The official book to discover all the beauty and richness of the Palace of Versailles.
The Palace of Versailles gives you a guided tour of the château, its gardens and the Trianon estate, exploring their rich and diverse history. With over 220 photographs from the palace’s official archives, this book offers a comprehensive, unique and exclusive vision of the estate. Many of the photos highlight recently renovated spaces, such as the richly detailed furniture of the King’s Bedchamber, which was restored to its original splendour in April 2026 – as well as a number of spaces with limited public access. These pages also include exclusive drone footage revealing spectacular perspectives and details that are completely invisible to visitors.
Perfect for architecture, art and history enthusiasts, this is an extensive and detailed guide to the Palace of Versailles’ fascinating and diverse history.
The official book to discover all the beauty and richness of the Palace of Versailles.
The Palace of Versailles gives you a guided tour of the château, its gardens and the Trianon estate, exploring their rich and diverse history. With over 220 photographs from the palace’s official archives, this book offers a comprehensive, unique and exclusive vision of the estate. Many of the photos highlight recently renovated spaces, such as the richly detailed furniture of the King’s Bedchamber, which was restored to its original splendor in April 2026 – as well as a number of spaces with limited public access. These pages also include exclusive drone footage revealing spectacular perspectives and details that are completely invisible to visitors.
Perfect for architecture, art and history enthusiasts, this is an extensive and detailed guide to the Palace of Versailles’ fascinating and diverse history.
Some places on Earth are disappearing before our eyes. Midnight Sun is the stunning new photography book by award-winning polar specialists Sue Flood and Ian Dawson.
The Arctic and Antarctic. Spectacular, harsh and rapidly changing. From penguins huddled against fierce blizzards to polar bears hunting across ice floes, this unique volume captures all the drama and fragility of both regions.
Sue Flood and Ian Dawson are united by a shared affinity for the coldest places on Earth, and a conviction that such environments are among those most in need of protection. Through their breathtaking images of ice, wildlife and the people who call these frozen worlds home, this collection forms a document to be treasured, a breathtaking record of landscapes that may not survive the century.
More than a photography book, through Midnight Sun witness the polar world before it changes forever.
“In this quite stunning collection of photos Sue Flood and Ian Dawson have caught the magical beauty of the far North and South and the surprising richness of human and animal life which survives in such hard and desolate landscapes. Their work brings to life the spectacular scenery of lands too often ignored.” – Sir Michael Palin
Four years after the publication of the first A Home Away from Home, our fascination with exceptional private houses has only grown stronger.
The 30 distinctive guesthouses presented in this second edition share that spirit. They are places where architecture, landscape and hospitality come together naturally; places conceived not merely to accommodate travelers, but to make them feel that, for a few precious days or weeks, they genuinely belong there.
Some are deeply personal homes whose owners have opened their doors to guests. Others are remarkable architectural projects created around a particular landscape or way of life. There are houses shaped by the sea and others surrounded by forests, olive groves, vineyards or mountains; intimate retreats for two and generous residences made for families and groups of friends. What connects them is not a particular style or destination, but a certain attitude toward living. From a restored centuries-old house among the rolling hills of Tuscany to a secluded sanctuary surrounded by tropical vegetation in Sri Lanka; from the elemental beauty of a Cycladic island house overlooking the Aegean to a contemporary loft immersed in the energy of Athens, these homes show how wonderfully diverse the idea of a home away from home can be.
Architecture naturally plays an important role, yet these houses are not included simply because they photograph beautifully. The most memorable homes are those in which design becomes almost invisible once you begin to live in them. Natural light, tactile materials, open kitchens, shaded terraces, gardens and swimming pools become part of the rhythm of the day. Indoors and outdoors merge, the surrounding landscape enters the house, and carefully designed spaces encourage a wonderfully unstructured way of living.
This second volume of A Home Away from Home is not simply a collection of 30 beautiful guesthouses. It is an invitation to discover 30 different ways of living well. Each has its own identity, atmosphere and story.
FMR Issue No. 19 follows Ariadne’s thread through myth and art; encounters Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro’s extravagant Portuguese ceramics; joins the irreverent Abbot of Cockaigne and the artists of the Val di Blenio; explores Caserta’s palace and myth-filled English Garden; and reopens Patrick Mauriès and Érik Desmazières’s cabinet of curiosities. Hors d’Oeuvre offers vertigo, cittern music, the Threepenny Galleries, and Miele’s veil: an issue devoted to wonder, satire, beauty, and the pleasures of discovery.
Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies is the first publication to accompany an international exhibition dedicated to the celebrated Indian artist Nilima Sheikh, tracing her practice from the late 1960s to the present. Across paintings, scrolls, and mixed-media works, Sheikh brings together personal memory, literature, history, and politics, creating visual narratives in which beauty and violence, intimacy and upheaval coexist. Her work draws on diverse artistic traditions and literary sources while remaining deeply engaged with contemporary realities.
