In an age of soaring uncertainty, small moments of connection – with ourselves and our planet – matter more than ever before. The 200 intimate portraits in this volume tell stories of courage, hardship and hope, across continents and through generations.
The photographs of these journeys form one of the most extensive records of any region taken in the 19th century. The range, depth and aesthetic quality of John Thomson’s photographic vision mark him out as one of the most important travel photographers.
Thomson arrived in Siam in 1865 and with the help of the British Consul in Bangkok, he was able to gain an audience with King Mongkut who granted him permission to take some formal portraits of the King, his royal family and chief ministers, as well as recording important ceremonies and traveling to Ayutthaya, Petchaburi and the surrounding countryside. Staying in Bangkok for several months he photographed many aspects of the city, river scenes, its surrounding countryside and people, before journeying to Cambodia and the amazing Angkor Wat ruins. After an arduous and dangerous journey, Thomson became the first photographer to document Angkor Wat before returning to London.
Between 1868-1872 Thomson turned his attention to China, making extensive trips to Guangdon, Fujian, Beijing and China’s north-east traveling down the Yangtze river and covering nearly 5,000 miles.
In China, Thomson’s photographic skills reached their zenith and his portraits of women are particularly remarkable.
His collection of over 600 glass negatives form a unique archive of images, which are today housed in the Wellcome Library, London.
Although one of the world’s smallest countries, Qatar punches well above its weight in terms of art and culture. It is home to innovative and striking pieces of public art as well as art-filled museums designed by world-famous architects. This is all part of a far-reaching plan to focus on becoming a culture-based, rather than carbon-based, economy – a plan which Sheikha Mayassa has spearheaded on every level. It is this which makes The Power of Culture so informative and readable. Sheikha Mayassa’s personality shines through every page, whether discussing the delights to be found in museums and galleries, or commenting on her favorite place to see wild life and where to find the best abayas. Part easy-to-read guide and part memoir, The Power of Culture offers a completely original insight into the Qatar of today, enhanced with in-depth interviews by Sheikha Mayassa with some of the leading architects and artists who have contributed to its success.
Text in English, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi and Spanish.
In line with the works on decorators of the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, this book plunges us into the world of ’80s and ’90s. These have witnessed unprecedented experiments in the world of design and architecture. Composed of a rich introduction which gives a synoptic vision and 38 monographs that describe its many faces, this book makes an exceptionally creative period, and reveals through an abundant iconography, often unpublished, its formidable aesthetic richness.
A new generation of designers stands out, among them Shiro Kuramata, Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Bob Wilson, Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti. All regenerate creation by refusing the elitism of their predecessors and by favoring the use of new materials. Some turn to recovery, such as the Creative Salvage group, and offer inventive and provocative furniture thanks to welding and assembly. Others, gathered in Italy around Ettore Sottsass and Memphis, combine unexpected colors and patterns to the playful use of plastic laminate. Sliding until the end of the ’90s, the achievements presented in this book mark the desire for a dialog between artistic references with a new relationship to the industrial aspect, at the dawn of the 21st century and its technological innovations.
Text in English and French.
“David Brafman, just like the alchemists did, mixes ingredients to make gold.” — The New Scientist
Alchemists are notorious for attempting to synthesize gold. Their goals, however, were far more ambitious: to transform and bend nature to the will of an industrious human imagination. For scientists, philosophers, and artists alike, alchemy seemed to hold the key to unlocking the secrets of creation. Alchemists’ efforts to discover the way the world is made have had an enduring impact on global artistic practice and expression.
Brafman’s book is the first to explore how the art of alchemy globally transformed human creative culture from the ancient world to the modern scientific age, and displays the ways its legacy still permeates the world we make today.
Documenting a contemporary reinterpretation of a classical French château by Landry Design Group with interiors by Philip Nimmo and Company, Creating A Livable Work of Art is a captivating case study of how a great home is conceived, designed, and built. The distinguished architecture writer Michael Webb traces the evolution of the design that marries period style with contemporary living patterns to create a unique residence that is both of its time and timeless. Accompanied by gorgeous photography by leading architectural photographer Manolo Langis.
One of today’s leading conceptual artists, Los Angeles-based Walead Beshty (b. 1976, London) works across photography, sculpture and words. Self-referential, playful and imaginative, Addenda to a Sequence of Appearances documents his exhibitions with Thomas Dane Gallery across Europe and is a guide to the artist’s key bodies of work.
