More than 130 works from the collection assembled by Drs Nicole and John Dintenfass over fifty years. The Dintenfass Collection serves as a model and a source of inspiration for new and seasoned collectors alike. A different slant on collecting which is not actually just buying from dealers. A lavishly illustrated book that traces the origin of a collector’s interest in African art and analyzes the psychological aspects driving the passions for collecting. The Nicole and John Dintenfass Collection is well known and based on aesthetics, and the works have been reproduced in many publications. They have collected with passion, diligence, depth and rigor monumental sculptures and wooden miniatures, from most regions of Africa. Focusing on pieces of the highest artistic quality, this book shares the collectors’ personal point of view about collecting and offers to readers anecdotes that provide an additional insight into this world to future and present collectors in their search for African art. Collecting is a passion that often leads to intimate inner conversations or to emotional experiences with the objects themselves. Moreover many collectors share their unique experience of joy and appreciation with twentieth-century artists who also collected African art and who generously imparted advice, suggestions and support in responding to the collectors’ enthusiasm. Thanks to the multiple beautiful and sensitive photographs of each object, the viewer has a chance to form an intimate conversation that creates a connection with those African master carvers that have strongly influenced modern realism, cubism and expressionism.

Seeing Zen is the catalog of 124 masterpieces in the Kaeru-an Zenga Collection. There are 91 paintings and 33 calligraphies presented in full-color, high quality illustrations and extended captions. Each entry has a detailed description that includes the original Japanese characters, English translation, and a commentary by John Stevens, a world authority on Zen art and artists. Seeing Zen includes heretofore unpublished art work by every major Zen artist – Ikkyu, Fugai, Takuan, Mokuan, Jozan, Hakuin, Sengai, Jiun, Gocho, Suio, Torei, Rengetsu, Tesshu, Nantenbo, and others. An extensive section on Artists’ Biographies is appended. Published to coincide with a major exhibition of Felix Hess’ Kaeru-an Collection at the Czech National Museum in Prague in Autumn 2020. Also, in 2020 John Stevens will be the curator of the Otagaki Rengetsu exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He will promote Seeing Zen in lectures and book signings.

Founded in 1921 and the first of its kind in the country, the National Gallery of Canada’s Department of Prints and Drawings boasts a world-class collection of historical drawings dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. These works, rendered in a wide range of mediums – graphite, ink, pastel, watercolor – reflect the diversity of techniques used over the ages.

Incorporating the latest research and a displaying wealth of scholarship, this richly illustrated book celebrates the recent centenary of this outstanding collection. It brings together a spectacular array of drawings, including newly acquired additions and little-known but historically significant works. The wide selection of plates showcases preparatory studies for paintings, depictions of historical and mythological themes, portraits, landscapes, forays into abstraction, and poignant explorations of the human condition. Featured artists include Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Théodore Géricault, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch and Wassily Kandinsky, among many others.

Following a first volume devoted to secular and sacred objects and sculptures from the 12th to the 18th centuries, this second catalogue in the decorative arts collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art focuses specifically on the art of living. Furniture, caskets, boxes, clocks, lamps, turned ivories and gold and silver cups from the dawn of the Renaissance to the end of the Age of Enlightenment provide a panoply of strictly decorative European creativeness.

Edited by Fabienne Fravalo, curator of the decorative arts collection at the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, this catalogue is introduced by two essays, written respectively by Sophie Mouquin, lecturer at the University of Lille, and Caroline Heering, professor at the Catholic University of Leuven. It presents the major objects in the collection, studied and analyzed by curators and scholars working in German, American, English, Belgian, French and Swiss institutions.

The Ashmolean is fortunate in having the finest collection of Indian art in Britain outside London, one which includes many works of great beauty and expressive power. For this we are indebted above all to the generosity, knowledge and taste of our benefactors and donors from the 17th century to the present. This book offers a short account of how the collection developed and a selection of some of its more outstanding or interesting works of art. While it is written mainly for the general reader and museum visitor, it includes many fine objects or pictures, some of them unpublished, that should interest specialist scholars and students.

