The charming painter of Endymion’s Sleep, Atala’s Funeral and Chateaubriand’s Portrait was also a poet. Thanks to his classical education, Girodet (1767-1824) was the author of free translations of ancient Greek and Latin poets.
In 1808 he tried the to imitate and at the same time illustrate the Odes of Anacreon, whose edition was published posthumously. The Musée du Louvre holds the precious manuscript of this intense and complex work, in which the poetic research and graphic invention — compositions or vignettes — intertwine with the text. Only a facsimile could restore this organic whole in its integrity.
This book reconstructs the history of the manuscript, the various stages of the project and the posthumous versions, and analyzes the artist’s aesthetic sources.
Girodet’s handwriting is sometimes difficult to decode, but the complete transcription allows the reader to appreciate all the refinements and to rediscover the charm of Anacreontic poetry.

Text in French.

Lucie Rie (1902–1995) is one of the finest modern potters of the 20th century. Born and trained in Vienna, her successful early career came to a halt in 1938 when forced to leave Austria to escape the persecution of Jewish people. In exile in London, Rie established a new workshop and over five decades created highly individual bowls, vases and tableware which continue to amaze and inspire today.

With over 150 photographs and five new essays, Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery celebrates an exceptional life of creative invention and experiment.

With texts by Edmund de Waal, Tanya Harrod, Helen Ritchie, Eliza Spindel, Kimberley Chandler and Nigel Wood. 

This beautifully illustrated book of avant-garde art furniture design highlights a generation of creators whose energy and vision made a break with the past. Profiled here are Mark Brazier-Jones, Franck Evennou, Elizabeth Garouste, Marco de Gueltzl, Hubert Le Gall, Thierry Peltrault, Laurence Picot, Andrea Salvetti, and Claude de Wulf. All have been represented since the 1980s by Elisabeth Delacarte, whose Galerie Avant-Scène in Paris continues its mission of promoting these and other extraordinary furniture and jewelry designers to this day.

Text in English and French.

“Now you can learn about and enjoy the big redo at ground level… “ — The Seattle Times

“This technical book pairs vintage tokens of remembrance—like midcentury blueprints and construction photos—with modern renderings of the tower, giving context to Olson Kundig’s plan for the since-completed upper deck.” — Architectural Digest
Originally built for the 1962 World’s Fair, the Space Needle quickly became an international icon of the Pacific Northwest and a symbol of Seattle. At the time of its construction, the tower pointed the way toward the future with a sense of optimism, possibility, and invention. In its 55th year, the Space Needle is again representing an enhanced future with the Century Project, a holistic renovation of the upper levels led by Olson Kundig that repositions the iconic tower for its next fifty years. New Heights: Transforming Seattle’s Iconic Space Needle documents this latest chapter of the Space Needle’s story with an in-depth look at the innovations, challenges, and triumphs realized by the client and project team, as seen through the eyes of the architects.

The work of Polhemus Savery DaSilva (PSD) synthesizes ideas from modernism, Shingle Style, and New England vernacular architecture into special homes that are carefully crafted for each different site and client. PSD’s poetic architecture reflects on the joy of living by the New England coast, and this major new monograph, The Art of Creating Houses: Polhemus Savery DaSilva, beautifully presents that work and the ideas embodied within it. This lavishly illustrated and clearly written coverage of PSD’s most recent work features 27 select homes designed and built by the firm. This stunning volume also contains a foreword by Brian Vanden Brink; an introduction by Victor Deupi, PhD; and text by John R. DaSilva, FAIA, the firm’s Design Principal. This new volume is a brilliant companion to the firm’s earlier monographs, namely Living Where Land Meets the Sea, Shingled Houses in the Summer Sun, and Architecture of the Cape Cod Summer.

Tracing human interactions with the world’s most famous tropical timber species, The Social Life of Teak maps worlds revolving around teak forests, trees and wood.

What gives Tectona grandis such a powerful aura, stoking desires and capturing imaginations? How has teak shaped people’s lives, driving fortunes and impacting futures? What has happened to the teak forests and what is their destiny?

In this illustrated anthology of oral histories, people connected personally or professionally to teak speak of survival, change and learning, creativity and destruction, growth and demise. Woven together, these experiences bring to light the ways that teak has been sought, crafted, cultivated, traded and prized over time.

Animist beliefs, creative expression, scientific invention, economic viability, imperialist expansion, peak luxury, violent repression, ecological disaster and the regenerative power of nature all find a home in this global intergenerational tale.