The volume features new essays by leading curators, scholars, and critics alongside a selection of Sheikh’s own writings assembled from across several decades. Together, these texts illuminate the evolution of her artistic language and her sustained engagement with questions of place, gender, memory, and historical reckoning.
With contributions by Roobina Karode, Cara Manes, Avijna Bhattacharya, Khushmi Mehta, and Deeksha Nath.
Whether buying gem-set jewelry or loose stones, you will be faced with a colorful array of beauty and value. With such a wide choice – from amethyst to zircon – which should you choose? What is it worth, and how do you even know it is real? All that glitters is not gold, as they say, and all that sparkles is not diamond. Gemstones helps to answer these questions in simple and easy to understand terms. As well as diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires, over 100 gems are featured, with full descriptions, technical details, and tips on how to check for fakes.
The book is illustrated throughout with fabulous color photographs to make identification easier. Technical terms such as refraction and fluorescence are explained and some basic identification tests are introduced. A helpful tour around the world details where gems are best available. Informative appendices include a glossary of terms, tables of specific gravity and refractive index, and the comparative value of different stones.
The clear, uncomplicated presentation makes this book a must for anyone interested in gemstones, whether as an investment or simply as a hobby.
Lewis Foreman Day (1845-1910) is one of the most neglected figures in late nineteenth-century design. In exploring Day’s dual career as an industrial designer of extraordinary range and versatility as well as a major writer and critic, this well-illustrated book restores his place among the influential figures of his time. Day’s relationships with colleagues William Morris, Walter Crane, W.A. S. Benson and others placed him in the vortex of development of design in Britain. Joan Maria Hansen, design historian, examines Day’s work as a prolific industrial designer whose mastery of pattern, color, ornament and superb draftsmanship resulted in tiles and art pottery, clocks and furniture, wallpapers, textiles, stained glass, and interiors of remarkable diversity and beauty. Day embraced modern technology. His views on the role of the designer for industry, along with his unshakable belief that a marriage of design and industrial processes was essential to produce beautiful furnishings for the majority of people, reveal him to be startlingly modern in his attitudes and practice in the changing world of industrial production. Today collectors prize Lewis F. Day’s clocks, furniture, tiles and art pottery, and books – which he both wrote and designed – along with reproductions of his patterns for wallpapers and textiles which are enjoyed by enthusiasts. Day’s textbooks on design continue to influence designers, and his magazine journalism provides insightful and balanced commentary on developments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century design. This book – the very first full treatment of this major figure – is the definitive reference on Day’s life and work and is an invaluable reference for collectors and dealers, decorative arts professionals, designers, business historians and enthusiasts of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century design.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the history of French glass making. Glass makers can be compared to alchemists in the way that they transform sand and ashes into precious objects of great beauty. This book explores the value given to glassware throughout French history, focusing on the Ancient Régime from the 15th to 18th Centuries, when royally appointed glassmakers were considered more important than their artistic counterparts within the court; painters, musicians and actors. In the middle of the 19th Century, glassware was subjected to mass industrial production and as a result the benchmark of quality that had previously been set was no longer adhered to. However, it was out of frustration with this situation that Emile Gallé, a glassmaker who employed many experimental techniques, started his own workshop to produce incredibly high quality original glassware, a move that revolutionised glass making and placed it once again at the forefront of contemporary artistry. Le Verre argues that glass never left this pedestal, and that today, more than ever, ‘the world is living in the age of glass.’ Text in French.
Rogier Vandeweghe established himself as an independent potter in Sint Andries, near Bruges, after leaving the ceramic workshop Per Ignem, which he had founded with his brother Laurent in 1947. Under the name Amphora, from 1960 on, his quickly expanding workshop produced entirely hand-thrown vessels. His modern forms – with glazes developed in-house and experimental firing techniques – rapidly earned the workshop an international reputation. Participation in major contemporary exhibitions led to numerous awards and acquisitions by leading ceramic museums across Europe. In 1975 all production ceased, and the workshop faded into obscurity. The present publication is a tribute to Rogier Vandeweghe and his wife, Myranna Pyck, for their unwavering commitment and their continuous quest for high-quality modern beauty in their ceramics.
Text in English, French and Dutch.
Since the 1960s, Elisabeth Defner has been one of Austria’s most prominent jewelry artists. Nowadays her works are displayed in museums in e.g. Vienna, Graz, Pforzheim, Cologne, Prague and London. Defner sees jewelry not merely as an aesthetic matter, but also as a form of complementary healthcare for body, soul and spirit. The energy radiated from the metals and stones is in holistic harmony with the forms of the jewelry and can bring about an inner transformation of the wearer.
