The stunning photographs in this book are not only an anthropological study on the types of work done all over the world and the different societies which undertake them, but are also a real look at work that is still carried out by manual labour, usually away from the Western World. This fascinating collection reveals the intricacies of these jobs and the people who perform them, looking in detail at farmers, tailors, mechanics and a huge number of other industries where the physical work of men and women create communities who pride themselves on ingenuity and creativity. People at Work is a captivating look at the socioeconomic development of different communities around the world and how they are fundamentally shaped by the type of work they perform. The evolution of technology in the modern age has meant that most job titles have become ambiguous and the notion of work in the traditional sense has been lost to a certain extent. This beautiful volume looks at the hands-on approach to work in an innovative way.
This small format book is full of dragons large and small, cunning and cranky, fun and playful, but always magical! Are you sure you’re ready to tackle incredible adventures with — or sometimes against — them? After having easily assembled the pieces included in the book, grab some dice and challenge your friends to an extraordinary game. Test your skills at games like The Labyrinth, Save the Knight, and Lava River. There are eight in all. Ages: 6 plus.
“Dachshunds, debutantes and Donald Trump: capturing the glitzy, bizarre world of 80s high society.” — The Guardian on Saturday Magazine
“Through these varying shades of grey, Jones was able to capture the pomp and grandeur of 1990s New York.” — Air Magazine
“British photographer Dafydd Jones documented New York’s upper class in the 1990s. His photo book “High Life, Low Life” is a testimony to a time lost in dreams.” — Die Welt Germany
“The renowned photographer, known for his images of debauchery at Oxford University, has released a new book of his time among East Coast socialites.” — The Times UK
“Dark, glamorous and hedonistic…captures New York in the 1990s.” — Wallpaper*
‘In England, I’d become too well-known as a Tatler photographer. It was wonderful to be invisible again.’
At the end of the 1980s, society photographer Dafydd Jones began a new life in New York. He had been hired by Vanity Fair to attend the most talked-about parties in the city and soon found himself descending into a world of human tableaux, ladies who lunch, princesses in powder rooms and dachshunds scrapping over canapés. Camera at the ready, Jones quickly filled the society pages of the illustrious magazine, snapping the likes of Leona Helmsley, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Imelda Marcos as they celebrated, mourned and unravelled in the bright lights. During the day, he captured the city streets and the ordinary citizens grounded in the real world. In these pages, the author of England: The Last Hurrah reveals the story of New York, the highs and the lows, as the ’90s unfolded in front of his expert lens.
‘Mr. Jones goes about his business with cheery zest and a wicked eye.’ – New York Times, 1993
“The RSN has worked on regalia for every Coronation since 1902, when Edward VII was crowned, and most recently designed and embroidered the robes of state for their Coronation last year. Its patron, Queen Camilla, has written a charming foreword to this beautifully illustrated book.” — The Lady
“Bees, butterflies, beetles and 24 different plants – the astonishing sewing secrets behind the gorgeous Coronation robes of the King and Queen.” — The Mail Online
Many initiatives to support women were begun in the late 1800s, but the Royal School of Needlework (RSN) is one of the few that remain. This initiative was born from the desire of three women – Princess Helena, Lady Victoria Welby and Lady Marian Alford – to popularise the lost art of ornamental needlework and place it on a par with other decorative arts, such as painting and sculpture. Their other, yet no less important goal was to provide employment for women compelled to earn their own livelihood. Though women are no longer so limited in occupational options, the RSN has been keeping traditional embroidery techniques alive for a century and a half.
An Unbroken Thread tells the story from the RSN’s founding in 1872 to the current day. It highlights key people, royal and other special commissions, the changing fortunes of the school as fashions changed and the approach to teaching hand embroidery, as well as bringing attention to the role and position of the RSN historically and today, associating with everyone from society ladies and theatre impresarios in the late 19th century to working with fashion designers Patrick Grant, Nicholas Oakwell and Alexander McQueen, and architects in the 21st century.
First published to coincide with the RSN’s 150th anniversary, this revised edition details the most recent projects worked by the RSN, showcasing their skilful work on regalia for the coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla – The King’s Robe of State, The Queen’s Robe of Estate, The Anointing Screen, The Stole Royal and Girdle, The Chairs of Estate and The Chairs of State.
There’s one topic that passionately unites people around the globe: football! No other sport is as accessible and can be realised with so few resources. No matter where you go, someone is surely playing football, and joining in is almost always allowed. It’s no wonder that countless fan themes revolve around this topic, and they all find their place in the new coffee table book by Peter Feierabend and Bernd Pohlenz, Football – The Ultimate Book.