Charting the domestication of wilderness and exposing the era of extinction of a feted natural resource, this book seeks to stimulate conversations about our role as nature’s most troublesome offspring.

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

With his Indian vision and French sens de la plastique coalescing to create a unique modernism, S. H. Raza has been a master of colors, concepts and creativity. From his early expressionist works to the mesmerizing abstraction of his later years, Raza’s artistic evolution is a testimony to his relentless pursuit of truth through color and form.

As an artist, Raza moved through many dualities, namely home and exile, color and concept, imagination and thought, modernity and memory, creativity and invention, locale and universality, passion and meditation, anxiety and silence, time and eternity. His journey is a testament to the power of artistic vision and cultural amalgamation.

Raza: The Other Modern celebrates the artist’s outstanding body of work and invites the viewer to explore the depth of his artistic genius. One of the most significant exhibitions of Raza’s work to be held in Dubai, it is a quest through the evolving phases of Raza’s life and artistic endeavors.

Molluscs are extraordinary builders; indeed, their architectural skills are almost unparalleled in the animal world. Who among us has failed to marvel at the wonderful structure of the smallest shell picked up on the beach? Some enthusiasts collect them throughout their lives – attracted by their beauty if they are aesthetes, or sought out for scientific purposes, as in the case of Jacques Senders. In this book, Paul Starosta’s spectacular photographs take the reader on a journey through this astounding collection, first started 50 years ago.

These shells, marvels of nature as they are, naturally suggest exotic or futuristic architecture, ancient or Art Nouveau vases, or even precious stones or volcanic rocks, and reaffirm the importance of nature as a source of inspiration for artists and architects. By celebrating the extraordinary variety and architectural refinement of the shells in Jacques and Rita Senders’s collection, the book reveals a world where nature far surpasses human imagination and invention.

At the end of the volume, miniature photographs are accompanied by scientific information on shells, their life, characteristics and different families.

More than a book of recipes, this cookbook explores Lee Miller’s life through the influence of food and how it ascends to becoming the creative vehicle that she eventually swaps her camera for and uses to build bridges, heal old wounds, and to empower other women. A woman of many lives and mistress of her own re-invention Lee Miller, model, surrealist and fashion photographer, war correspondent and gourmet cook does everything wholeheartedly and with an imaginative flair. Much has been written about the varied forms of her creativity but Lee Miller’s achievement as a gourmet chef is usually left to being an endnote. Her granddaughter Ami Bouhassane sees this part of her life as Miller’s longest battle and most extraordinary personal accomplishment in every sense. Contains over a hundred of Lee Miller’s recipes as well as images by her and others in both color and black and white.

The Mediterranean coast of France witnessed the rise and development of modern art over a century, from Cézanne in the 1860s to Matisse, Picasso and Klein in the 1950s and 1960s. These artists and the many more featured here discovered an inexhaustible source of inspiration in this storied region, whose glittering, languid sea stretches out towards the far horizon beneath brilliant azure skies. Indelibly associated with the classical past, this magical land of eternal spring and spiritual renewal came to signify a state of mind, and avant-garde artists sought to convey the vitality and élan it inspired in them through new paradigms of modernist invention.

Almost a hundred years after the invention of the car, the time must have been deemed right to devote a course of study to this means of transport and its design. In 1984 in Pforzheim, not far from the sites of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, the Transportation Design study program—then known as Automobile Design—was thus launched. Today it belongs to one of the sector’s most prestigious training institutions in the world. Numerous designers have studied here who have since become international leaders in the field and whose designs have influenced the global automotive industry in a significant way. This publication documents the more than 40-year history of the program through its numerous designs and achievements up to the present day. The authors also present their vision for the future of Transportation Design and mobility, making this publication an important source of inspiration for contemporary car design. 

The grotesques that adorn the Gallery of Statues and Paintings, the original name for the Uffizi’s corridors, belong to different periods. The most imaginative and most artistically admirable, however, are the earliest ones, contrasting with the classical severity of the antique statues in the Medici collection there displayed. Commissioned by Francesco I de’ Medici in 1581, they occupy the 46 bays of the eastern corridor (about 150 meters), then a simple loggia, but closed the following year probably to protect the new frescoes.

The cycle celebrates the marriage between Francesco I and Bianca Cappello, which took place in 1579. The celebration of the Grand Ducal couple and the wish for offsprings explains the abundance of erotic themes, often depicted through ingenious iconography. The playful aspect, the pursuit of the marvelous and the monstrous prevail. The figurations move between great fantasy and allusiveness, originality and licentiousness, according to typical grotesque canons.