Brooches, earrings, rings or pendants are combined with moulded plant leaves, so that the beauty of the jewelry can merge symbolically with the magical effect of the plant. Her understanding of art is reflected in a famous remark by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer: ‘Truly art is firmly fixed in Nature. He who can extract her thence, he alone has her’.
Text in English and German.
Du Paquier, an independently operating Viennese porcelain factory, was established in 1718, only eight years after Meissen. Although its heyday was brief, lasting only twenty-five years, Du Paquier produced porcelain of great beauty, notable for an enchantingly graceful style and consummate sophistication of execution. In three sumptuously illustrated volumes, scholars of international standing present the distinctive style and the exciting history of Du Paquier porcelain in the context of Baroque Vienna. The first comprehensive publication on this important porcelain factory, this work has been made possible through a five-year research programme conducted by the Melinda and Paul Sullivan Foundation for the Decorative Arts. The objects shown, many of them for the first time here, are in major public and private collections. The first volume deals with the historical and stylistic background of Du Paquier porcelain: art and architecture in early eighteenth-century Baroque Vienna; furthermore, the history of the porcelain factory, its style and its manifold sources of inspiration as well as Du Paquier’s relationship to Meissen and the role played at Du Paquier by independent porcelain painters and decorators. The second volume places this Viennese porcelain in its cultural context, providing broad-ranging information on court banquet ceremony as well as private pleasures such as drinking and festive dining. Objects used in aristocratic circles are shown along with choice presents of state made to the Ottoman and Russian courts. In addition, this volume contains a new study on the Dubsky Room, the only room still in existence devoted to Du Paquier porcelain. The contents of the third volume include an annotated catalogue comprising approximately 500 objects, scholarly analysis and a chapter on the history of collecting Du Paquier porcelain, an inventory of the Dubsky Room, a bilingual glossary of terms and a complete bibliography. An enclosed CD-ROM contains transcriptions of original documents that have played an important role in the history of the Du Paquier porcelain factory. “This definitive work provides a fascinating survey of Viennese baroque court culture.”
The Art Newspaper
In the glass art of Franz Xaver Höller (b. 1950) artisanal techniques rich in tradition, such as cutting and engraving, collide with modern forms. Vibrantly sculptural bodies engraved on their surface with fine lines, the drawing of which generates impressive depth via incidental light, make up the majority of the vessels and objects that he has created over the last thirty-five years. Sharp edges protrude and challenge the conception of a harmonious form.
This publication illustrates all stages of Höller’s development, drawing the view to the artist’s multi-variant language of forms. Large-format details reveal the beauty and precision of the meticulous workmanship. Accomplished authors expound sources of inspiration as well as turning points in creativity, while preliminary sketches afford insights into the developmental process of his works.
Text in English and German.
The Austrian ceramic artist Thomas Bohle is an extraordinary figure in the field of ceramic vessels. His double-walled objects, created at the wheel with technical perfection, effortlessly transcend the boundaries between ceramic and free art. Their interior and exterior forms create an accentuated contrast which opens up an exciting dialogue between the vessel and the space. They appear as a consequence of the will for clear form and design, which is underscored by the sensual, haptic quality of the reduced burnt oxblood and celadon glazes. With clear elements and exciting correlations, Thomas Bohle opens up new dimensions for the art of the vessel as a fundamental possibility of abstract sculptural design.
The publication offers a fascinating overview of over twenty-five years of vessel design by Thomas Bohle. Numerous illustrations of individual objects, group photos and details as well as expert essays uncover the beauty of precise geometry combined with painterly glazes and reveals just how progressive ceramics can be.
Text in English and German.
Ulla and Martin Kaufmann have developed their aesthetic agenda together. The techniques used by gold and silversmiths are the focal point of their work and represent the basic thematic focus of their tableware, jewelry and cutlery. It rests on their exploratory approach to materials and the diverse possibilities it provides for expression. Ulla and Martin Kaufmann have been working in their own studio in Hildesheim for nearly forty years. The two artists have thus acquired unique skills over years of experience especially the knowledge of the properties of silver and gold, their materials of choice. This profound knowledge is an essential part of the indissoluble union of design and execution. The connotations are always dual: the form of objects stems from practical considerations; is, therefore, close to ideas of functional design. At the same time, individual expression born of the artists’ mastery of their craft and their exacting aesthetic standards surrounds these pieces with the aura of works of art. This book reveals the secrets and beauty of the stunning pieces made by Ulla and Martin Kaufmann. In showcasing these objects, it establishes their aesthetic permanence as timelessly practical works. Text in English & German.
