Liverpool’s unique history as an international port and a cultural melting pot has given it a character all its own. The city has produced music that conquered the world and is home to more historic buildings than any other British metropolis outside London. It features two magnificent cathedrals and many world famous museums. But beyond its renowned exterior, is an eclectic assortment of places hidden and unknown.
This deliciously offbeat guidebook will lead you to a different Liverpool: down tunnels, up skyscrapers, and into secret bars, speciality shops, and disused factories. You will see Balenciaga trainers and vintage planes, rolling bridges and disappearing statues, Liver birds and celebrity suitcases, home-baked cakes and cast-iron churches.
Stroll under the palms in a magical glasshouse, explore a 1950s kitchen or a museum of false teeth. Relax in a hip tea bar with over 50 varieties of tea (loose leaf naturally). Marvel at the world’s most expensive book or largest brick building (27 million bricks!). Go underground to explore a network of mysterious tunnels or a perfectly preserved World War II bunker. Drink in a prison cell, picnic in a graveyard, or stay in the hotel where Winston Churchill and Bob Dylan were guests.
Think you know Liverpool? Think again! Whether you’re a long-time local, a first-time tourist, or a repeat visitor, prepare to be charmed and intrigued by 111 eccentric and unusual spots you’d never expect to find in the city best known for football and the Fab Four.

After Tour Paris 13, a spectacular new project has come into being in Paris. The elevated section of metro line 6 now passes through an “open-air museum” all along the Boulevard Vincent Auriol: Boulevard Paris 13 with its immense murals, executed by the greatest international artists, and which can be viewed as if in a gallery of a gigantic museum.
You can enjoy or repeat this unparalleled experience through a richly illustrated book that relates the genesis and making of the project!

Text in English and French.

The relationship Ernst Gamperl, an artist of international renown, has developed with wood as a living material and the acknowledgment of inescapable serendipity are a source of creative inspiration as well as the driving forces behind his work – a work revolving around the artist’s deep connection with nature and respect for his raw material. The wood worked by Gamperl sometimes comes from majestic trees tens or even hundreds of years old – grown in nature, it is nature that has often sent these unmistakable creatures crashing down.
Trees are an integral part of creation, symbols of life and strength that Gamperl has studied and “perceived” for many years in symbiosis with their essence and nature. His ability to combine an unconventional approach to the material with a revolutionary technique and an original interpretation honed over many years results in works that stand out for their elegance and charisma. Gamperl stretches technique to its limits in creating powerful sculptures that unfailingly stir the viewer, who discovers something never before encountered.

Text in English, Italian and German.

ECHTZEIT is made in collaboration with Dirk Braeckman (BE, °1958) and FOMU Antwerp in line with his impacting solo show with the Collections department of the photo museum. Echtzeit offers a unique glimpse into Dirk Braeckman’s most recent photographs, accompanied with the museum’s collection and texts written by Clément Chéroux, director of the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson and Tamara Berghmans, curator of the exhibition.

Braeckman has chosen from the FOMU collection functional photographs, made without artistic ambition. He recognized certain qualities and commonalities with his own work in these atypical images.

Rephotography and experimentation have always formed part of Braeckman’s artistic practice, though the trajectory to the final image is always different. For the FOMU exhibition, he worked for the first time with an existing collection of photos. Braeckman took photos of the chosen images and printed them. He then over-painted, smeared or cut holes in the prints. He photographed the results and processed them further in his analogue and digital darkroom.

The original meaning of the photographs has been altered through the removal of context, the change in format and the addition of titles. A functional document is transformed into a piece of art, a timeless visual poem that raises more questions than it answers.

‘Echtzeit’ refers to Braeckman’s bridging of the past and present.

Text in English, French and Dutch.

The British architect Tony Fretton has long been renowned as a pioneer of London’s architectural scene, winning many commendations and prizes for his buildings. Highlights include the Lisson Gallery in London, for which he attracted initial attention in 1990, as well as the Red House in London (2001) and the Danish Fuglsang Art Museum (2008).

The three parts of this comprehensive and conclusive monograph address all aspects of his creative oeuvre: including his buildings, sketches, project ideas and his non-architectural photographic work. The reserved design of this overall presentation reflects his own rational, unembellished work, which is inspired by each respective location.

Everyday Indian Aesthetic is a unique documentation of India, depicted through aesthetics as seen in architecture, adornments, objects, colors, textures, patterns, and typography. It celebrates the diversity of the country while highlighting the identities and functionality associated with everyday design. With more than 400 photographs taken during Sayali Goyal’s travels around rural and small-town India, she invites you to take a personal journey and interpret the richness of Indian design that is based on form and functionality with an element of the unusual. This photo book will let you wander through the pages without restricting the way you see and discover how design has the capacity to document cultural exchange whilst holding the past in the present.