With meticulous comprehensiveness, the two authors in this entertaining illustrated book orbit football and all the societal expressions of the world’s most popular grassroots sport. They showcase legends on the field, highlights from the best games in sports history, and the greatest football players, both men and women. The book also provides an overview of the various football associations and clubs, the World Cup, continental championships, and of course, presents the most beautiful goals.
In addition to the records of the sport itself, there’s also a keen interest in the lifestyle associated with it. Because football is big business. Fan merchandise, ticket sales, and advertising revenue bring millions into the clubs’ coffers every year. And the players themselves are a business and are scrutinised in this book. They are brand ambassadors, coveted models, and their hairstyles, tattoos, and fashion choices consistently make headlines.
Lastly, the two authors don’t miss documenting the gossip side of football. So, in this book, you’ll find funny anecdotes about lost balls and broken goals alongside spectacular accidents, scandals, and even a dedicated chapter about the beautiful player’s wives, which is an essential part of this magnificent photo book.
For all football enthusiasts, Football – The Ultimate Book is a perfect gift, where even the biggest football fan will surely discover something new.
Text in English and German.
Antoine Leperlier (b. 1953) is a trained visual artist and painter. He has been working as a freelance glass artist since the 1980s, developing his own glass technique based on casting and the lost-wax technique to create large-format translucent and painterly blocks.
In this survey of work spanning more than 40 years, skulls float, snakes are frozen alive, and what looks like abstract watercolours are preserved forever. Time stands still, the universe speaks. His works explore transience and memory, past and future; he stops time, makes moments eternal. Enamel and ceramic inclusions, bubbles, colours, and engravings create colourful, expressive worlds reminiscent of organic forms floating in outer space. This endeavour to capture dynamic images in material form is an approach unique in contemporary glass art.
Text in English and French.
The history of wine production in Greece dates back more than four millennia, yet for many consumers and aficionados Greek wine is still synonymous with the retsina they drank in tavernas as tourists. Here, Master of Wine Konstantinos Lazarakis argues that to dismiss Greek wine in this way today is to miss out on an array of varied and vibrant wines – even retsina, in the hands of boutique producers, has become a drink worthy of a second chance.
From the foothills of Mount Olympus to the plain of Thessaly in Central Greece and scattered across the vast number of islands, each of Greece’s vineyards has its own challenges, history and varieties. Yet terroir, in Greece, goes far beyond soil-types and weather conditions – it emanates from the culture of the country and the spirit of a people whose ancestors even had a god for wine.
The wines of Greece begins with a summary of Greece’s wine history, geography and grape varieties. The many responses of vine growers and winemakers to the land have created a host of different wines – sweet wines from Samos, the famed Malvasia from the Peloponnese and new, surprising wines from oenological innovators throughout the country. It is to the work of these winemakers that the bulk of the book is dedicated; Lazarakis has tirelessly explored Greece’s 700 wineries and here focuses on some of the most inventive producers and interesting wines available.
Greek wine is on the brink of a new era; anybody curious to rediscover a lost gem of winemaking will have their enthusiasm charged by this lovingly written book.
Georgia has for the last 25 years been resurrecting its unique winemaking tradition and rediscovering the distinctiveness of its native varieties. A handful of producers in 1997 has now exploded to more than 1,300. Wine is arguably more important to Georgia than to any other country and its people firmly believe their country to be the birthplace of wine. Yet Georgian wines are still largely unknown in the West.
Lisa Granik, who began visiting Georgia 30 years ago, starts The Wines of Georgia with a brisk tour through the history of the country and analysis of its complex geology, before moving on to consider Georgian wine culture. She explains not only winemaking methods and viticulture but also the centrality of wine to Georgian culture. Georgia can claim more than 400 native Vitis vinifera varieties; here Granik profiles the most commonly planted grapes, as well as the many ‘lost’ varieties being revived. The second half of the book details each of the major regions. Of Georgia’s 20 PDOs, 15 are in the east, in Kakheti. With a history of wine education dating back 900 years, this prolific winemaking region is home to the qvevri, the conical clay vessel that for many represents Georgian winemaking. Stretching west, the regions become more sparsely populated; some places are still pioneer wine territory, with more amateur and self-taught winemakers. Granik provides details on the most significant producers, along with tips on sites of interest and places to eat and stay, for those visiting the country. This definitive book on Georgian wine is an essential text for anybody studying or making wine today.