Since 1987, the Ashmolean has made many significant new acquisitions of Indian art and these are highlighted in this collection. As the book’s title implies, it also ventures beyond the bounds of the Indian subcontinent by including works from Afghanistan and Central Asian Silk Road sites as well as many from Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia. From the early centuries AD, Indian trading links with these diverse regions of Asia led to a widespread cultural diffusion and regional adoptions of Buddhism and Hinduism along with their related arts. Local reinterpretations of such Indic subjects, themes and styles then grew into flourishing and enduring artistic traditions which are also part of the story of this book.

The selection of works ends around 1900. By the 16th century and the early modern period in India, growing European interventions and Western artistic influences under Mughal rule saw a significant shift in sensibility and the practice of more secular and naturalistic forms of court art such as portraiture. By the late 19th century, fundamental cultural changes under British rule and the advent of new technologies brought about a gradual decline in many of India’s traditional arts.

A remarkable private collection formed over the last thirty years is the focus of this richly illustrated book that introduces the reader to English silver spanning a century and a half from a little before the Tudor age (1485-1603) to the threshold of the Civil War (1642-51). This was a period when England changed out of all recognition. At the beginning it was still essentially a medieval country dominated by an autocratic king and a rich and powerful Church; by the end of the period the Church had lost virtually all of its power and, with the execution of Charles I in 1649, the monarchy itself was abolished. To a degree, this changing world is mirrored in the styles represented by the silver featuring in the collection. Besides setting the silver against its social and historical background the book examines the wide range of techniques used by silversmiths at the time to shape and adorn silver objects.

Ring Redux presents more than a hundred avant-garde rings by renowned international artists who explore this age-old jewelry form with great vitality and relevance to society today. In the essay “Riffs on Rings“, Ursula Ilse-Neuman provides valuable insights into the astonishing variations on one of the most intimate and enduring forms of body adornment, revealing the profound and subtle differences in how these artists evoke the ring’s potential to express ideas that extend beyond its ornamental role. The skill and audacity infused in these intimate sculptural forms is captured in stunning new color photographs. In the “Artists’ Voices” section, the jewelers provide valuable perspectives on the conception and execution of their works. The collection of rings presented here has been acquired over five decades by Susan Grant Lewin and will be exhibited at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia.

This is the story of the Reeves Collection of botanical paintings, the result of one man’s single-minded dedication to commissioning pictures and gathering plants for the Horticultural Society of London. Reeves went to China in 1812 and immediately on arrival started sending back snippets of information about manufactures, plants and poetry, goods, gods and tea to Sir Joseph Banks. Slightly later, he also started collecting for the Society but despite years of work collecting, labeling and packing plants and organizing a team of Chinese artists until he left China in 1831, Reeves never enjoyed the same degree of recognition as other naturalists in China. This was possibly because he had a demanding job as a tea inspector. Reeves himself never claimed to be a professional naturalist and the plant collecting and painting supervision were undertaken in his own time. Furthermore, fan qui (foreign devils) were restricted to the port area of Canton and to Macau, so that plant-hunting expeditions further afield were impossible. Furthermore, Reeves never published an account of his life in the country, unlike Clarke Abel and Robert Fortune, but he left us some letters, notebooks, drawings and maps. The Collection is held at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library in Vincent Square, London. It is a magnificent achievement. Not only are the pictures accurate and richly colored plant portraits of plants then unknown in the West, but they stand as a record of plants being cultivated in nineteenth-century Canton and Macau. In John Reeves: Pioneering Collector of Chinese Plants and Botanical Art, Kate Bailey reveals John Reeves’ life as an East India Company tea inspector in nineteenth-century China and shows how he managed to collect and document thousands of Chinese natural history drawings, far more than anyone else at the time.

