Established in 1992, Mark English Architects is an award-winning firm that designs sustainable, sensible architecture that’s built to last. With an inherent understanding of context and climate, its residential designs reflect California’s relaxed indoor-outdoor lifestyle. This beautifully appointed monograph provides an inspiring glimpse of seven uniquely crafted homes, along with a close examination of the design approach.

Mark English Architects believes every home is a prototype, developed in collaboration with the client, landscape, topography, climate, and cultural considerations. Landscape and climate play a vital role in every project, as buildings and spaces are designed to celebrate their location, whether it’s the city, coast, or mountains. The firm draws on the California vernacular of open-plan living, light-filled spaces, and natural materials to blur the boundaries of inside and outside. Every home is embedded with a layer of artistry, providing unique homes that reflect their residents. 

During the cherry blossom season of April 1924, 100 years ago, on his only trip to the Land of the Rising Sun, Alfred Baur, an extraordinary entrepreneur and founder of the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva, was charmed to discover the sparkling poetry of the “images of the floating world” (ukiyo-e), combined with the landscapes of the great masters of the print and the delightful motifs found throughout the objects in his superb collection of Japanese art.

Echoing his taste and pioneering spirit, and as part of the celebrations marking the 160th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Switzerland and Japan, this book, thanks to contributions from leading specialists in the fields of handicrafts and textiles, takes an in-depth historical, technical and comparative look at the desire for lightness that underpins the aims, aesthetics and meaning of the work of Michiko Uehara, a virtuoso weaver.

In her studio bathed in the subtropical sunshine of Okinawa, in the archipelago in the far south of Japan where she was born and which is renowned for its textiles, she succeeds in pushing the material to the very edge of nothingness, weaving and dyeing sublime fabrics in three-denier threads*, as fine and transparent as “a dragonfly’s wing” (akezuba in the local language).

This bonding relationship – combining the physical and the spiritual – which links Uehara to silk fibers and more generally to nature itself, gives rise to “woven air”, as she puts it: an aerial, rhythmic journey, free of borders and attuned to living things.

As this book suggests, this quest is not unrelated to some of the research carried out by Swiss explorer Bertrand Piccard, whose solar aircraft, a giant, silent dragonfly whose carbon-fiber ribs combine extreme strength and lightness, intelligently weaves a harmonious path between humanity, earth and sky…

* The Denier (Den) is a measure of continuous thread, i.e. its weight in grams per 9000 metres of thread; i.e. 1 Den = 1 gr./9000m of thread

Text in English and French.

Restrooms are inescapably important amenities, but something of a grey zone when it comes to design. In a massive effort to make them inconspicuous, public restrooms have been standardized, buried in underground bunkers, hidden behind walls and unmarked doors. At times, it seems our embarrassment with their very existence has led to an inability to provide sound sanitation. This book presents a selection of over forty very diverse public restroom designs, in which toilets enjoy special status as a vehicle for various artistic and cultural expressions, corporate values and the needs of different social groups.

Four experts from different backgrounds and countries have been invited to write on sensitive issues in public restroom design. More than 500 full-color photographs, plans and detailed descriptions illustrate the designs in detail and provide fascinating information to architects, interior designers, students, and so on.

The world changed after the First World War. Its aftermath saw the collapse of the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires, and the world map never seemed the same again. Though the Great War is widely considered to be a European war, it had enormous effects halfway across the world in India. At the advent of the war, the number of Indian soldiers fighting exceeded the number of British soldiers. Because of funds reallocated to Britain’s advantage, India’s economy took a toll as well.

The Indian National Congress believed that supporting Britain’s war efforts would benefit India’s move towards independence. As a result, over a million Indian men were deployed to fight for the British. Post the war, Britain’s refusal to grant India home rule created hostility among the Indians towards them. This dissent eventually paved way for the Indian independence movement, which was to emerge later.

For the first time India’s contribution to the First World War is carefully documented with details of the different theaters in which Indian soldiers took part. In addition, the authors also examine the unsettling encounters the Indian soldiers had with Europe and European culture. What did the war mean for the political climate in India? What was it like for the Indian soldiers to fight a war they were unprepared for? Using first hand accounts such as letters home, documents from the various army archives and incredible photographs, the authors reconstruct the story of a war which was as much India’s as it was Britain’s.