Uncovering processes is central to Beshty’s art. He deliberately incorporated marks made by oxidation and human touch into his FedEx copper works and Copper Surrogate works, as well as photographing the many individuals involved in his exhibitions in Industrial Portraits. The work that has gone into this substantial monograph, which features contributions from publisher Francis Atterbury, book designer Billie Temple and Thomas Dane partner Francois Chantala, is laid bare. Also presented is an insightful essay by leading professor of Juridical Sociology Carlo De Rita.
Adopting a semiotic approach to books as ‘not just a thing you hold, but something held in common’, Addenda to a Sequence of Appearances embraces the archetypal format, tropes and conventions of a traditional – if unorthodox – book, employing printing and publishing practices seldom seen in contemporary bookmaking.
“The quality of the reprint is nearly perfect, with a good selection of papers for the three sequential parts of the book: the texts, the drawings, and the black-and-white photographs. Text and drawings are on matte heavyweight pages, while the photos are on glossy paper. The inks make everything read well; in particular, the drawing reproductions are exquisite.” — Archidose
Edwin Lutyens, one of the most famous architectural names of the 20th century, died in 1944. As a memorial, three large volumes of his drawings and photographs were commissioned from the thousands found in his office, and were published by Country Life.
All three volumes will be republished in 2023. The first volume contains his own plans, elevations and copious details of the finest examples of his domestic buildings, on which his huge reputation principally rests. The book embodies the quintessence of the man and his work; the variety of style and design seen in the houses brings together in one volume the many strands of Lutyen’s fertile mind. Two further volumes will include his corporate and public buildings.
The genius of Lutyens is now universally recognized. In the work featured in this book, we can now see not just the professionalism of a great architect, but also the loving care with which he set down the most minute detail, with the result that this is one of the few books in existence that can be used to provide working drawings.
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.
Never reprinted since their first, posthumous appearance in 1935, these woodcuts were the only printed versions of his work to receive Rodin’s full approval. Mostly self-educated, Rodin was a passionate re-reader of his favorite books, and Ovid’s Love Elegies occupied a special place in his imagination. These woodcut illustrations were taken from the astonishingly free and improvisatory life drawings he made in his later years. For many people these are the most entrancing manifestation of his genius. Privately published in 1939 in a very strictly limited edition, these 31 beautiful images are very rarely seen. This edition marries Rodin’s illustrations to Christopher Marlowe’s glittering translation, which was ceremonially burnt by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1599.
” … The author’s personal, beautiful, and discursive style will appeal to enthusiasts of art and English literature.” Library Journal
One of the greatest literary artists in history, Ford Madox Ford’s childhood is brought to life in this collection of anecdotes from his many memoirs. Ford Madox Ford, best known today for Parade’s End and The Good Soldier, was also a very fine memoirist. The grandson of Ford Madox Brown, he grew up surrounded by all the great figures of Victorian artistic life, whom he saw with the unflinching eye of a child. This collection brings together some of his most evocative, witty, and tender memories of an extraordinary youth. There are rich anecdotes about the Rossettis, Brown, Morris, Burne Jones, Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, Leighton, Swinburne, the accomplished con-man Charles Augustus Howell, and many of the minor but no less vivid characters that made up the bohemian life of London in the second half of the 19th century. Ford’s elegiac but always penetrating prose is a constant delight, and his comic timing invariably immaculate. Selected from Ford’s many volumes of memoirs (all now out of print), this is a superb and very funny introduction to one of the great periods of English art and poetry by a great writer at the very heart of all that was old and all that was new.
In 1975 Abram Games, one of Britain’s greatest graphic designers, was commissioned to make a fund-raising poster for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His brilliant solution was to become iconic: the face of Shakespeare built up from the titles of all the plays as they appear in the First Folio.
The poster has been seen all over the world; but Abram Games intended much more. After his death, his daughter Naomi discovered a mock up he had made of a flick book. As the reader flicked the pages, Games planned to make Shakespeare’s face gradually emerge.
Now at last Games’ original project is coming to life. All 37 plays are included, in the order they are printed in the First Folio of 1623, ending with Pericles, Prince of Tyre, added to the collection in the Third Folio of 1664. At the end, the playwright makes a graceful exit, marked by the poems and the lost or doubtful plays. The book is completed with some favorite quotations, and the date of each work. Naomi Games has written a brief introduction about the history of Games’ image.
Ruskin is one of the most influential and exhilarating writers in English. Art critic, architectural visionary, social reformer, climate warner and incomparable teacher; Ruskin’s words not only transformed Victorian England but speak to us with increasing urgency today. This, the first general introduction to Ruskin for many years, places him in the social, economic and aesthetic world of Victorian Britain that he transformed – and shows how this transformation has much to teach us today. The extensive illustrations range from private notes and lecture diagrams to presentation drawings, including some of the most beautiful images of the 19th century and many never before published. Published in association with the Ruskin Foundation.