“Building the Brooklyn Bridge is a perfect feast, a would-be time-traveler’s delight, overflowing with rare and evocative and fascinating images.”
– Kurt Andersen
Recipient of the 2021 Book Award from The Victorian Society New York.


The captivating story of how a bridge of unprecedented size and technology was built during an age of remarkable innovation.
This book invites the reader to step back in time to discover why this iconic bridge-proclaimed the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ soon after its completion and a National Historic Landmark since 1964-continues to hold such a special place in the hearts of so many.
Spanning the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge connected for the first time the then independent cities of Brooklyn and New York. This awe-inspiring structure was not only a modern engineering feat of extraordinary imagination, fortitude, and skill, it also was a towering beacon of human triumph.
Author Jeffrey Richman, historian at Brooklyn’s famed Green-Wood Cemetery, has gathered more than 250 superb nineteenth-century images, many never before published on the printed page, including engineering drawings, photographs, stereographs, woodcuts, and colored lithographs. Flipping through the book, one can imagine the excitement people around the world felt as they followed the progress of the bridge’s construction, either through the illustrated papers of the day or using viewers to look at stereographs in three dimensions. Richman specially commissioned more than forty anaglyphs-3D images generated from the historic stereographs-to recreate the 3D experience on the page. Every copy of the book includes a pair of 3D glasses kept in a pocket inside the back cover, offering the reader the sensation of being at the construction site as the towers began to rise.
A born storyteller, Richman relates how a small group of dedicated engineers and thousands of workers toiled for more than a decade to construct what was then the largest suspension bridge ever built, section by section, from the massive anchorages and elegant towers to the cables and bridge railway (operational four months after the bridge’s official opening). He reminds us how profoundly modern and groundbreaking the bridge was, in its use of steel (a new material) and pioneering construction methods. The bridge still elicits awe and admiration today.
“This is one of humankind’s great creations”-author interview with Michelle Miller on CBS Saturday Morning.

From imposing railway terminuses in Indian cities to picturesque stations in small towns, the romance of the railways still remains. Indian Railway Buildings takes the reader on a fascinating journey through some of the most iconic railway buildings in India – buildings that were, and still are, landmark structures.

Featuring historic information and many rare photographs about the construction of these structures, the author reveals interesting and little-known aspects about the heritage railway buildings of India, such as Bengal Nagpur Railway House. It is the oldest and one of the finest classical revival buildings of the Indian Railways, and is said to have been home to Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Oudh while he was in exile in Garden Reach, Kolkata. Focusing on the structures built during the mid-19th the mid-20th centuries, this book highlights the historical and architectural features of a significant number of railway buildings that were constructed during the days of the British Raj in India.

Extensively researched and packed with historical facts, this book is a treasure for all those who love to travel or explore the styles and designs of buildings from the comfort of their homes. Rediscover the romance of the railways on a journey with Indian Railway Buildings: Heritage, History and Beyond…

An impressively tattooed but unnamed Easter Island (Rapa Nui) man appears often in the pages of Pacific Island histories and museum catalogs. The Swedish ethnographer Dr. Knut Hjalmar Stolpe knew him only as Tepano, the Tahitian version of the Christian name Stephen. But what was his real Rapanui identity, and what can his life story tell us about the history of Easter Island?

This book reveals his identity, who illustrated him, and how he transcended the tragic events of 19th-century Rapa Nui to become one of the most iconic faces of the Polynesian past. The authors summarize the history of tattoo as practiced by Rapanui artisans, link that history to island geography, and present rare barkcloth sculptures as a visual record of tattoo patterns.

This title is the first in a new series on Polynesian Arts & Culture by Mana Press, in partnership with Floating World Editions.

For a list of future titles, visit: www.FloatingWorldEditions.com. For more on Rapa Nui, the Mana Gallery and Mana Books, visit: www.eisp.org.

History Today carried a feature in 2015, describing The Origin of Museums as “a cult book [that] spawned a new discipline in the history of collecting”. Indeed, the first publication of this book in 1985 undoubtedly marked a propitious moment in the development of interest, in what has since grown to be a dynamic subject-area in its own right. That an appetite for such matters was already there is confirmed by the fact that the first impression sold out within a few months, a second impression a year or two later, and the third in 1989. There was to be no further printing by the original publishers, Oxford University Press. However in 2001 a new edition appeared with a new publisher. Demand again proved buoyant, but within a few months the company failed; having operated on a print-on-demand basis, it left behind it no unsold stock. The Origins of Museums reverted to a scarce (though much sought-after) volume. With original copies now selling for hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, the Ashmolean is proud to make this important volume readily available again.

