This volume represents an important tool for getting to know every aspect of Leonardo da Vinci’s work: his pictorial technique, his scientific and technological investigation, his study on anatomy, his Codices, and every suggestion produced by his genius. All works and paintings are accompanied by descriptive and technical sheets, and ample space has been given to images and details, to the updated report on his most controversial works, to those of recent critical acceptance, and to the masterpieces that have animated the international debate such as The Encarnate Angel, the Salvator Mundi, and La Bella Principessa (Portrait of Bianca Sforza). The narrative captions reveal the most curious aspects of the history of each painting. Thanks to the direct contribution of collectors and museums the photographic reproductions of paintings and works reflect the last restorations.

Text in English and French.

The significant and rapid trend toward small office design globally is testament to increasing economic imperatives, where often commercial rentals are pushing business into innovative ways to manage and minimise their space and resources. Fast-evolving technological advances are also making it possible for people to work from home, where their home office environment needs to be not only stylish, but also conducive to productivity, and ergonomic to support and encourage good health and well-being. Also, there are those who seek to start their own business and are looking to establish a creative, professional and inspiring home office environment. Big Design for Small Workspaces combines form with function, and presents innovative interior designs for offices with compact floor plans of up to about 3230 square feet (300 square meters). This book showcases a selection of richly photographed, sleek and modern solutions, and presents insightful design concepts and appealing examples of imaginative and resourceful spaces, with informative commentaries describing aspects such as furnishings and materials, workstation layout, including the use of vertical space to its fullest advantage, and multipurpose areas. This book will provide an essential source of inspiration for architects, interior designers, small business owners, the homeoffice renovator, and anyone looking to create a smart small office environment.

Pure Luxury: World’s Best Houses is a celebration of residential living at its finest, and best. Satisfying our natural and abiding curiosity about how other people live, and our endless quest to add a special something to our own homes, this latest volume in IMAGES’ 100 Houses series showcases contemporary architectural trends. The beauty of residential architecture lies in its infinite scope for innovation and the comfort of its inhabitants, be they at rest, at play, or hosting guests. Among the awe-inspiring projects in this book are an opulent villa set in the Hollywood Hills with an infinity pool projecting over LA, an idyllic rural retreat set in luxurious valleys and stunning beach houses around the coast. The diversity of the locations extend from Mexico and Brazil to Thailand and Italy. Featured architects include: Damien Murtagh, Lockyer Architects, ISJ Architects, Saucier + Perrotte, SAOTA, Okada Architects, Original Vision, Koutsoftides Architects, Drozdov Partners and Carlos Bratke Architect.

Collage is one of the most popular and pervasive of all art-forms, yet this is the first historical survey book ever published on the subject. Featuring over 200 works, ranging from the 1500s to the present day, it offers an entirely new approach. Hitherto, collage has been presented as a twentieth-century phenomenon, linked in particular to Pablo Picasso and Cubism in the years just before the First World War. In Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, we trace its origins back to books and prints of the 1500s, through to the boom in popularity of scrapbooks and do-it-yourself collage during the Victorian period, and then through Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. Collage became the technique of choice in the 1960s and 1970s for anti-establishment protest, and in the present day is used by millions of us through digital devices. The definition of collage employed here is a broad one, encompassing cut-and-pasted paper, photography, patchwork, film and digital technology and ranging from work by professionals to unknown makers, amateurs and children.

Contents:

Collage Over the Centuries, an introductory essay by Patrick Elliott; Collage Before Modernism by Freya Gowrley; On Edge: Exploring Collage Tactics and Terminology by Yuval Etgar; catalogue of exhibition works; a Chronology of Collage.

Clay is back: the age-old craft of ceramics is being embraced by a new generation of urban makers and collectors. This book explores the contemporary revival of pottery, focusing on six inspiring cities, their history and their makers. Twenty-eight passionate ceramicists in New York, London, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Sydney and São Paulo introduce us to their work, their studios and their inspiration. Includes a practical and updated source list of places to discover and buy handmade ceramics in the six cities featured. Third and updated edition.

This beautifully illustrated book showcases the Hindu and Jain temples of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka built prior to the invasion of peninsular India by the Delhi sultans at the end of the 13th century. Unlike temples in many other parts of India, those of the Deccan are well preserved, with their wealth of figural and decorative carvings miraculously intact. They demonstrate the development of Indian sacred architecture and art over a span of more than 600 years.

