No country, apart from India, is as closely allied with the Buddha’s travels as Sri Lanka, which was visited thrice by the Buddha and received corporal relics and a branch of the bodhi tree after his death. Today the Buddha’s eye-tooth is venerated daily by thousands in Kandy and regarded as a priceless relic.
Buddhism is not the only religion to have influence the island, as another major pilgrimage spot is Kataragama, a site devoted to a Hindu God, while Christianity and Islam are also part of the mix. From Europe, the Portuguese, Dutch, and English added new spiritual layers in a colonial period that stretched nearly three centuries. As a result, understanding the country, through the lens of sacred sites provides a special glimpse into this unique civilisation.
Golden Glass: Verre Églomisé brings the reader into the glittering world of Miriam Ellner, the foremost practitioner of verre églomisé, the ancient process of gilding precious metals on the reverse side of glass, etching in a design, and setting it off with color. While it was first developed in 200 BC, Ellner is one its acknowledged modern masters. These seductive materials coalesce to enliven the surface of glass with luminous reflections creating moving glass paintings. She is one of few experts in this rare art form, making it fresh and relevant in the 21st century. Her work enhances private collections and design projects around the world.
Beginning her career as a dancer, Ellner brings energy, dynamism, and sense of motion to her art. This book offers stunning views into both Ellner’s process, her personal work, and the way she has worked on commissions with many leading interior designers and architects to create pieces that transform their rooms and bridge the worlds of art, craft, and design.
Golden Glass: Verre Églomisé contains reflections from her collaborators, coupled with hundreds of incredible photographs, as well as Ellner’s own insights into her decades-long practice, journeying into the ethereal world of illumination, reflection, and color.
Revealing the patterns and palettes of the Australian landscape, photographer Lisa Michele Burns captures the vast continent as you’ve never seen it before.
From the moment the sun rises on the east coast of Australia, a vivid color palette is revealed, hour by hour, across the country. Ocean blues merge with white sandy shores that connect with green forests, rocky grey ridges and red desert plains. Across the vast and varied landscapes of Australia, the sightlines and the spectacles feel endless and infinite. The horizon stretches and extends; colors collide and combine; patterns compress and expand; and light constantly changes how we perceive and experience a landscape.
In Sightlines: The Patterns + Palettes of the Australian Landscape, award-winning photographer Lisa Michele Burns expertly captures the beauty, artistry and splendor of the Australian landscape. From the rainbow of sandstone hues at Gantheaume Point and ancient monolith of Uluṟu to the dazzling colors and patterns at the Great Barrier Reef and misty rainforests of Tasmania’s Western Wilds, Burns is inspired by the magnificence and fragility of nature and takes the time to observe, research, and learn about each location, its history and formation.
This collection of images, photographed over two years, captures some of the indescribable magic of Australia, its vibrant and varied palette and patterns, and the sightlines that stretch across a seemingly never-ending landscape.
This unique guide explores the broad arc of terrain that flanks the city of Edinburgh – the three old counties of East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian, plus the district of Falkirk, ancient hub of Central Scotland. It’s a rolling landscape dotted with multifarious sites of every era, concealed amidst its characterful towns, picturesque waterways, urban sprawl and quiet green spaces. Brooding castles, palatial mansions, poignant monuments and sacred ancient landmarks stand cheek-by-jowl with stark relics of industrial heritage and world-beating wonders of modern engineering. You can trace the proud vestiges of Rome’s final frontier, marvel at the fruitiness of a giant Georgian folly, walk into the secret birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and roam the coast that inspired an early environmental pioneer.
Myth mingles with reality in the hidden histories of this realm. You’ll encounter royal A-listers Mary, Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie, plus a king from Arthurian legend, to say nothing of industrious goblins, enigmatic crusaders, tragic witches, elusive extra-terrestrials and a curious character covered in prickly plants.
Join Gillian Tait as she reveals 111 destinations with a difference around this diverse and fascinating region.
This monograph’s title, The Hand of Others/La Main des Autres, could not be more appropriate, as it aptly summarizes Emmanuel Babled’s work and essence. The French designer, who now operates his studio in Lisbon after stints in Paris, Milan, and Amsterdam, initially graduated as an industrial designer. However, early in his career, inspired by the great Ettore Sottsass, he realized that his true passion did not lie in the mass production of plastic objects, but rather in creating distinctive, precious functional pieces through close collaboration with master craftspeople. These artisans are situated in specific production centers where age-old traditions and highly skilled craftsmanship continue to produce magic today, albeit increasingly challenged by the signs of our times.