Manchester is far more than a grey provincial city preoccupied with the business of making money. The bales of cotton goods awaiting export have gone from the grand warehouses styled like palaces, and the cotton mills no longer hum with the sound of machinery. Yet the buildings remain in all their glory of tiles, terracotta and stained glass – converted to hotels, offices, chic apartments, hipster bars, fine eateries or gritty drinking dens. The textile trade may have disappeared, but you can find sustainable fashion in the old rag-trade district, and top quality coats and jackets are still being hand-sewn in the last remaining family-owned clothing factory. This book will also take you to alternative Manchester – Radical Manchester from Peterloo to the Pankhursts, Literary Manchester from Elizabeth Gaskell to Anthony Burgess, and of course to Madchester, the crazy music scene of Morrissey, Tony Wilson, the Hacienda and Factory Records.

500 Piece Puzzle featuring the artwork of Rachel Hayden.

Rachel Hayden’s paintings seek order in chaos by puzzle-piecing together a handful of objects into balanced and symmetrical compositions. The artist creates full yet uncluttered canvases where figures float harmoniously in midair without touching. Hayden’s work repeatedly depicts different iterations of a small number of natural subjects, such as rainbows and shooting stars—often anthropomorphized with human faces.

In a completely unexpected way, Aurelio Amendola, a world-renowned photographer, goes beyond his consolidated practice of printing on paper to take up the challenge of the contemporary medium par excellence, digital, exhibiting his shots dedicated to Michelangelo on the screens of Rifugio Digitale. The gallery that hosted the exhibition draws its identity from its origin: an anti-aircraft bunker built in Florence during the Second World War to protect the neighborhood from bombing. The redevelopment of the tunnel has given rise to a space that welcomes artistic expressions of all kinds, with a strong look towards the future and a strong predilection for everything that moves in the digital field.

Antonio Natali, together with the photographer from Pistoia, selected these images, curating the exhibition and the volume, inviting us to pay attention to something completely different from the canonical iconography to which we are accustomed. In fact, we are presented with an iconic Michelangelo.

There’s more to the South of France than sun, beaches, palm trees and the azure blue sea. For over a hundred years, it has been the favorite destination of many artists, who find themselves drawn to the superb light and the pleasant climate. The South of France for Art Lovers will show you what the area between Collioure and Menton has to offer in terms of surprising and remarkable art and cultural treasures. Journalist and art connoisseur Eric Rinckhout (Knack Magazine a.o.) selected more than 350 exceptional places: from the chapel decorated by Louise Bourgeois to the studio of Matisse and the apartment of Nabokov, from Eileen Gray’s modernist Villa E-1027 to architect Frank Gehry’s most recent design, from the oldest cinema in the world to street art in Marseille. Discover the best and most unique spots in inspiring lists such as contemporary sculpture gardens on wine estates, in the footsteps of painters and writers, chansonniers and rock stars, sleeping inside art, gardens that are artistic gems and much more.

Published on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of the Rosetta stone, this book responds to the ever-growing enthusiasm and curiosity for Egyptomania.

This concept refers to a collective imagination which was nurtured throughout the 19th and 20th centuries by archeological digs and exploratory trips. These key discoveries were crucial for creation and particularly for the Art Deco artists who found their inspiration in Egyptian lines and patterns.

Art Déco & Egyptomanie explores the origins and functioning of this cultural and artistic movement shaped by many fields: architecture, cinema, sculpture, popular art, theater and fashion.

Art Déco & Egyptomanie comes with an explicit and previously unseen iconography.

Text in French.

D*Face, born Dean Stockton, is a British artist known for his distinctive blend of pop art and punk culture in street art. Drawing inspiration from American comics, he creates street art and exhibits globally, contributing to the rise of contemporary street art alongside artists like OBEY and BANKSY.

The purpose of this book is to give a wider insight into the practice of working within the streets and the public domain. What people most often see of street art is actually the middle point of an artwork’s lifespan, the clean image of a recently finished mural or a freshly peeled sticker but that’s not the whole picture. Not only is there a whole process leading up to the creation of a mural but there also exists a journey of change after work has been left to the streets. Paint fades, tags appear, stickers peel and crack – all these are part and parcel of what it means to work within the street. This book aims to tell that story.

Paper Art III contains the wonderful works of dedicated paper artists from all over the world since 2018, exploring the infinite possibilities of paper, an ancient and common material in daily life, allowing people to rediscover the breathtaking beauty of the ordinary and perceive the survival and growth of paper in art. The exquisite paper cutting, spectacular paper sculpture, collision of photography and paper art techniques… each piece of paper artwork will be cohesive in the work of the artist’s time and effort to present the full extent of the work.