Focusing on some 50 historical sites, the Temples of Deccan India begins with artificially excavated “cave” shrines dedicated to various Hindu deities, before proceeding on to examine free-standing Hindu and Jain monuments sponsored by successive rulers of the Deccan. Attention is paid to the beautiful sculptures found on temple basements, walls, brackets and ceilings. Carved in crisp relief, and sometimes even in three dimensions, these carvings are among the greatest glories of Indian stone art. 

Among the featured highlights are the cave temple on the island of Elephanta, with its stupendous representation of three-headed Sadashiva; the colossal, monolithic Kailasa temple at Ellora, a technical feat unsurpassed in the entire history of Indian architecture; the magnificent columned pavilion at Hanamkonda, now currently being reconstructed; and the temple at Belur, with its exquisitely carved female figural brackets. Specially commissioned plans of temple layouts accompany 300+ photographs. and clarify the succession of dynasties that governed the Deccan during the centuries covered here. Maps locate the temple sites, while passages of text illuminate the succession of dynasties that governed the Deccan from the 7th to 13th centuries. Educational, accessible and beautifully illustrated, this book will be of interest to anyone fascinated by Indian architecture.

The value of inventories in charting how houses were arranged, furnished and used is now widely appreciated. Typically, the listings and valuations were occasioned by the death of an owner and the consequent need to deal with testamentary dispositions. That was not always so. The inventory for Castlecomer House, Co. Kilkenny, for example, was drawn up to make a claim following the house’s devastation in the 1798 uprising.

Mostly hitherto unpublished, the inventories chosen give new-found insights into the lifestyle and taste of some of the foremost families of the day.

A comprehensive index facilitates access to the myriad items within the inventories, while the books listed at three of the houses are tentatively identified in separate appendices. A foreword, together with preambles to the inventories, sets the households in their historical context. The book will appeal to historians of interiors, patronage, collecting and material culture, as well as to scholars, curators, collectors, creative designers, film directors, bibliographers, lexicographers and historical novelists.

In 2019 Ali Kazim, one of the most exciting contemporary artists working in Pakistan today, became the first South Asian artist-in-residence at the Ashmolean Museum. Drawing inspiration from the objects in the Eastern Art collections, and their contextual history, he saw his time in the Museum as an opportunity to reimagine the objects in his own work and practise. Thus, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue will focus mainly on Kazim’s engagement with the Ashmolean collections and the works created between 2019 and 2021. Widely exhibited and collected internationally (including the British Museum, V&A, Metropolitan Museum, Queensland Art Gallery, etc.), Kazim lives and works in Pakistan. The exhibition and book provide the Museum an opportunity to engage wider diverse audiences, while also presenting the works of a contemporary multidisciplinary artist who reflects and draws strength from the Ashmolean collections.

The Caravane Earth Foundation presents The Majlis book, a rich and colourful documentation of the creation of the “Majlis” exhibition, a multi-layered nomadic project at the 17th annual Biennale di Venezia. The book tracks the multifaceted nature of the exhibition itself, which comprised an architectural object, an exhibition, and a garden, all three hosted by the Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy. Additionally, the book tells the broader story of Caravane Earth, chronicling research conducted by the foundation and the key ideas that form its philosophy and agenda. The Majlis highlights the main elements of the project in Venice while giving an introduction to key members of Caravane’s community of experts.  

With a narrative structure broken into four sections – Exhibition, Architecture, Craft, and Earth – The Majlis book features interviews with important figures and institutions from these fields, stunning visual documentation of the creation process and featured artefacts, and critical writings on permaculture, architecture, and craft. Featuring discussions with the Smithsonian Foundation, landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, The International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU), director and curators of the Sheikh Faisal Museum, and many more, the collection provides a deep look and education into the many causes championed by Caravane Earth.

The Classicist is an annual journal dedicated to the classical tradition in architecture and the allied arts. Focused on the United States’ Washington Mid-Atlantic region, the Classicist No. 18 explores the city’s rich architectural history as well as contemporary examples of classical design through professional and student portfolios as well as academic articles authored by leaders within the field. Contributors include Guest Editor W. Barksdale Maynard, architectural author; Witold Rybczynski, Martin and Margy Meerson Professor Emeritus of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania; David Frazer Lewis, Associate Professor of Architectural History at the University of Oxford; and Bryan Clark Green, Director of Historic Preservation for Commonwealth Architects in Richmond. 