Paper is undeniably a vehicle for the flowering of Indian art, literature, history and religion, but where did it come from? Who made it and how? What was their inspiration? How has this ancient craft survived in today’s India? Comprehensive and detailed, this book traces the nearly thousand-year history of hand paper-making in India.

Joan Eardley (1921-1963) is one of Scotland’s most admired artists. During a career that lasted barely fifteen years, she concentrated on two very distinct themes: children in the Townhead area of central Glasgow, and the fishing village of Catterline, just south of Aberdeen, with its leaden skies and wild sea. The contrast between this urban and rural subject matter is self-evident, but the two are not, at heart, so very different. Townhead and Catterline were home to tight-knit communities, living under extreme pressure: Townhead suffered from overcrowding and poverty, and Catterline from depopulation brought about by the declining fishing industry. Eardley was inspired by the humanity she found in both places. These two intertwining strands are the focus of this book, which looks in detail at Eardley’s working processes. Her method can be traced from rough sketches and photographs through to pastel drawings and large oil paintings. Identifying many of Eardley’s subjects and drawing on unpublished letters, archival records and interviews, the authors provide a new and remarkably detailed account of Eardley’s life and art.

A unique insight into the ways in which one of today’s leading artists is inspired by great works of the past. In 16 emphatically modern new paintings, renowned artist, Alison Watt, responds to the remarkable delicacy of the female portraits by eighteenth-century Scottish portraitist, Allan Ramsay. Watt’s new works are particularly inspired by Ramsay’s much-loved portrait of his wife, along with less familiar portraits and drawings. Watt shines a light on enigmatic details in Ramsay’s work and has created paintings which hover between the genres of still life and portraiture. In conversation with curator Julie Lawson, Watt discusses how painters look at paintings, explains why Ramsay inspired her, and provides unique insight into her own creative process. Andrew O’Hagan responds to Watt’s paintings with a new work of short fiction and art historian Tom Normand’s commentary explores further layers of depth to our understanding of both artists.

“It is an exhaustive overview of LeCompte’s work and is chock-full of expertly photographed images.” — Princeton Herald

“The book is a magnificent volume. It is as comprehensive as one could hope.” — Anglican and Episcopal History

Rowan LeCompte (1925-2014) was a world-renowned stained-glass artist best known for his work in Washington National Cathedral that spanned an unprecedented 70 years of artistic commission. Rowan LeCompte: Master of Stained Glass celebrates LeCompte’s artistic inspiration, distinctive technique, and unique perspective on a medieval decorative art, which he transformed into a fine art for modern times. The book traces his fascinating trajectory, from a determined teenager to a charming octogenarian with a clear vision of what stained glass can do within and beyond cathedral walls. More than an artist biography, this book illuminates the essence of human nature and its balance of light and darkness.  

Growing up in Baltimore, young Rowan LeCompte was fascinated by color and light, collecting colored glass fragments that his older brother – Stuart, a scientist – had discarded from his lab at Johns Hopkins. A visit to the Washington National Cathedral at age 14 would prove transformative for LeCompte, who later described the day as his “second birthday.” At age 15, LeCompte knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life: combine his love of architecture and painting through the study of stained glass. Just a year later, he earned his first commission in the National Cathedral: the very place that forged his destiny. Rowan LeCompte’s seven decades of work not only fulfilled his teen ambition beyond expectations – it changed the art of stained glass itself. 

Rowan LeCompte: Master of Stained Glass takes readers behind-the-scenes of LeCompte’s process, hearing from the artist first-hand about his unexpected inspirations – and rejected ideas – for color and design, and illustrating his work from the first ‘cartoon’ storyboards of windows, to painting the finishing touches on some of his best-known work. This beautiful 4-color photo art book tells of the complete history of Rowan’s life, incorporating brilliant full-color photos of many of the windows which highlight the details of the imagination and innovation of this modern artist working in an ancient medium. It was his single-minded determination to create works that make the world a more beautiful place that will mark Rowan LeCompte as a great master for years to come. 

Rowan LeCompte: Master of Stained Glass is a companion to Peter Swanson’s two films about Rowan. One of these films, Let There Be Light, documented LeCompte’s final commission for the Washington National Cathedral’s centennial celebration. The film won the Best of Festival award at Washington, D.C.’s Independent Film Festival.

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.