‘..the news that Baritone Richard Suart has produced an account of Ko-Ko’s Little Lists will be music to your ears. Beginning with a brief history of The Mikado, this hearty collaboration focuses on the way contemporary politics and society are freshly lampooned in each season’s book’ – Sunday Telegraph
Richard Suart, heir to the great Gilbert and Sullivan singers of the past, has made the role of KoKo, Lord High Executioner, his own. Over the last 20 years his topical version of the Little List song has become a focus of audience expectation and hilarity. In this book, he looks back over the Lists that have raised such laughter at the Coliseum and at the history of this immensely malleable song, taking in previous performers such as George Grossmith, Martyn Green, Groucho Marx, Frankie Howerd and Eric Idle – not to mention poets as varied as John Hollander and Tim Rice. Illustrated with 56 colour and 45 black & white illustrations, many never previously reproduced, this is a delightful biography of one of the most entertaining songs in the English language.
Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) is one of the most important and best loved artists in the Kettle’s Yard collection. Nicholson met Kettle’s Yard founder Jim Ede in 1924, and they kept in regular contact over the following decades. Ede credited Winifred Nicholson directly for ‘[teaching] me much about the fusing of art and daily living’ and at Kettle’s Yard he built the largest public collection of her work.
This book brings together some of Nicholson’s most eloquent essays with extracts from previously unpublished letters between the artist and Ede, and the words of their mutual friends, the poet Kathleen Raine and collector Helen Sutherland. With an introduction by curator Elizabeth Fisher exploring Nicholson’s relationship with Ede, the book is richly illustrated and included reproductions of all works in the collection, a biography and bibliography.
Tornabuoni Art Paris opens 2023 with an exhibition dedicated to the relationship between art and poetry, examining the case of Giuseppe Ungaretti, on the 110th anniversary of his arrival in Paris, a defining moment in his literary career.
The catalog, with texts by Alexandra Zingone, literary critic and curator of the exhibition, tackles the analysis of the art of the ‘short century’ with a global view, taking into consideration the constant dialog between the various exponents of the cultural world.
Through passages from critical texts by Ungaretti as an interpreter of art, the volume follows the exhibition among the many works by contemporary artists, including Giacomo Balla, Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Piero Dorazio and others.
Throughout his multidisciplinary career, Ungaretti found himself indiscriminately analyzing various genres, including Futurism, Metaphysical, Informalism, Socialist Realism and Expressionism of the Roman School.
The exhibition develops around the poet’s pieces, in some cases in the form of original manuscripts and first editions.
Accompanying the volume is an extremely rich iconographic and archival apparatus accompanies the reader in discovering a virtuous example of the links that have always existed between literature and the visual arts.
This book about miniature painting at the Bundelkhand royal courts of Orchha, Datia, and Panna is the first to admit an understanding of the works that two fatal misconceptions regarding their time and place of origin have hitherto thwarted. The miniature school of Bundelkhand that first developed at Orchha was the earliest and most Indian of all the Rajput schools and at the time of its founding the only one to practice a purely indigenous style of painting, “untainted” by the naturalism of imperial Mughal painting. The author’s interpretations and stylistic analyses of over 240 paintings from his collection, many of them published here for the first time, shed light on the school’s development from the late 16th century to the early days of British rule.
The book also introduces readers to the conceptual world of Rajput miniature painting and the rasa aesthetic that anticipates the modern reception aesthetic. Origins of Orchha Painting, the first volume of the series Orchha, Datia, Panna: Miniatures from the Royal Courts of Bundelkhand (1590–1850), deals with the founding period of Orchha painting, the years 1590–1605, and how it derived from pre-Mughal Early Rajput painting, which flourished at the Tomar court of Gwalior from around 1460 until the downfall of the Hindu kingdom in 1518. The subsequent volumes, Stylistic Trends in Bundelkhand Painting, analyze how this Rajput school developed during the period 1605–1635 and spread to Datia after the disintegration of Orchha in 1635 and later to Panna, the Bundela state of Chattrasal, in the 1680s. Bundelkhand painting ended with Chattrasal’s death in 1731, and it was only after a long interruption, in the beginning of the 19th century, that the school experienced an Indian summer at the court of Datia during the period of British suzerainty.
Rock music, or rock for short, serves as a generic term for music styles that have emerged since the late 1960s from the mixing of rock ‘n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s with other styles of music such as B. beat music and blues have developed. Many genres within rock music are identified with individual youth cultures.