Crete was famous in Greek myth as the location of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was confined in a palace at somewhere called ‘Knossos’. From the Middle Ages travelers searched unsuccessfully for the Labyrinth. A handful of clues that survived, such as a coin with a labyrinth design and numerous small bronze age items. The name Knossos had survived – but it was nothing but a sprinkling of houses and farmland so they looked elsewhere. Finally, in 1878, a Cretan archeologist, Minos Kalokairinos discovered evidence of a Bronze Age palace. British Archaeologist and then Keeper of the Ashmolean Arthur Evans came out to visit and was fascinated by the site. Between 1900 and 1931 Evans uncovered the remains of the huge palace which he felt must be the that of King Minos, and he adopted the name ‘Minoans’ for its occupants. He employed a team of archeologists, architects and artists, and together they built up a picture of the Bronze Age community that had occupied the elaborate building. They imagined a sophisticated, nature-loving people, whose civilization peaked, and then disintegrated. Evans’s interpretations of his finds were accurate in some places, but deeply flawed in others. The Evans Archive, held by the Ashmolean, records his finds, theories and (often contentious) reconstructions. 

Humayun, the son of Babur and the second Mughal ruler, reigned in Agra from 1530 to 1540 and then in Delhi from 1555 to 1556. Until now, his numerous achievements, including winning back the throne of Hindustan, have not been well recorded. The Planetary King follows Humayun’s travels and campaigns during the political and social disturbances of the early 16th century. It delves into Humayun’s extraordinary social and intellectual life; demystifies his magico-scientific world view, draws attention to his deep involvement with literature, poetry, painting, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, occultism and extraordinary inventions, and offers a new analysis of Humayun’s mausoleum as the posthumous sum of his visions and dreams.

The book accompanies the new site museum at Humayun’s tomb created by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture upon the culmination of two decades of conservation work on the World Heritage Site.

Co-published with Aga Khan Trust for Culture, New Delhi. 

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.

Contrary to the monochrome vision of Queen Victoria’s mourning dresses and the coal-polluted streets of Charles Dickens’ London, Victorian Britain was, in fact, a period of new and vivid colors. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the Victorians’ perception of color and, over the course of the second half of the 19th century, it became the key signifier of modern life. Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design charts the Victorians’ new attitudes to color through a multi-disciplinary exploration of culture, technology, art and literature. The catalogue explores key ‘chromatic’ moments that inspired Victorian artists and writers to think anew about the materiality of color. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, these figures learned from the sacred colors of the past, the sumptuous colors of the Middle East and Japan and looked forward towards the decadent colors that defined the end of the century. 

For most of us the Gita evokes an image of Krishna addressing Arjuna who is dutifully kneeling before him with folded hands, with a chariot and the battlefield as a backdrop. We have seen versions of this image on wall calendars, diaries, amateur paintings, and on walls of religious spaces. Year after year, our exposure to the Gita remains limited to these fleeting visual engagements as they become part of our muscle memory as we go about our chores.

This book, as the title suggests, decodes life lessons from each section of the Gita, looking at this ancient text through a 21st century prism. Far from being a mere compilation of selected didactic verses, this narrative skillfully strings together 251 verses of the Gita. It deciphers each of them, and presents the takeaways as tools to face situations of modern-day distress, dilemma and inner conflict. 

Written from the perspective of a non-ritualistic individual, the book connects the teachings of the Gita with current concepts of life skills. It also reiterates the relevance of a text written thousands of years ago, and showcases its contemporary value by drawing parallels with our day-to-day existence today. 

Few, if any, cities have a literary history as rich as that of London. Writers have written about it; and lived, loved, stayed and died there. Here are 111 stories to be revealed. Among them are the lives of writers and their characters, and the plots and venue. Where can you see the first printed book in the western world, or visit the library with no books? Where did two poets marry secretly and then flee to Italy; and what happened when Sigmund Freud met Salvador Dalí? What is the mystery of the signed copy of Mein Kampf?

This is a guide to the capital unlike any other – not only enlightening to residents who may have thought that they knew their city (and their books), but the visitor, too. These are sights you shouldn’t miss – but which you’re unlikely to find without this book.