Heyuan Garden, the largest existing private classical garden in Yangzhou, China, is the subject of this book, which offers a complete description and representation of the garden’s overall characteristics and its contributing components. It contains a wealth of maps, aerial photographs, and diagrams which are published here for the first time. Notably, this book uses high-precision point cloud images as its main graphic method in order to convey more garden detail than traditional, two-dimensional line graphics. Led by the ICOMOS-IFLA International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes (ISCCL), the Garden Heritage Digital Document (GHDD) project was set up in 2018 to highlight representative cases of Chinese classical gardens, adopt international cultural heritage archive frameworks and standards, and use new digital technologies to establish high-quality heritage archives to make up for the shortcomings of existing classical garden records. This is the first publication of the GHDD project. 

Text in English and Chinese.

Tribal Rugs: Treasures of the Black Tent is the definitive work on this subject. Dedicated to one of the most ancient crafts of the world, this book leads its reader through the history of the tribal rug. Featured content ranges from the oldest complete rug in the world (dated to the fifth century BC) to the weavings of the nomadic peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia, compiled from the 19th Century up to the present day. Each chapter introduces a different group of tribes, illustrating the rugs, carpets, kilims and utilitarian bags attributed to their weavers. This book is both a celebration of the woven legacy left by the tribes and a tribute to the skill and artistry of the women who created these magnificent artworks. It aims to provide an introduction for the novice, and entice the more knowledgeable to further study. This new 2017 edition features a marvellous array of new photography showcasing the finest work of each tribe, which will excite anyone with an eye for the tribal aesthetic.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the history of French glass making. Glass makers can be compared to alchemists in the way that they transform sand and ashes into precious objects of great beauty. This book explores the value given to glassware throughout French history, focusing on the Ancient Régime from the 15th to 18th Centuries, when royally appointed glassmakers were considered more important than their artistic counterparts within the court; painters, musicians and actors. In the middle of the 19th Century, glassware was subjected to mass industrial production and as a result the benchmark of quality that had previously been set was no longer adhered to. However, it was out of frustration with this situation that Emile Gallé, a glassmaker who employed many experimental techniques, started his own workshop to produce incredibly high quality original glassware, a move that revolutionised glass making and placed it once again at the forefront of contemporary artistry. Le Verre argues that glass never left this pedestal, and that today, more than ever, ‘the world is living in the age of glass.’ Text in French.

Of all the world’s great cities, Paris is perhaps the one that marks its visitors and inhabitants the most, both in their discovery of the city, and their memories. With its many monuments, it is also a fabulous theatre where adventure, chance meetings, and the unexpected have fascinated the painters, poets and photographers that we meet in the pages of this book. While its history is ancient, and very long, its present is lively and attractive. This is a history of Paris that invites readers to wander in the city, to discover it. It presents the major events of the city, together with the most charming examples of daily life in its streets, which is always vibrant. It shows its crowds, who are delighted to find all the odours of the world, all the colours of life, and the marvels of everyday that are seen in this city. We also meet those writers who have praised Paris, such as Victor Hugo, Jacques Prevert, Gerard de Nerval and Léon Paul Fargue, and all those who have immortalised the city in their paintings, from the anonymous painters of the Renaissance up to the Impressionists. This is an intelligent history of Paris, but also friendly, entertaining, accessible, to whet your appetite for the city, and to arouse your curiosity. Also Available:
Lebanon: The Phoenician Pearl ISBN:9782867701443 $66.00
Le Sud Marocain ISBN:9782867700569 $66.00

It had been a desert, its dunes languorously meeting the lapping sea which has played its part in world trade since the beginning of time. There had been the gold and spices from nearby India, and the petroleum of today, extracted from its sands or brought from elsewhere, from off the shores of its coasts. It is difficult to imagine that these seven Emirates have a history, as understood in Western canons. Here, the past seems to have been dug away with excavators, drowned in concrete, built over with metropolitan motorways. This does not prevent it from seeming to surge forth at the slightest provocation, at the smallest of solicitations. Proud of what the world acknowledges as his country’s achievements, the most insolent of Emiratis grows less arrogant when recalling his father’s fathers. Fathers who, hardly more than four decades ago, were Bedouins, traders, camel drivers, almost all pearl fishers. It is in this way that this modern history was written. Twenty centuries of hard seasonal migration of their livestock, intensive trade, fierce competition, destructive setbacks and creative imagination forged mentalities that have made this desert into one of the richest and most envied places in the world. What seems a modern miracle is no more than the culmination of an ancient culture having survived mishap and change to forge a modern economy.