In 1925 Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh bought Kenwood, the magnificent 18th-century mansion of the 6th Earl of Mansfield on Hampstead Heath. The empty house was just what Iveagh needed to provide a gallery for the best of the art collection he had formed between 1887 and 1891 for his palatial home in Mayfair. Through the Iveagh Bequest Act of 1929 he left his collection to the nation, where it remains on display at Kenwood. This catalog reproduces in glorious full color Lord Iveagh’s bequest of paintings, discusses each work, and in addition discusses the wider collection on display at Kenwood, the spectacular white villa of Hampstead Heath.

“It is difficult to leaf through this book without saying ‘wow’ over and over, which means this is definitely top of the Christmas reading list.” – Embroidery Magazine

“For anyone involved with textile arts, fashion, design, or art—from makers to collectors, from students to museum curators—this book is an absolute must-have. A feast for the eyes, a source of inspiration, and a reminder of how art, craft, and imagination are intertwined.” — NL Magazine

Stephen Ellcock’s Book of Textiles is a unique collaboration between bestselling author Stephen Ellcock and textile expert Karun Thakar. Together, they share an inspiring vision of the world through the medium of textiles, leading the reader on a journey into the splendors of nature and the infinite complexities of the human condition.

A social-media sensation, Ellcock is widely known for his online curation of artworks, while Thakar owns one of the world’s most important and varied textile collections. Through a spellbinding selection of more than 200 of the most significant, extraordinary and distinctive pieces in Thakar’s collection, these pages cover everything from fashion, costume and adornment to pattern and design, rituals and magic, pure abstraction and the sublime.

Combining Ellcock’s singular vision with Thakar’s expert eye, Stephen Ellcock’s Book of Textiles is a ground-breaking compendium of wonders and a must-read for anybody with an interest in art and visual culture, as well as textile devotees, experts and enthusiasts.

Things Made Over Time is a comprehensive survey of South African artist-potter Hylton Nel’s work, spanning his career from the 1960s to 2024. From his early days in Antwerp to his studio in Calitzdorp, Nel’s ceramics—plates, bowls, vases, and sculptures—embody a unique voice in contemporary ceramics. Featuring a foreword by Dior Men’s creative director Kim Jones and a photographic series by Pieter Hugo, this book explores Nel’s vast inspirations, from Staffordshire pottery to Tang Dynasty China, as well as his home filled with objects and books. With insights from Nel’s own words and an essay by art historian Tamar Garb, who highlights his whimsical cats as symbolic witnesses, Things Made Over Time captures Nel’s blend of humor, critique, and timeless tradition. A must-have for collectors and lovers of contemporary ceramics.

José Bedia: Inner Circle Journey 1976 – 2026 is a rich exploration of the career and work of Cuban artist – José Bedia. From being a formative member of the “Volumen Uno” Cuban art renaissance, Bedia’s international outreach continually grew from the 1980’s onward, reaching worldwide acclaim – spanning from his participation in the monumental exhibit Magiciens de la Terre in 1989 to winning First Prize at the Beijing Biennale in 2010. His unique artistic craft focuses on organic elements, tribal symbology, and shamanism from diverse cultures. Bedia’s work and artistic creations are deeply informed by living and past ancestral communities everywhere and his personal interactions with them, while simultaneously using a “field work” approach of an ethnographer or anthropologist to create his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. Anchored by his 5-decade retrospective at the MARCO Museum of Monterrey, and also accompanied by text from various art scholars, this book will look at his trajectory focusing on his different styles and periods throughout the years, as well as images from his personal travels, and tribal collection, that directly impact his artistic output. 

Text in English and French. 

Visions in Silk presents the first comprehensive exploration of exquisite Japanese fine art textiles from the Meiji era (1868-1912), showcasing the unparalleled treasures from the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art.

This beautifully illustrated volume reveals how Japanese artists and craftsmen ingeniously adapted centuries-old textile traditions to create innovative art textiles that captivated international audiences, won exhibition awards, and served as prestigious diplomatic gifts.

Featuring over 300 spectacular examples, the book examines dazzling works of embroidery, yuzen resist-dyed silk and cut velvet, tapestry, and oshi-e raised silk, ranging from elegant panels, hangings and screens to grand exhibition showpieces. Each represents the pinnacle of artistic collaboration and hitherto unsurpassed technical mastery.