In addition to existing as pure artwork, this book also shows how paper art can be used in a variety of applications. From house decoration to window decoration, to large-scale public space decoration, etc., these cases give readers the opportunity to understand and feel how the artist creates a rich sense of space, enhances environmental aesthetics, and even changes the urban temperament by changing the color and shape of the paper.

According to medieval theologians, faith is a deadly serious business. Humor and virtue are irreconcilable, because laughter is uncontrollable and escapes the control of reason. A modest smile is permitted. But laughing loudly, grinning and grimacing: these are the playing field of the devil – just as pernicious as other uncontrollable urges, such as physical love or the addiction of the gambler. That is the domain of the peasant or fool.

In the late Middle Ages, every right-thinking town-dweller knew the difference between the peasant and the fool. Peasants are innocently gullible, primitive, throwing themselves into feasting, gorging, drinking and sex. The peasant is the antithesis of the cultivated urbanite, who fastidiously controls his urges – and who therefore above all must not laugh too loudly. Only during Innocents Day parties or Shrove Tuesday celebrations is it permitted for urban partygoers to play the fool and to show their ‘underbelly’.

In contrast to the peasant, the fool escapes the existing order. He holds up a mirror to the self-declared wise citizens, because ‘the fool reveals the truth through laughter’, even though it may be hidden between piss and shit, sex and snot. It is for precisely this reason that Erasmus, in his In Praise of Folly writes not as himself but through the persona of Folly, a broad back behind which the wise person can hide when he denounces social problems. Laughter thus alters the world.

In this context, the fool and irony became important motifs in medieval art, especially in the Low Countries. This original art book is illustrated with dozens of top-quality works by Flemish masters from worldwide collections.

In Kari Steihaug’s art, what is overseen plays a major role. The things that have been set aside, unfinished projects, objects that are worn or frayed are all solicitously brought into the light. This is also evident in the materials used by the textile artist: Steihaug’s works feature worn out woollen garments as well as unfinished knitwear. By embracing imperfection, her creations become a counterbalance to the galloping consumer culture of our time, allowing us to see with fresh eyes what surrounds us in everyday life.

This book brings together 25 years of her work. Contributions in poetry and prose introduce Steihaug’s work and trace the lines of a diverse and rich practice.

With contributions by Monica Aasprong, Ingvill Henmo, Anne Karin Jortveit, Aasne Linnestå, Halvor Nordby, Kjetil Røed, Cecilie Skeide, and Kari Steihaug.

A visit to a museum is an extraordinary opportunity for imagination, liberation from the mundane routines of daily life, and opening the door to a world of diversified perspectives. In the last two decades, an artistic network has flourished along the scenic banks of Shanghai’s Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek, both prominent waterways in the city. As of 2023, the 6.3-kilometer waterfront along Suzhou Creek has been transformed into an awe-inspiring canvas housing more than 100 vibrant art spaces. Meanwhile, the Huangpu River has become a hub of artistic expression, featuring renowned cultural areas like the Bund, the “West Bund Cultural Corridor” project, initiated in 2010, and the post-Expo venues.

Roaming Shanghai’s Art Museums guides readers through every path that leads to the most important 15 art museums in Shanghai. This book unveils a comprehensive treasure trove of art museum insights, accompanied by precious photographs, and engaging dialogues with directors and architects. From industrial relics to architectural masterpieces by Pritzker Award winning architects like David Chipperfield, Jean Nouvel, and Tadao Ando, it takes readers to a world of art. Embrace the journey of artistic exploration, where each museum visit becomes a transformative and enriching encounter with creativity and human expression.

Text in English and Chinese.

With the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925, Art Deco seduced the world. From New York to Paris, the press celebrated this event which permanently imposes this universal style.

Crossing the Atlantic aboard sumptuous liners such as Île-de-France and Normandy, main French decorators such as Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, Jean Dunand and Pierre Chareau exhibited in department stores, from New York to Philadelphia.

From Mexico to Canada, this enthusiasm is driven by North American architects trained at the School National Museum of Fine Arts in Paris from the beginning of the 20th century, then at the Art Training Center in Meudon and at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts, two art schools founded after the First World War world which strengthened the links between the two continents. 

This book reveals a reciprocal emulation which is illustrated in the architecture and ornamentation of skyscrapers as well as in cinema, fashion, press, sport… 

Thirty-seven texts and 350 illustrations make it possible to discover the unique links that unite France and America, from the Statue of Liberty by Bartholdi to the Streamline which succeeds Art Deco. 