Jewelry designed by Ute Eitzenhöfer is intrinsically complex and contradictory. Her designs range from playful, sensual, reassuring, to dark, angry, provocative and brutal. Intrinsic beauty and its value to society is a recurring theme of her work. The jewelry she creates is autonomos, it makes a statement; created not for an abstract display case, these are strong artifacts that become complete, that find some meaning, only when worn on the body. The narrative Eitzenhöfer strives for is one of social criticism, her designs are perceived as opulent yet reflect a certain image or concept inherent in the modern world. She has consistently challenged and explored the themes of freedom, time, sensuality and worth in her work. This volume is a collection of designs that range from her earlier creative work to the last ten years; thought-provoking, imaginative and often extreme, this is jewelry as a social statement, rather than an accessory.
Text in English and German.
This book of photographs by Swedish photographer Christer Löfgren explores the diverse and multifaceted world in which we live, from north to south. In comparing photographs of various cultures, diversity is more noticeable: the colors, clothes, and food point to the identity of each place. The further north or south of the equator you travel, colors are paler, and the food is milder and less spicy. The more extreme nature is, the more difficult the lifestyle. These vibrant photographs ask us to broaden our vision and grasp the complexity and beauty of the world as a global whole. This deluxe edition consists of three hardcover books in a slipcase.
Steve Diet Goedde’s photographs are concerned with fetishism, but they could reasonably be regarded as fashion photographs, for they are about clothes and the roles that dressing imposes on women, or allows them to play. Indeed, Goedde has consistently rejected the visual stereotypes of ‘fetish’ photography. Instead he sets out to seduce and amuse, experimenting with humor, irony and elements of the surreal. Extempore brings together images that are departures in another sense. They represent stolen moments, or glimpses behind the scenes, when the models are not necessarily aware of the camera. Most of Goedde’s models are drawn from his close circle of friends and in these photographs particularly one senses a shared trust and understanding.
In Let the Kids Play, Drago’s 36 Chambers series exalts the beauty and exuberance of youth as embodied by the renowned street artist, Pax Poloscia. The book is a reaction to the cynicism and monotony of the adult world and a celebration of youthful creativity.
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum houses an extraordinary collection of ‘prisoners’ objects’. These were made by prison inmates and presented to the ICRC delegates who visited them, as provided for by the Geneva Conventions. For over a century, these objects have borne mute witness to the numerous violent episodes that continue to ravage our planet, from Chile, Vietnam, Algeria and Yugoslavia, to Rwanda and Afghanistan. Made from simple materials – whatever comes to hand in a prison – these objects express the need to escape the world of the jailbird. As a Lebanese inmate puts it, ‘Creating is a way of acquiring freedom of expression, it gives us a means to say what we think while everything we see around urges us to keep quiet and to forget who we are.’ While some of these works touch us through their simplicity, others astonish us with their beauty or ingeniousness. Each bears the imprint of a personal story loaded with emotion, inviting us on a journey through time and collective history.
Headrests are simple, utilitarian objects. Widely used across Africa, they are predominantly found in the eastern, central, and southern part of the continent. Also known as neckrests or pillows, headrests are valuable and very personal objects which are indispensable to everyday life. They are made to sleep on, to rest the neck, to sit on, and to protect the elaborate coiffure of their owners. At first sight, they appear to be devoid of any symbolic content. This functional utility has confined them through history to the realm of mere objects. Headrests are not that simple, though. They transcend their material purpose to become something more. In many instances, their design, inherent beauty, technical mastery, and uses give them a multi-purpose value and a multi-layered meaning.
They are objects with ritual and magical intent concealed inside their utilitarian function. Headrests can be flaunted as status symbols that differentiate chiefs from ordinary people, rich from poor, diviners from healers, farmers from shepherds, and sedentary from nomadic. The volume features full-color pictures of very rare and fine headrests that have never before been published. Short texts introduce selected pieces among the 230 works that have particularly interesting, well-documented backgrounds. This book is a journey through ethnicity, anthropology, aesthetics, creativity, tradition, and spirituality. A journey to a part of Africa that materializes through a simple artefact that sometimes dreams to become art: a dream that starts with resting the neck on a piece of wood.
While connoisseurship of natural stones is today well established in the West, books on viewing stones still predominantly feature East Asian examples. This is the first to present the finest North American viewing stones from private and institutional collections, selected by a panel of experts from over 275 professional photographs submitted by over 50 individuals and institutions. Each stone confronts us with the beauty and diversity of the natural world, and each has an uncanny ability to elicit an emotional response in the viewer. Included are introductory essays on Native American stone appreciation and a brief history of stone collecting on the continent.
The project was conceived and developed by Dr. Thomas S. Elias, former Director of the U.S. National Arboretum, Chairman of the Viewing Stone Association of North America, and Honorary Vice-Chairman of the Viewing Stone Association of China.