Written by leading international experts, this landmark publication provides unprecedented insight into these remarkable yet understudied treasures. Visions in Silk will enchant anyone interested in Japanese art, textile design, Japonisme, and the cultural transformations that occurred during the Meiji era, when Japan opened to the outside world.

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is home to a vast and impressive collection of over 100,000 items, with 20,000 dedicated to graphic design. Inspired by the exhibition Everyday, Someday and Other Stories 1950–1980 in gallery 1.23, this book showcases a selection of posters from the museum’s extensive graphic design collection. Beginning with 1,000 iconic posters, the publication offers an in-depth exploration of visual storytelling, design trends, and cultural history from the mid-20th century, providing a unique insight into the evolution of graphic design.

Ten more handscrolls from the series Collection of Ancient Calligraphy and Painting Handscrolls: Paintings have rich themes and diverse styles, such as vivid portraits, exquisite landscape paintings, and meticulous paintings of flowers and birds. The paintings are accompanied by texts written by experts, offering detailed analysis of the artists’ works. It is a powerful tribute to Chinese ancient paintings and provides original insight into the work itself. In this series (volumes 11-20), most of handscrolls are painted in Song Dynasty, in which painting became an art of high sophistication and reached a new level of sophistication with further development of landscape painting. The original paintings have been in the collection of the Palace Museum or the Taipei Palace Museum for many years.

The artworks are presented in the traditional format of a handscroll which can be extended indefinitely, so that the postscripts and observations of later generations can be directly followed by the end of the works.

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

“Turning the pages of this encyclopedia of golden parties, a nostalgia emanates from the clichés and plunges us into the evening of the stars at the Oscars…” — Harper’s Bazaar France

“With his new collection of photographs, Dafydd Jones offers a sensational dive into the excitement of the awards season in the 1990s.” —  Vanity Fair France

“… a rare collection of candid moments that reveal the deepest aspects of the personalities of the world’s most famous people.” — Vogue Greece

“These images, taken before the turn of the century, give us a snapshot into the rise of America’s future movers and shakers, when mobile phones were in their infancy, Facebook had yet to be created, and the hit TV series Succession hadn’t even occurred to a twenty-something Jesse Armstrong.” — The Independent

“If you’re interested in celebrity culture, black & white, and of course any of the other work of Dafydd Jones, this comes highly recommended.” — Amateur Photography

Hollywood: Confidential is the latest collection of beautifully timed photos from bestselling society photographer Dafydd Jones. Formerly of Tatler and Vanity Fair, Jones is a serial capturer of intimate moments during high-society functions. As famous Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter puts it, when it comes to party photographers, ‘Dafydd Jones is the sniper’s sniper – the best of the best.’

On numerous occasions in the 1990s and 2000s, Jones turned his lens to the faces of Hollywood with all his usual impudence, as they mingled and danced at private events in the Hollywood Hills, Oscar-night parties and awards ceremonies. The result is a rare thing – photographs that convey the underlying personalities of the world’s most public personas.

Following on from England: The Last Hurrah and New York: High Life / Low Life, this is an essential portrait of celebrity culture from behind the scenes, featuring the likes of Anna Nicole Smith, Tom Cruise, Prince, Winona Ryder, Tony Curtis, Oprah, Nicholas Cage and more.

Praise for Dafydd Jones:

“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Mr. Jones goes about his business with cheery zest and a wicked eye.” – New York Times

“Some carefully tended public images are punctured with such rapier precision that one can hear the hiss as they deflate.” – Mitchell Owens, The World of Interiors

“Sublime vintage photographs…”– Hermione Eyre, the Telegraph

“Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline.” – Country & Townhouse podcast

“The New York book is an evocative historical document, brimming with nostalgia and menace.” – Hannah Marriott, The Guardian

“The best party photographers, and their numbers are few, are like snipers… Dafydd Jones is the sniper’s sniper – the best of the best.” Graydon Carter, foreword from New York: High Life / Low Life