When a city is pursuing high-speed development and putting massive infrastructure into construction and operation to enable rapid economic growth and efficient urban operation, it will see, quite possibly, increasingly scarce land and resources. And much of its space for people and life lost to economic development, and worse still, the degradation of the environment and the loss of nature… This disequilibrium has set us thinking: what is exactly the purpose of development? Or is it a choice that’s simply not worth making?
This book includes the research and design project “Shenzhen 2030: Balance is More” by Doreen Heng Liu with NODE Architecture & Urbanism at an invitation to Audi Urban Future Award 2012, as well as interviews and articles by experts and scholars in the field of architecture and urbanism. This project, which takes transportation infrastructures as the object of research and design, attempts to reinterpret, deconstruct and reconstruct Shenzhen’s highly efficient urban roads through an interdisciplinary approach. By establishing new supporting systems and reorganising urban mobility, it tries to leave more possibilities of “leisure” for people and life within limited space and redefine a new balance between economy, society, and environment – a balance that sustains and brings more.
Text in English and Chinese.
First Painter to the king in 1736 for only a few months before his tragic death, François Le Moyne had a career as short as it was prolific. Teacher of Charles-Joseph Natoire and François Boucher, and contemporary of Antoine Watteau and Jean-François de Troy, he reached the height of his glory with his Apotheosis of Hercules painted between 1732 and 1736 on the immense ceiling of the Salon d’Hercule, located between La Chapelle Royale and the royal apartments of the Château de Versailles. After so many years spent in oblivion, Le Moyne is finally recognised today as one of the major artists of the 18th century, exerting a seminal influence on the following generations.
Nearly 40 years after his first monograph devoted to the painter, Professor Jean-Luc Bordeaux proposes a renewed survey of the oeuvre of François Le Moyne (1688–1737). Bordeaux analyses Le Moyne’s contributions to the French rococo as well as lesser-known aspects of his artistic production and career. With almost 140 paintings and 250 drawings, this new catalogue raisonné is an extended edition of the one published in 1984, with significant additions. It also includes an appendix of around 20 pages that describes a considerable amount of works by Le Moyne, now lost but attributed to him by famous collectors of the time and 18th century experts such as Gersaint, Mariette, Paillet and Remy.
“You can be as smart as Einstein, but if you fail to direct your attention to what is important, then what good is that high IQ? People who are focused are more alert, experience less stress, and worry less. Unfortunately, focus has become a rare commodity: our attention span has dramatically decreased over the past decades.” – Elke Geraerts
How many times have you been distracted today from what you actually wanted to do? We live in a world of constant connectivity, where distraction lurks around every corner. Our endless to-do lists and packed schedules are a merciless reflection of what’s going on in our minds: we are constantly in overdrive, and our focus is completely lost. No wonder stress and burnout rates are at an all-time high. Despite the fact that we now know more than ever what we need to remain resilient and healthy, our overstimulated brain seems unable to handle all that knowledge, let alone put it into practice. Ten years after her bestseller Better Minds, Elke Geraerts presents a book tailored to a generation without attention. She combines powerful insights with practical tools that can be implemented immediately. Her goal? Sharpening our focus again. Not only by making us work more efficiently and attentively but also – and especially – by teaching us to deliberately unfocus. Are you ready for a mental revolution?
When Kurt Cobain died at his Seattle home on April 8, 1994 at the age of 27, music lost the idol of an entire generation. Ernesto Assante, renowned music journalist, guides the reader through the personal story of an artist and the discovery of an entire musical genre that symbolises an era. A story of pain, passion, and music. A fascinating and mysterious personal adventure. The story of a troubled boy who became a rock star and that of a band that gave sound to the last great rock season of the 20th century: Nirvana.
David Hoffman’s bold, humane photography records a lost era, speaking vividly to our own times. Living in Whitechapel through the seventies and eighties, David documented homelessness, racism and the rise of protest in startlingly intimate and compassionate pictures to compose a vital photographic testimony of resilience.
In this hauntingly beautiful volume, artist John A. Rice re-envisions Dickens’s seemingly familiar Christmas classic as a true Victorian ghost story.
The Victorians knew that the end of the year is a precipice, a time of change and transition. They captured the essence of this season — the yearning for what is lost, the fear of the unknown, but also the hope for what is to come — in the fantastical storytelling tradition known as the “midwinter’s tale.” And of all such tales, the most famous is A Christmas Carol.