Babled’s objects encapsulate the collective knowledge of master craftspeople, his design talent, and his ability to collaborate with masters worldwide. His unparalleled talent for integrating out-of-the-box design thinking with cutting-edge technology culminates in limited editions that contain intangible world heritage. Precious traditions, local history, and groundbreaking innovation converge in Babled’s work, breathing new life into ancient crafts and precious materials such as marble.
Within this monograph, we gain a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Babled’s limited editions, delving into the spirit of the designer as he celebrates a successful career spanning over 30 years. Through him as an intermediary, we are initiated into the rare craft of highly skilled craftspeople in places inaccessible to the public, where secrets are passed down from generation to generation.
The book captures the essence of Babled’s career: he transcends the role of an individual designer and instead utilizes his brand to represent an entire industry and culture deeply rooted in tradition and local knowledge. He achieves this through an impressive multidisciplinary use of contemporary design and technological applications, propelling ancient tradition into the 21st century.
In this manner, Babled surpasses his own ego and individual signature, embodying the idea that a designer is not a solitary entity but rather a collective enterprise, beautifully illustrated in this unique monograph.
Text in English and French.
Wu Changshuo is one of China’s most celebrated calligraphers and painters. On the 180th anniversary of his birth, the Shanghai Wu Changshuo Art Museum has put together this anthology of selected writings alongside over 130 works from the museum’s collection to accompany a year-long series of exhibitions of this celebrated artist. With each piece written from a different perspective, this fascinating book is an appreciation of the resolute character and accomplishments of this great Chinese calligrapher, painter, seal engraver and poet.
Born in 1844 in the late Qing period, Wu Changshuo went from impoverished farm worker to celebrated artist. Leading the Xiling Seal Art Society, Wu would go on to become part of the avant-garde Shanghai School with its unique ‘East meets West’ culture. A great believer and practitioner in studying the ancient masters and their techniques in order to create a solid foundation and expert knowledge of the arts, Wu went on to create his own school of thought which combined this ancient wisdom with his own innovative interpretations.
Psilocybin. LSD. Ketamine. MDMA. These are the drugs that will change mental health treatment forever. We’re on the cusp of a psychedelic revolution. But how did we get here? And if the drugs are so great, why aren’t they legalized already?
This book examines the long, turbulent history of psychedelics, from their ancient and spiritual significance to their astonishing medical potential, from Ancient India to 1960s San Francisco to the labs of today and tomorrow. It explores how they might prompt spiritual revelation, reveals their long cultural legacy and traces the development of psychedelic medicine, ultimately asking the question: how can these mind-altering substances alter the world for good?
Kawanabe Kyōsai (pen name Kawanabe Tôiku) is a globally celebrated 19th century Japanese artist with an astonishing repertoire of styles and artistic themes. His woodcut print picture book on falconry, Ehon Taka Kagami (The Mirror of Hawking), first published in 1863, remains relatively unknown among his modern admirers. Nonetheless, An Illustrated Mirror of Hawking is an invaluable record of an ancient art. Kyōsai was commissioned by a retired daimyo (feudal lord) to create studies depicting traditional Japanese falconry, which may have inspired the illustrated plates of the An Illustrated Mirror of Hawking. He added explanatory script to caption most plates, as well as stories, poems, and songs chronicling falconry and celebrating nature. This edition provides the first proper translation of the Ehon Taka Kagami, revealing the meaning of the words accompanying each plate to non-Japanese readers. In addition to fully reprinting the original images and texts, this edition includes contextual essays and reference images that provide important background information about Kyōsai, the history of Japanese falconry, and the origins of this unique publication.
Robert Baines (b. 1949) is a master of his craft, a goldsmith whose work transcends time and tradition. Empowered by his extensive research into archaeometallurgy, his work connects the artistry and techniques of ancient Greek and Etruscan goldsmiths with modern-day innovation. His creations, infused with his wry humor and unparalleled technical brilliance, challenge our perceptions as much as they captivate the eye.
In Plenitude, Baines invites readers into his world, where ancient techniques are revived and re-imagined and where mythology is both respected and playfully deconstructed. This is not just a book; it is a glimpse into the mind of a goldsmith who sees history not as a relic but as a living, breathing source of endless inspiration.