Between the twilight years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867) and the end of the Meiji Era (1868–1912) that followed it, photography offered a unique insight into the rapid transformation of Japan from an isolated, feudal society to a modern, industrialized state. In the four decades that followed the opening of the country in 1853, the camera evolved from an imported novelty to a familiar witness of Japanese daily life. Operating from the Treaty Ports of Yokohama and elsewhere, early practitioners of photography plied an often precarious trade in images of Japan and laid the foundations of what would soon become a highly competitive industry with a global reach. Whether cherished as souvenirs of an exotic land of fond imagination or curated as visual documents of a fast-changing society, these images by foreign and Japanese photographers, often packaged in exquisitely produced albums, enjoyed a wide circulation abroad and played an important role in influencing perceptions of Japan in the West well into the early 20th century.
Drawing from an extensive private collection assembled over many years, this book presents a unique selection of 19th century photographs of Japan, many of which are published here for the first time.

Living Tradition: The Architecture and Urbanism of Hugh Petter celebrates the exceptional professional achievement of one of the world’s leading traditional architects. It showcases recent highlights from Hugh’s award-winning portfolio, including handsome new country houses; major alterations and refurbishment of historic buildings; a significant new building for Trinity College in Oxford; and commercial development at all scales with landed estates across the UK and beyond. His pioneering work as master-planner for the Duchy of Cornwall is regularly cited as an exemplar of a community that reflects local identity.

Written by Clive Aslet, with a foreword by The Former Prince of Wales, this book reveals how a series of iconic buildings came to be. Richly illustrated with newly commissioned photography by Dylan Thomas, one of Britain’s foremost photographers of architecture and interiors, this book reveals the working process of the architect.

Common to all the buildings in this book – whether a new or historic private house, a public building, or a masterwork of urban design – is a loving attention to detail and materials, and an architect who cares deeply for his craft.

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.

October 21, 1982. Three singers stand on the steps of the High Court with large cheques and broken dreams. The women are Annie (Annabel Leventon, the book’s author), GB (Gaye Brown), and Di-Di (Diane Langton). Their dream was of a British three-woman rock band, unique and different from anything that had gone before. They called themselves Rock Bottom. They were raunchy, rude and hilarious – the contemporary media described them as ‘a cross between the female Rolling Stones and the female Marx Brothers’ – and they nearly made it.

Until Thames Television stole everything and made a major award-winning series called Rock Follies, about them, based on them, but without them. It made stars of the three lookalikes playing them. And they lost everything.

A common enough tale of showbiz betrayal. Except that they fought back. At the offset of the Court trial, the Head of Drama at Thames TV sarcastically quipped, ‘three little actresses against the might of EMI?’ Forget it, the three ladies were told. Move on. They didn’t. They took the case to the High Court and won. Breach of Confidence is now on the Statute Books and it has become one of the defining cases in Intellectual Property.

The Real Rock Follies is a real-life story of youthful trust betrayed, dreams of stardom dashed and cruel lessons learnt. The three girls, then in their late twenties, learned too late that in the harsh showbiz world you can hardly trust anyone, not even your friends. However, despite everything, they got the last laugh. Their promising career couldn’t be returned to them but they enjoyed the huge satisfaction (both emotional and financial) that the ruling confirmed that the creative concept behind Rock Follies was fully theirs.

Between the second half of the 15th century and the 20th century, many painters added a fly to both their sacred and profane compositions. It was painted so convincingly that it seemed real. André Chastel, art historian, reconstructed in this book the history of the fly in painting, here reviewed and updated by Sylvia Ferino-Pagden. At least at the beginning, the fly was introduced as an odd masterpiece, an affirmation of the artist’s skill and convictions. A joke for illusionists, which however contains more complex meanings. The fly in painting then evolved. The insect, as we know it, is not well-loved and goes from simply being a nuisance to being the sign of death itself. And over time, la burla di Giotto, Giotto’s joke, generated a series of symbols where the artist wanted to represent the transience and precariousness of life, of earthly joys. The book chases the flies in picture after picture and recounts how the pictures are strewn with even minuscule signals, plots, and traps which, from time to time, take the form of a flower, an insect, a gem. It is a question of knowing how to interpret them to delve into a story that is also an adventure of the human spirit.

Text in English and Italian.