice Rheims, still hewing to the precision of his classical aesthetic.

Text in French.
• Creator of exceptional interiors in Europe and the world, from 1928 to the end of the 1960s, Marc du Plantier was one of the leading decorators of the 20th century• The only monograph on Marc Du Plantier; the book covers the entire body of his workThe first monograph dedicated to Marc du Plantier (1901-1975), allows the reader to rediscover one of the major decorators of the 20th century. Marc du Plantier began his career in 1928. From his earliest projects he began to implement his architectural vocabulary, characterized by precision of line, working with color, indirect light and the interplay of mirrors. His art reached its apogee in the rue du Belvédère, where Anne and Marc du Plantier welcomed the Parissmart set of the 1930s. This was followed by the apartment overlooking the Bay of Alger, considered to be one of the high points of interior decoration of its time, the palaces in Madrid where, from 1938 to 1949, he developed a remarkable form of neoclassicism, his Parisian apartments of the 1950s, and the drawing room of the French embassy in Ottawa. In the 1960s, the disappearance of private commissions drove the designer to settle in Mexico, where he founded the Artedecor Company, and then in Los Angeles, before returning to Paris via the Orient. His contact with American Pop Art inspired the work he developed in 1968, creating models with new materials edited by the Lacloche gallery and for the dining room of Maurice Rheims, still hewing to the precision of his classical aesthetic. Text in French.