It is a means for transportation, a useful companion, a status symbol, and an object of desire. It is available in countless styles and for the most diverse of occasion, be it for shopping or traveling, work or sport. No other object is kept so readily to hand while carrying everything we need on the go: Die Tasche (The Bag). This multifaceted publication delves into the European cultural history of the bag as an everyday object, fashion item, and luxury good used across the globe. And our choice of bag reveals a great deal, in that it reflects individual requirements, style, and personality. Social developments, technical advances, and changing fashion trends have shaped the design over centuries to the present day. Over two hundred exhibits from three millennia—from ancient Egyptian leather pouches to Middle Age belt bags, the first traveling cases from the 19th century to practical backpacks, elegant handbags, and models by renowned designer labels such as Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci—tell of one of humankind’s oldest accessories.
Text in German.
The Ashcan School and The Eight are now recognized as America’s first modern art movement: rejecting their academic training and the practices of the National Academy of Design, they forged a new art that represented America’s shifting values. By focusing on urban streets scenes, the lives of immigrants, popular entertainments, and the working poor, this loosely affiliated group of artists became synonymous with ordinary, everyday subjects — in the words of one critic, “pictures of ashcans.” Yet this is only part of their story: they also experimented with complex color theory and embraced scientific studies about movement and perception, while also creating scenes of bourgeois leisure and society portraits in attempts to reconcile their high-art practices with their populist reputations.
This catalog features nearly 130 works across media, including paintings, drawings, pastels, and prints — rarely seen objects and popular favorites. Collectively these works emphasize the Ashcan School’s and The Eight’s valuable contributions to the formation of American modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.
Nineteenth-Century European Painting: From Barbizon to Belle Époque represents a comprehensive guide to the range of stylistically diverse genres of nineteenth-century European painting. Accessible and insightful, this exquisitely illustrated volume presents the historical context behind the century’s essential artistic movements including Romantic Painting, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Realist Painting, Academic Painting, and Impressionist Painting. Influenced by an overwhelming wave of political, military and social change, nineteenth-century Europe represented an era more diverse in painterly subjects and styles than any before it. Indeed, it was a period that saw many European painters moving away from the strictures of the academy system, choosing instead to use their training to develop new techniques and traditions. A collection of independent stories, this book also outlines the unique progression between the different movements, exciting and enlightening the reader about the most magnificent period of art the world has ever known. Contents: Foreword; Dr. Vern G. Swanson; Introduction; Author’s Note; STYLES: The Barbizon School; Romantic Painting; Orientalist Painting; The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Realist Painting; Academic Painting; Impressionist Painting; The Newlyn School; Post-Impressionist Painting; SUBJECTS: Landscape Painting; Venetian View Painting; Maritime Painting; Sporting Painting; Animal Painting; Genre Painting; Cardinal Painting; Costume Painting; British Neoclassical Revival Painting; Belle Époque Painting; Conclusion; Endnotes; Bibliography. Featured works from museums and collections including: Louvre, Paris, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Wallace Collection, London, Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, The Tate Gallery, London, The Schaeffer Collection, New South Wales, The Royal Collection, The Royal Academy of Arts, England, The Musée D Orsay Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Collection), The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, England, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Stanhope Forbes, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA, USA, Paisnel Gallery, London, National Gallery, London, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy, Museo de Arte, Ponte, Puerto Rico, Musée Marmottan, Paris, Musée D Orsay, Paris, Auguste Renoir, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among many others.
“This book builds and expands the scholarship covering this central motif in African art and culture and serves as an authoritative contribution to the field.” – Nicole Beatty, ARLIS
“This volume is outsized and lavishly illustrated, befitting the art objects…represented.” – CHOICE
Horses are very rare in Africa. The few to be found west of Sudan, from the lands of the Sahara and Sahel down to the fringes of the tropical forests, belong to the king, the chief warrior and to notable persons. Due to the dense humidity of the tropical rainforest and the deadly tsetse fly, only restricted numbers of horses survive. And yet rider and mount sculptures are common among the Dogon, Djenne, Bamana, Senufo and the Yoruba people. The Akan-Asante people of Ghana and the Kotoko of Chad produced a good deal of small casting brass and bronze sculptures. Some of the artists could barely even have caught a glimpse of a horse. This visually stunning book presents a wealth of African art depicting the horse and its rider in a variety of guises, from Epa masks and Yoruba divination cups to Dogon sculptures and Senufo carvings. In Mali, the Bamana, Boso and Somono ethnic groups still celebrate the festivals of the puppet masquerade. The final chapter of this book is dedicated to the art and cult of these festivals, which are still alive and well. It is not the habit of the African artist to provide intellectual statements for his work, yet his unique creative dynamic and far-searching vision does not conflict with that of his Western counterpart. It is fair to state that the African, who though not educated in Western art history, contributed his fair share to the shaping of modern art. Features works from museums in both Africa and Europe, including the Musée Royal de L’Afrique Central, Tervuren in Belgium; Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, Netherlands; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Museum Rietberg, Zurich; The British Museum, London; Museu National de Antologia, Lisbon and National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria.