In his new illustrated edition of A Christmas Carol, John A. Rice draws on the influence of Victorian Spiritualism and fin de siècle Symbolism to emphasise the deeper symbolism and spirituality of Dickens’s novella. Through five absorbing full-page illustrations and a number of enchanting vignettes — married to an elegant typographic design — Rice reveals Scrooge’s encounters with the spirits as a soul’s journey from darkness to light. This is a fresh presentation of a seemingly familiar classic, one that will inspire contemporary audiences to heed the lessons of the ghosts — just as Dickens intended — and be kind to each other this holiday season and all throughout the year.
A magnificently illustrated oversize book that uses art to illuminate the lives of medieval women, from peasants to queens.
Medieval women ruled over kingdoms, abbeys, and households; produced stunning works of art and craft; and did the hard work that kept ordinary families fed and clothed. In medieval written accounts, however, women’s contributions were often diminished or completely ignored. Yet art tells a different story: women appear everywhere, from manuscript miniatures to statues in cathedrals. In this book, historian Gemma Hollman uncovers the captivating story of medieval European women through the art of their time.
Hollman traces the lives of women across society, with chapters dedicated to nuns like Hildegarde of Bingen, abbess, mystic, and polymath; courtiers like Christine de Pizan, author of pioneering works on women’s role in society; warriors like Joan of Arc; and the everyday women whose names are lost to history. She illustrates her text with some 150 varied works of medieval art, revealing what they tell us about the real lives of medieval women, and about medieval attitudes toward women — which were exemplified at once by Eve, the symbol of moral fallibility, and by the Virgin Mary, the paragon of virtue.
With its eye-opening new perspective on the lives of medieval women and how they were portrayed, this book will be a treasure for anyone interested in the Middle Ages or women’s history.
Sculptures of Stones by Ronny Delrue depict female statues that are either made of bricks or covered with masonry-like patterns. They form a critical riposte to the heroic male statues of former leaders that are scattered around our cities. Furthermore, the forms also broaden our prior knowledge of the depiction of figures in the public sphere. Sculptures of Stones shows drawing to be a form of spontaneous expression. It offers an alternative to the all-pervasive means of instant communication that govern the world today, namely digital tools and social media systems. Delrue’s drawings are both action and representation. Unlike the electronic devices, a drawing redeems the option of an unmediated, direct action and reflection in and on the world. It re-positions the function of the artist as a free, sovereign subject, who touches the world and is ready to participate and influence history.
English, Dutch and French.
German artist Lother Götz (b. 1963 in Gunzburg, Germany) completed an MA at the Royal College of Art in 1998, after studying in Germany at Aachen, Düsseldorf and Wuppertal. He has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, with solo shows at galleries such as Gasworks (London), the Chisenhale (London), Mappin Art Gallery (Sheffield), Museum Goch (Germany), David Risley Gallery (Copenhagen) and the Petra Rinck Gallery (Dusseldorf), and has been included in group exhibitions in Amsterdam, Dublin, Hamburg, Hanover, Salamanca, Wilhelmshaven and Wuppertal.
Perhaps best known for his large-scale wall paintings and installations, Götz’s drawings lie at the centre of his practice.
Brought together in dense compositions on painted card and board, Götz’s thin pencil lines explore the impact of using varying colours and intensities on the work’s surface. Referencing and expanding upon the abstract language of Suprematism and the Bauhaus, the colours appear to oscillate in front of the viewer to immerse them in the surrounding space.
Alongside over 40 colour illustrations, an essay by Charles Darwent explores the range of influences on Götz’s recent body of work.
To commemorate the publication, Götz created a limited-edition lithograph, Correction (2015), in collaboration with Hole Editions. Each edition is hand-finished by the artist and contained within a custom-made slipcase.
In recent years, photographer Bieke Depoorter developed an overriding interest in astronomy. She sought out amateur stargazers, visited state-of-the-art observatories and researched the history of the field. Gradually, it became clear that her interest in astronomy was linked to lost memories from her past. After all, the night sky is a kind of shared memory; the light of celestial bodies takes hundreds, thousands or millions of (light) years to reach our eyes on earth. In Blinked Myself Awake, photographer Bieke Depoorter explores the power and fragility of memory, the human desire for objectivity and the elusive nature of ‘truth’. She does this by interweaving photographs of amateur and professional stargazers, diary-inspired texts and fragments of astronomical history, in which often-forgotten female astronomers play a role.