Text in French.

“Adimoolam’s work, in addition to being inherently attractive, is also intriguing for its unusual deviations off regular artways. Mapin Publishing’s The Art of Adimoolam is a show-and-tell of this journey and largely succeeds in giving readers/viewers an idea of the geography of Adimoolam’s routing in art and art’s forms and locations. Sinha’s writing maintains a sensitive balance of technical and human-interest angles….” -The Hindu K. M. Adimoolam’s art resists easy categorization. He brings to his work a genuine spirit of inquiry, and a continually rejuvenating wonder at the generative cosmic possibilities of art. He makes profoundly aesthetic choices, bringing to his abstract painting and apparently realistic drawing sheer, unambiguous artistic skills. Adimoolam is primarily optimistic; his paintings resonate with a pleasure in the sensuality of the medium of oil, its dexterity and movement, and its ability to translate emotion into color. What all the works have in common is his preoccupation with presences and fields outside his immediate perception, and a graded move towards the ideal space of pure abstraction. This for Adimoolam is the vivid, magnetic Other, the field of consciousness-energy or citsakti-one that is not personalized in any way, but which hints at the possibility of the deepest realization.

With 304 pages of striking floral arrangements, International Floral Art 2016/2017 is another exceptional tribute to the wonders of floral art. An absolute favorite of many, the International Floral Art series has become an essential resource that reflects the diverse and ever-evolving floral art scene. Over 200 international artists, both up-and-coming and well-established designers, sent in their best designs. This splendid mix of backgrounds accounts for the extraordinary diversity and the refreshing mix of arrangements in this volume. Packed with artful and inventive new designs and showcasing many contemporary styles and techniques, this is a must-have for anyone interested in floral art, from those with fingers itching to create, to those who just want to stand back and admire the incredible talents of others.

This volume brings together leading scholars of Sikhism and of Sikh art to assess and interpret the remarkable art resource known as the Kapany Collection, using it to introduce to a broad public the culture, history, and ethos of the Sikhs. Fifteen renowned scholars contributed essays describing the passion and vision of Narinder and Satinder Kapany in assembling this unparalleled assemblage of great Sikh art, some of which has been displayed in exhibitions around the globe. The Kapanys’ legacy of philanthropic work includes establishing the Sikh Foundation (now celebrating its 50th year) and university endowments for Sikh studies. Through this profusely illustrated book’s chapters, scholars examine the full range of Sikh artistic expression and of Sikh history and cultural life, using artworks from the Kapany Collection.

The New York jewelry firm of Marcus & Co. (1892–1942) created exceptional examples of Art Nouveau and Art Deco jewelry for an art-loving, wealthy elite. Innovative in their collaboration with contemporary artists, and in their captivating window displays and advertisements, the firm captured the imagination of Gilded Age families such as the Rockefellers. This volume chronicles their story, from the founder’s apprenticeship in Dresden to the firm’s grand premises on Fifth Avenue neighboring Tiffany and Cartier. The triumphs and tragedies of three generations of Marcus jewelers, both artistic and entrepreneurial, are presented here together with exquisite jewelry and archival design drawings spanning 50 years.

Gertrude Jekyll was perhaps the most important British garden designer of the 20th century. She famously argued that gardening ought to be considered a Fine Art, highlighting that it becomes a point of honor to be always striving for the best. This volume examines Jekyll’s work at Manor House, Upton Grey in Hampshire, offering an insight into her eclectic, imaginative, and inspiring art. Designed between 1908 and 1909, and once maintained by as many as nine gardeners, the garden fell into disrepair by the second half of the twentieth century, before a full and accurate restoration was carried out in the early 1980s. Gertrude Jekyll: Her Art Restored at Upton Grey presents a visual record of the garden’s plants and layout, with original plans and photographs, as well as beautiful images of the garden taken since its restoration. There is also a fascinating chapter about Miss Jekyll’s discovery, admiration and use of Mediterranean plants. The book succeeds in illustrating exactly why Jekyll was so admired in her lifetime and why she continues to inspire and influence gardeners today. Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: The Garden from 1902 to the Start of its Restoration in 1984 Chapter 2: The Rose Garden Chapter 3: The Dry-Stone Walls Chapter 4: The Main Herbaceous Borders Chapter 5: The Pergola, the Rose Arbour and Surrounding Garden Chapter 6: Miss Gertrude Jekyll’s mediterranean travels and plant discoveries and their use at Upton Grey Chapter 7: The Wild Garden Chapter 8: The Art Completed Also available: The English Garden Through the Twentieth Century ISBN: 9781870673297