Parallel to the emancipation of the long-playing record from the single, a completely new treatment of the record sleeves developed from the mid-1960s, which had never existed before in any music genre. An art form of its own emerged that tolerated no restrictions whatsoever and for which Klaus Voormann and Peter Blake for the Beatles, Storm Thorgerson for Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd as well as Doug Johnson for Tina Turner or Judas Priest deserved credit made. In this context, it also became common to design a separate band logo for each band.
For this tear-off calendar, we’ve selected 365 of the most iconic rock album covers of the last six decades. A collection that should not be missing in any collection! And the hit: with the printed SPOTIFY codes, every album can of course be played anywhere and immediately.
Vinyl records and record stores are currently experiencing a revival, and so the artfully designed covers of the past decades are coming back to consciousness, presenting real music and design history in an inspiring way.
Now the world’s first tear-off calendar with 365 vinyl covers from the last five decades will be published in the sixth issue. Including famous and less known artists of all genres, true classics but also scurrilities. In addition to the daily music inspirations and eye candies, all responsible cover photographers, illustrators and art directors are mentioned. A must-have for all vinyl lovers and design nerds!
And the best: with the printed Spotify Codes, every album can be listened to immediately and anywhere.
“In an era dominated by traditionalism on one hand and the emergence of modernity on the other, Lutyens’ work serves as a compelling testament to the brilliance of harmonizing these contrasting approaches.” — ArchEyes
Edwin Lutyens was one of the most famous architects of the 20th century. After he died in 1944, three large volumes of his drawings and photographs were commissioned and published by Country Life as a tribute.
All three volumes are in the process of being reissued. Having earned his reputation designing domestic buildings, he was soon given scope to expand his practice to the outdoors and to public projects. This second volume contains his extensive contributions to garden design and town planning, as well as the finest examples of his bridges and a selection of monumental civic constructions. These include various university buildings, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Washington Embassy and the Viceroy’s Palace in New Delhi.
The genius of Lutyens is now universally recognized. In the work featured in this book, we can now see not just the professionalism of a great architect, but also the loving care with which he set down the most minute detail, with the result that this is one of the few books in existence that can be used to provide working drawings.
Also available: The Architecture of Sir Edwin Lutyens: Volume 1, Country Houses ISBN 9781788842181.
The 500 Hidden Secrets of Seattle reveals 500 off-the-beaten-track places and interesting details for anyone who’s keen to explore Seattle’s best-kept secrets, e.g. 5 great places for seafood, 5 places to satisfy your sweet tooth, 5 great LGBTQ+ bars, the 5 best views in the city, 5 quirky buildings and structures, 5 swimming spots for hot days, 5 great birding spots… and much more.
“Through superb photography, nostalgic ephemera and detailed descriptions by travel journalist, Ellie Seymour, we’re treated to a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the lavish worlds these historic establishments conceal.” — We Heart
In Grand Hotels of the World, travel journalist Ellie Seymour takes us on a nostalgic journey around the world to discover 40 legendary hotels that have welcomed guests in luxury and style for centuries. Through exquisite photography and detailed descriptions, we are given a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the lavish worlds these historic establishments conceal. From fabulous Claridge’s in London’s Mayfair and the luxurious St Regis New York, to the chic Splendido in Portofino and the timeless Villa Serbelloni on the shores of Lake Como, this book tells the fascinating stories of some of the world’s finest architectural gems and the famous guests to have sashayed through their storied corridors.
“Outsider art” is the name given to the idiosyncratic work of self-taught creators who are driven to use their own invented visual language to bring forth images from their imaginations. It is outside the continuum of art history, outside the boundaries of art recognized by established art institutions, and outside the collective discourse of the mainstream art world. This book examines the underlying biases, ideologies, and social factors that inform the various approaches to outsider art, including myths surrounding mental illness, movements toward social inclusion, and movements away from the marginalizing effect of labels. Most importantly, Outsider Art of Canada explores how we think about art and who is entitled to call themselves an artist. In this survey dedicated to outsider art in Canada, the first of its kind, the artists introduced have much to tell us about their need to create, unapologetically and without regard to public opinion.
Sophie Toulouse transports Drago’s 36 Chambers series to the Nation of Angela, a fictitious society brought to life through the French artist’s fascinating writing and unique iconography. The Nation of Angela is a fantastic, seductive utopia where the values of beauty, purity and innocence prevail. But it is not as innocuous as it seems: its propaganda messages reveal a totalitarian ideology based on the promise of a better world, individual redemption and the denial of earthly happiness. The apologia of beauty and perfection retraces the advertising strategies of today’s consumer society.