During the German occupation, a Jewish Dutch couple had to sell a painting to go into hiding. Their daughters were placed in a children’s home, but were rounded up in early 1944 and deported to Auschwitz, where they died. The parents survived the war and did not discover their children’s fate until 1946. The search for the painting also remained fruitless for a long time, until Origins Unknown Agency discovered that it had ended up in a German museum. The museum had previously tried unsuccessfully to trace its provenance. Thanks to the Origins Unknown Agency, the heirs of the original owner were found. The German museum and the heirs agreed that the painting, an 1882 work by Camille Pissarro, would remain at the museum. As part of the compensation, the painting will be kept on display from November 2024 to February 2025 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Over the course of a year, Brian Rose set out to photograph all the neighbourhoods at the ends of the subway lines in New York City. He had multiple reasons for engaging in such a project, but the strongest was the desire to portray New York as a highly diverse, multi-centred metropolis. Having spent a major part of his career photographing the city through often challenging times – the dichotomy of destruction and creativity of the 1980s, the mortal wounding of 9/11, and the suspended animation of the Covid-19 pandemic – Rose was perhaps uniquely equipped to document the city at this moment of political uncertainty under the increased strain of new arrivals, many of whom are refugees from around the world. For a new generation of New Yorkers, the trains roll on ceaselessly, and despite the title, Last Stop is not so much about endings as it is about reinvention.
From Nigel Grierson, (photographer/sleeve designer and joint creator of the 4AD visual identity), and with an essay by esteemed photography writer, Gerry Badger, comes the first volume of his street photography from the early 1980s – created while studying at The Royal College of Art in London. Here ‘the decisive moment’ combined with Grierson’s uniquely minimalist eye, are employed to create images of great power, humour and poignancy. Pioneering ‘flash in daylight’ within British documentary photography from the late 1970s, onward (‘a time when natural light was almost a creed’ – Badger), this award winning work, is finally published. In his brief introduction, Grierson speaks of his fascination for the ‘paradoxical’ nature of the medium, being both documentation and self expression simultaneously. He states, ‘It seemed to me, that through photography and observation, there was the possibility, for the two great arcs of life; one of the outer world of reality / documentation, and the other of the inner world of fiction and dream, to come together with the single click of a shutter’.
A long-deserved survey, of the everyday building types that line our suburban roads and parking lots, affords an informative and diverting critique of their architectural and socio-cultural foibles.
This project began with an essay on the “McMansion” phenomenon, and it grew to become a meditation on the assorted different building types that are found in every American city and suburb. While it’s true that good buildings do exist for each of those categories, they are very much the exception, these buildings more typically ranging from dull to assertively ugly. The book is meant to be a fairly pitiless and revealing look at this “vast wasteland,” with an architect’s hat on but without resort to the profession’s fads and verbiages. Several natural categories inform the organisation of the contents, including commercial, residential, and institutional, even including cars and other manifestations of “architecture on the move” that have also lost their way in stylistic terms. The writing includes capsule histories of many of the building types included, plus some lesser known facts and some sidebars on socio-cultural aspects which make up much of one’s experience of these places. Stylistically, a bit of an acerbic tone makes for diverting as well as informative reading.
This book is about architecture, but not about formal architectural images. It is about the people who inhabit and use buildings and places. It is about the people who have made and will make buildings and places. It is a book about subjects and themes that directly impact the lives of the people who will utilize these efforts.
All these issues open the door to the systematic investigation of the question of value, of what works and what does not, of what is good and bad. Inside the academy, it questions the accepted dogma of subjectivity and neutrality in traditional teaching, particularly as it applies to subjects of taste and perception in architecture. Outside the academy, it requires a willingness to engage with the community in ways much different from traditional detached observation and recordation. The result is a much different and much more sensitive relationship between architects and their clients, teachers and their students, and even between students and their peers.
Effectively, it points to the need of a seminal change in the way we look at the production of architecture as a whole today. Nothing is lost: not beauty, not individuality, nor the eagerness to experiment with form. The wonder of it all is that there is everything to gain.
Geert Baudewijns, full-time ransomware negotiator, is called every week by hacked companies and governments across the globe. But by then, it’s too late. Cybercriminals have infiltrated the system. To prevent worse-case scenarios – weeks of downtime, all your data leaked – over 70 percent of the victims give in to ransom demands. And malicious hacker collectives on the dark web are making fortunes. This is still a taboo because no one wants to go public with it. Who is at risk? How do hackers operate? How can we protect ourselves? In this book, Baudewijns takes the reader into the dark side of the digital world. His insider stories describe recent cases from around the world.