This catalog for a show at the Tornabuoni Gallery in Paris pays homage to two outstanding Italian women artists of the second half of the 20th century, Carla Accardi Dadamaino (Eduarda Emilia Maino). Both embraced avant-garde art and theory while remaining free of dogmatism, and explored the characteristics and possibilities of painting and signs while forging their own distinct paths. They shared a strong belief in social and political involvement, and left an enduring mark on the history of art. In this book, their creative journey is beautifully illustrated with a vast selection of works and through contextual critical analyses.
Text in English and French.
The ARCASIA Awards for Architecture is an annual award established by the Architects Regional Council Asia to recognize the outstanding architectural works of Asian architects. It hopes to encourage the inheritance of the Asian spirit and promote the improvement of the Asian architectural environment as well as the role of architects and architecture in the social, economic and cultural development of Asian countries. This special issue of Architecture Asia gives a comprehensive review of the 26 winning projects of ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2021, which includes Single Family Residential Projects, Multi-family Residential Complexes, Commercial Buildings, Resort Buildings, Institutional Buildings, Social and Cultural Buildings, Specialized Buildings, Industrial Buildings, Conservation Projects, Integrated Projects, Socially Responsible Architecture, and Sustainable Buildings.
Through brief jury comments, project descriptions and rich images, this book provides a wonderful opportunity for readers all over the world to give a quick glance at what happened in Asian architecture in 2021.
From the Coolest Corner – Nordic Jewellery presents groundbreaking and fresh jewelry from Northern Europe, a comprehensive selection of current works by artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the Baltic States. The best and most innovative Scandinavian art jewelry is presented, assessing its possibilities and potential at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The project presented in this publication, culminating in a symposium and a traveling exhibition, challenges stereotypical notions of northern European art jewelry. Do the typical Nordic trends of the nineteen-nineties still apply today? Indeed are there currently any general trends at all in Scandinavian design? Or has the orientation towards international design become so dominant that there are no longer any regional characteristics? Renowned experts have made a selection of representative works, as a basis for researching the role of northern European jewelry in the context of international art.
Text in English, Norwegian & Swedish.
The Baga, along with the Nalu and the Landuma, are a small rice-growing community living along the coast of Guinea, in West Africa. They became famous following the discovery of their extraordinary sculptures by explorers, colonial administrators, ethnologists, collectors, and art dealers towards the end of the nineteenth century. Nowadays, the art of the Baga is admired in the public and private collections of northern European countries. Their works consist mainly of different types of wooden masks and statues of various sizes, as well as wonderful percussion instruments, chiefs’ seats, and other skilfully carved utilitarian objects. All these sacred objects were once created and used as important features in their ritual behaviour based on the manifestation of their divinities, ancestor worship, rites of passage, secret brotherhoods, and the performance of important social ceremonies like weddings, funerals, and harvesting. But more recently they have also included entirely new sculpted works created by talented, highly skilled craftsmen who were influenced by colonization and newly introduced religions, while at the same time finding inspiration in traditional myths and legends. Fascinating examples of this eclecticism are the figures of colonists depicted standing, on horseback, or riding birds, the many different kinds of female busts representing Mami Wata, the sea goddess, winged figures, bestiaries associated with tales and legends, and the personifications of the heroic founders of their villages. To this day, the young men of the Baga continue to make certain commemorative and emblematic objects, such as the large D’mba mask, and still produce sculptures connected with their history and culture. All these artefacts have their place in the dances and events that play such an important part in village life and in relations between villages and beyond.
William Bell Scott’s screen, The King’s Quair, was commissioned by James Leathart, an important collector of Pre-Raphaelite art. The beautifully decorated folding screen took as its inspiration The Kingis Quair, a 15th-century Scots poem attributed to James I of Scotland. Depicting key scenes from the king’s 18-year imprisonment in Windsor Castle, it is adorned by exquisite botanical details and gold leaf.
Split into three parts, this book reveals the history of the screen’s commission, details the remarkable imagery of the screen itself, and finally situates the screen in its historical context by explaining the fascinating personal relationships that were the backdrop to its creation, including Scott’s relationship with the artist and heiress Alice Boyd.
