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 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.
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.
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.
This book aims to tell the story of social history through Money. Money and Art have shared a long history. Both words are metaphors derived from Latin terms used over 2,000 years ago. The word Money derives its modern meaning as the general term for all means of payment from its use as the word for coins in the pre-modern period. Particularly since the introduction of paper money, the word was applied to coins because of the name of the place where coins were made in ancient Rome, the temple of Juno Moneta (Juno the Warner), from this name the word moneta came to mean mint in Latin, and later the product of a mint, i.e. coins. The word Art acquired its modern usage, meaning works of art, both singularly and collectively, from the Latin ars meaning a skill, and it has so been used in English to describe any form of skill, but gradually from the nineteenth century, the word came to signify the product rather than the skill, particularly in relation to painting, graphic works and sculpture. This eclectic collection of stories brings together a multitude of perspectives through collections from the Ashmolean and around the world — from Art Nouveau bank notes and global portrayals of prosperity to activist Money Art. Deep dives into compelling stories reveal humor, hidden surprises and a tension between the power of money and the playfulness of art.
Gertrude Vernon, or Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, was an English woman who married a Scot. The American artist John Singer Sargent excelled as a painter in Europe. His portrait of Lady Agnew was painted in London but has found its definitive home in Edinburgh. All these contexts converge in a supremely beautiful painting which is one the icons of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.
Created in the 1890s, it proved to be a seminal work in the lives of the artist and his subject and has enjoyed a rich afterlife, inspiring artistic and written responses. This book offers a fascinating biography of this most accomplished, evocative and admired of portraits, placing it in the context of Sargent’s career and how he worked, discussing the life of the sitter and unveiling the picture’s rich critical history.
Issam Kourbaj was born and grew up in Syria before settling in Cambridge in 1990. Following the uprising in Syria in 2011, Kourbaj has been a constant creative witness to the continuing conflict in his home country, his art increasingly addressing the endemic pain and suffering that accompanies displacement and forced migration everywhere. Published to accompany two substantial solo exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge and The Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge, Issam Kourbaj explores the life and work of an artist characterized by collaboration and endless curiosity. Kourbaj’s art is expressive and alive, suggesting even in the darkest hours the potential for change and renewal.
“How can we grasp the remarkable artistic breadth of Issam Kourbaj? Here is an art so full of invention and purpose that its images and ideas reverberate well beyond the walls of any gallery. Kourbaj’s achievement is to make us look, pause and imagine. Engaging with his acute and powerful work makes us consider our responsibility for the conditions of others on our shared planet” – Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle’s Yard
Andrew Holmes is renowned for his hyper-real colored pencil drawings. His subject matter is the fixed and mobile service infrastructure that sustains the city of Los Angeles. The gleaming trucks, automobiles, and motorcycles that traverse the highways, and the industrial armature of storage tanks, service stations and truck stops to be found beyond the city’s edge are, for Holmes, the greatest artifacts of a society based on oil. Over the past 50 years, he has captured scenes from this uniquely American landscape in painstaking detail. Together they evoke a lost civilization. Gas Tank City presents 100 of Holmes’s Los Angeles drawings, along with commentaries by art historian, Thomas E Crow, architects Mark Fisher and Cedric Price, and Holmes himself.
“As a result, the book should provide fresh, in-depth insight into this seminal Rollie.” — Robb Report
“The latest release from Rolex is one for die-hard fans and to many many’s surprise, it’s not a watch.”— HypeBeast
“We haven’t gotten our hands on a copy of Submariner yet, but the prospect of Foulkes writing combined with access to Rolex’s archives has me excited.” — Hodinkee
“This book is not just for those who love watches but also for anyone fascinated by stories of innovation, design, and cultural influence.” — The Subdial
For the first time, Rolex has authorized a wide-ranging account and full history of the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner watch, in the first of a series taking a deep dive into the watches of the iconic brand. Oyster Perpetual Submariner. The Watch That Unlocked The Deep, written by author, editor, and watch expert Nick Foulkes, is published by global design authority, Wallpaper*, which brings its sharp, cinematic eye to the project, creating new and original photography in collaboration with Rolex to run alongside testimonies from renowned witnesses to the Submariner’s illustrious 71-year history, including marine biologist Sylvia Earle, photographer David Doubilet, and aquanaut Dr Joe MacInnis – further highlighting the role this iconic timepiece continues to play in the exploration and protection of the marine environment.
Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1684) was one of the best still-life painters of the 17th century. His work, which is enchanting to the eye, has always enjoyed international fame. Throughout his painting career of nearly 60 years, de Heem continued to search for new and better ways to depict his subjects. He trained several pupils and had countless followers and imitators, in the Netherlands as well as abroad, and throughout the centuries. The fact that he was active in both the Northern and Southern Netherlands enhanced his success and fame. He worked successively in Leiden, (presumably) in Amsterdam, in Antwerp, in Utrecht and again in Antwerp.
De Heem is perhaps best known for his exuberant floral still lifes, which, however, were mainly created after 1660. By then, already for decades, he had painted still lifes of many themes and motifs, and in a variety of sizes, modest as well as luxurious. In Antwerp he had developed the large, rich still lifes which earned him part of his renown.
This comprehensive monograph written by Fred G. Meijer, contains the complete catalogue of de Heem’s oeuvre. Volume 1 includes an introduction, a biography and description of the development of his work. Volume 2 contains the catalogue raisonné of all paintings now known by de Heem, as well as several appendices.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) remains the most compelling artist in the Western canon. Painter, sculptor, poet, architect, he redefined both the possibilities of the imagination and the image of the artist. In 1550, he became the first artist to be the subject of a biography within their own lifetime, presented by Giorgio Vasari as the divinely inspired culmination of the history of art. Dissatisfied with Vasari’s treatment, Michelangelo encouraged his close friend and fellow-painter Ascanio Condivi to publish a rival biography. Condivi’s Life is an impassioned, intimate portrait, giving an unparalleled picture of the master’s life, work and personality. This compelling narrative of genius and its struggles in the treacherous world of Papal politics and Italian wars remains one of the most fascinating and influential texts in art history. This edition reproduces the long unavailable translation by Charles Holroyd and has 66 pages of illustrations covering the span of Michelangelo’s achievement.
Mark Fisher was the creator and designer of a new art form: the traveling rock show. His exuberant stage sets framed artists from The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, U2, Madonna, Lady Gaga and Jean-Michel Jarre to Elton John and Tina Turner. There were thousands of concerts and hundreds of bravura settings, from the 2000 London Millennium show to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, as well as permanent structures, such as the 2,000-seater theater and stage machinery for KÀ by Cirque du Soleil, in Las Vegas, and the Dai Show Theatre, in China. Each of these projects first found expression in Fisher’s sketch-books and on his drawing board. This book spans his entire career, with details of every major project and more than 100 drawings – some of which are performances in their own right.
“In 1977, I went on the road with the Floyd, and that was really the moment I ran away and joined the circus.” – Mark Fisher
With contributions from those who knew Mark Fisher well: Cristina Garcia, his life partner, keeper of the archive and editor of this book; Piers Gough, his contemporary at the Architectural Association in London; Andrew Holmes, an artist, occasional collaborator and close friend; and finally Ray Winkler, a colleague of long standing and now CEO and Design Director of Stufish Entertainment Architects.
With Road Work, Andrew Holmes continues his pilgrimage through the seductive litter of modern life. Cities are conventionally viewed as static objects, but a third of Los Angeles is on the move; it is a kaleidoscope trapped in a grid, where what you see is what you drive past. Road Work presents 500 of Andrew Holmes’ Los Angeles Polaroids, capturing the machines that deliver people and goods to different parts of the city each day. These vehicles are seen at the airport, at a truck stop, always in a parking bay, set classically against azure skies, frozen like statues in a Renaissance garden. Everything has equal status. Nothing transgresses the grid. The work is even, chrome and rust are its soul. Along with commentaries by David Greene and Holmes himself, Road Work includes lyrics by Chuck Berry and others, and extracts from a variety of road novelists and writers.