“Dafydd’s brilliant evocation of a time and a class only seem more potent today, when we know that so many of the moneyed twits in his ’80s portfolio ended up running the country, as they always have” – Tina Brown, The New Yorker

The !Xun & Khwe Art Project was developed in 1993 in a refugee camp in Schmidtsdrift, South Africa. After being party to the struggles for liberation from colonial rule, endangered groups of San people from Namibia and Angola were relocated there. They eventually found their final home in the self-governing South African community of Platfontein. The art of the !Xun and Khwe came about during the short period of transition from a traditional way of life to a modern, globalized society. This is what makes them unique. The collection of Hella Rabbethge-Schiller reveals the remarkable creativity and visual expressiveness of the artists. Despite otherwise depending on oral transmission, the San have captured their stories for posterity here in images charged with energy.

Text in English and German.

Through a decade of friendship, sharing the same environs and being active collectors, Sonja Graber and Christian Graber are inextricably connected to the photographer Annelies Strba, the jewelry and object artist Bernhard Schobinger and the painter Adrian Schiess. A far cry from thoughts of prestige and conjecture, one of the most extensive collections from all genres of the three Swiss artists has now emerged out of artistic and personal esteem. In the collectors, the artists and the Kunsthaus Zug, like-minded people have come together in the most indiscriminate appreciation of fine and applied art. To mark the occasion of the donation of the Graber collections to the museum, the three internationally renowned artists along with hitherto largely unpublished works are now united in one publication. Contents: Art is an Experiment for Us by Matthias Haldemann; Supporting the Artists: Building the Graber Collection by Marco Obrist; Things, Art … Art Things by Felix Philipp Ingold; Undine’s Song by Ildegarda Scheidegger; The Year’s Production from 1981, the Start of Painting by Ulrich Loock; The Graber Collection at Kunsthaus Zug; artists’ biographies. Text in English and German.

Between 1885 and 1891 the Swiss pastor Wilfried Spinner sojorned in Japan on behalf of the East Asian mission. He founded the first Christian parishes in Tokyo and Yokohama and began to intensively teach there. However, his interest was also directed at local beliefs, which informed the everyday lives of the population. He brought back to Europe around eighty religious scrolls, comprising some painted hanging scrolls and numerous black-and-white prints (ofuda). Ofuda are paper amulets featuring representations of important deities, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, which were printed in and distributed from temples. Some of them additionally feature calligraphy, which was written by the monks in the presence of the pilgrims. They are evidence to their pilgrimage and accompany them onwards as protection and good luck charms. The recently discovered collection of Wilfried Spinner in the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich covers a broad spectrum both figuratively and in content.

Text in English, German, and Japanese.

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

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

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

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

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

Text in English, French and Dutch.

A ‘vessel for living’ – such were the words Glenn Adamson used to describe this remarkable residence. Richard Meier designed the Grotta home to house Sandra and Louis Grotta’s collection of contemporary studio jewelry and significant works in wood, ceramic and fibre. The building was conceived around the collection, framing the objects within the open architecture, which comprises an equal blend of glass and concrete. Nature, visible from many vantage points, plays an essential supporting role. The Grotta Home by Richard Meier: A Marriage of Architecture and Craft is rich in photographs of the collection and provides impressive insights into this exceptionally personal project. The accompanying essays afford the reader a greater sense of how the Grottas have not simply acquired art, but have immersed themselves in it.

Ever since the 1970s, the Austrian couple Heidi and Karl Bollmann have been assembling a highly respected collection of international art jewelry. In this survey exciting artistic approaches as well as trends and developments of the genre are brought before our very eyes with the aid of selected works. The illustrations of the objects are complemented by a series of portraits, for it is only when worn by man that the pieces unfold their performative potential – and a subtle dialogue with the individual develops. Moreover, each piece is accompanied by a definition by the collector or the person who is being portrayed as to what jewelry is or could be, thereby stimulating thought about the meaning of art jewelry for the individual as well as for society as a whole. A particular focus lies in the work of the Austrian Fritz Maierhofer, one of the most significant jewelry artists in the world.