Drawing together the chivalric medieval tale of an imprisoned, love-struck king with the vibrancy of the Pre-Raphaelite social circles in which Scott moved, the reader is given a vivid picture of how this captivating artwork was created. Illustrated with new photography of the screen, this book is a vital new part of the story of British, as well as Scottish art.
Kifwebe masks are ceremonial objects used by the Songye and Luba societies (Democratic Republic of Congo), where they are worn with costumes consisting of a long robe and a long beard made of plant fibres. As in other central African cultures, the same mask can be used in either magical and religious or festive ceremonies. In order to understand Kifwebe masks, it is essential to consider them within the cosmogony of the python rainbow, metalworking in the forge, and other plant and animal signs. Among the Songye, benevolent female masks reveal what is hidden and balance white and red energy associated with two subsequent initiations, the bukishi. Aggressive male masks were originally involved in social control and had a kind of policing role, carried out in accordance with the instructions of village elders. These two male and female forces acted in a balanced way to reinforce harmony within the village. Among the Luba, the masked figures are also benevolent and appear at the new moon, their role being to enhance fertility. Although the male and female masks fulfil functions that do not wholly overlap, they do have features in common: a frontal crest, round and excessively protruding eyes, flaring nostrils, a cube-shaped mouth and lips, stripes, and colours. Art historians and anthropologists have taken increasing interest in Kifwebe masks in recent years.
The monumental 17th century Solebay Tapestry series captures the first major naval battle of the third Anglo-Dutch war (1672-1674), which took place off the coast of England. Of the 12 tapestries created after drawings by the artist Willem van de Velde the Elder (who witnessed the battle firsthand), two are in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. The first tapestry shows the burning of the flagship of the English fleet, the Royal James. The other depicts the two war fleets as they line up in a long line, ready to continue the battle the next morning. This is the first book in a series that highlights the objects in the National Maritime Museum of the Netherlands.
When Joan Miró moved to Majorca in 1956 he already enjoyed an international reputation and still had twenty-five years to live, dying on the Balearic island in 1981. Confident in his capabilities and status and spurred on by a kind of creative freedom, he spent these years in his studio experimenting to the greatest degree. He developed, or rather perfected, his own inimitable style: elementary forms became a personal iconography as he placed increasing faith in the expressive power of the brushstroke and the impact of the paint itself. His work displays the most varied influences and all are strongly present: the cave paintings at Altamira, Romanesque art, Catalan landscapes, and the inventiveness of Gaudí. But he also found inspiration in the East, in the rhythms of poetry, and in action painting. They all nurtured his theme of transformations, of metamorphoses. The book, which includes over 150 illustrations of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, many of which extremely large and previously unpublished, will be released to coincide with the Joan Miró exhibition to be held in Quebec (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 30 May – 8 September 2019), an event that sees the artist’s work return to Canada after a hiatus of thirty years.
Text in French.
Architecture Asia, as the official journal of the Architects Regional Council Asia, aims to provide a forum, not only for presenting Asian phenomena and their characteristics to the world, but also for understanding diversity and multiculturalism within Asia from a global perspective.
This issue reveals how old buildings can be updated to realize innovation through renovation, and features three essays and eleven projects that elaborate this perspective. The three essays discuss regenerative architecture in Pakistan that create contemporary examples of traditional architecture, the revitalization of old buildings in Hong Kong, China for heritage conservation—along the concept of updating the “hardware” and “software” of the building—and the sharing and regeneration of historical heritage spaces in old towns in Xiamen, China. The 11 projects, accompanied with full-color photos and text descriptions, highlight architectural works that showcase the theme of renovation and innovation across projects that include a house, library, chapel, and clinic, to reveal how these buildings embody sustainability and innovation, and re-energize cities.
Virunga National Park, the green lung in the eastern DR Congo, is Africa’s oldest nature reserve. The park is breathtakingly beautiful and offers an unparalleled diversity of ecosystems—from active volcanoes to tropical rain forests, from the glaciers of the Rwenzori peaks to the savannas of Rwindi. It is home to an exceptional array of wildlife, including the world’s last mountain gorillas. Thanks to these unique features, Virunga is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. This publication, written by around 40 experts, explores the complex history of this Congolese gem. It sheds light on those who have dedicated themselves to its preservation since 1925, as well as the current teams fighting to address the countless environmental and social challenges in a region plagued by conflict, poverty, and humanitarian crises. Through their efforts, the park has become a catalyst for development and stabilisation of the entire region. The book invites us on a fascinating journey where resilience and innovation serve the park and surrounding communities, continuing to shape the legend of Virunga.