Terrifying beasts, imaginary landscapes, portraits and ornaments – All Manner of Murals celebrates the many ways we have decorated our day-to-day lives with wall paintings. Murals by their very nature must remain in the buildings for which they were designed, inextricably at one with their surroundings, and so offer glimpses of vanished ways of living. Whether painted in a humble cottage or a grand palace, they illustrate the march not only of history, but of our view of ourselves. At once strange and strangely familiar, the ancient wall painting emerging from under layers of whitewash has much to tell us about how our predecessors saw the world around them. The tradition of wall painting, arguably the oldest of art forms, continues to this day, and our descendants may find our own values and views reflected in the murals, private and public, that we leave behind. The twenty papers collected in this book explore over 500 years of secular wall paintings, right up to contemporary work, looking at why and how they were painted, and the best ways of caring for them to ensure that future generations can also find in “all manner of murals” a source of wonder and of kinship to their past. One hundred color illustrations demonstrate the very best examples. The editors Robert Gowing and Dr Robyn Pender are both Senior Architectural Conservators in the Conservation Department of English Heritage.

This bulletin, part of an annual series which Archetype Publications publishes in association with the British Museum, offers a forum to show a dynamic behind-the-scenes glimpse of the current work of curators, conservators and scientists conducted on a range of artifacts and materials across the collections at the British Museum. Contents: Foreword – David Saunders; The study and conservation of four ancient Egyptian funerary portraits: provenance, conservation history and structural treatment – Nicola Newman, Lynne Harrison, David Thomas, Joanne Dyer and John Taylor; Maker, material and method: reinstating an indigenously made chair from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa – Catherine Elliott, Caroline Cartwright and Philip Kevin; A Bulgarian kukeri mask: a diplomatic gift and the conservation of its polyurethane foam decorations – Clare Ward, Nicole Rode, Marei Hacke and Judy Rudoe; A traditional Chinese method for weakening silk for use in the conservation of silk paintings – Vincent Daniels, Marei Hacke, Jin Xian Qiu and Valentina Marabini; Analytical study of the first royal Egyptian heart-scarab, attributed to a Seventeenth Dynasty king, Sobekemsaf– Gianluca Miniaci, Susan La Niece, Maria Filomena Guerra and Marei Hacke; Scientific analysis of a Buddha attributed to the Yongle period of the Ming dynasty – Quanyu Wang and Sascha Priewe; Examination and experimentation: conservation of an archaeological glass unguentarium for display – Julia Barton, Andrew Meek and Paul Roberts; Simple sophistication: Mauryan silver production in North West India – Paul Craddock, Caroline Cartwright, Kirsten Eckstein, Ian Freestone, Lalit Gurjar, Duncan Hook, Andrew Middleton and Lynn Willies; An unusual decorated skin coat from Canada: aspects of conservation and identification – Pippa Cruickshank, Caroline R. Cartwright, Jonathan C.H. King and Antony Simpson.

The papers in this book consider the existence and preservation of modern materials in the textile field. This is the first publication to present modern textiles as a subject in its own right and the content is intentionally multidisciplinary to demonstrate the wide spectrum of subjects involved in their preservation. Contributors include artists, curators, anthropologists, conservation scientists and conservators, while topics cover the creation, collecting, interpretation, deterioration, analysis and conservation of synthetic materials associated with textiles. This is the second in a series of three volumes of papers from the conferences of the Research Centre for Textile Conservation and Textile Studies, Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton, U.K. The first book, Scientific Analysis of Ancient and Historic Textiles, (1873132794, $75.00) was published in 2005.

Proceedings of a conference hosted by the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the British Museum on the application of scanning electron microscopy and microanalysis (SEM-EDX) to the study of materials, manufacturing methods and deterioration processes of objects from ancient through to contemporary cultures.

At a time when more and more plants and animals are threatened with extinction by humanity’s ever-increasing pressure on the land and oceans of the planet, this book sets out to record sources of colorants discovered and used on all the continents from antiquity until the present day. Some 300 plants and 30 animals (marine molluscs and scale insects) are illustrated and discussed by the author, whose passion for natural dyes, with their colors of unequalled richness and subtlety, has taken her across the globe in search of dye sources and dyers. Botanical and zoological details are given for each source and chemical structures for each dye. Dyes employed by different civilizations are illustrated and relevant historical recipes and detailed descriptions of dyeing-processes by traditional dyers are quoted and explained in the light of modern science. Other current uses of such colorants, such as in medicine, and as colorants for food and cosmetics, are also noted. Although natural dyes have been largely replaced by synthetic dyes, increasing worldwide awareness of the harmful consequences of the pollution resulting from the production and use of some synthetic colorants has led to a significant revival and renewed interest in natural colorants. As potential renewable resources, natural dyes are an integral part of the major issue of our time: sustainable development. The aim of this book is to provide a scientific background for this important debate.

Tibetan Buddhist art is not only rich in figural icons but also extremely diverse in its symbols and ritual objects. This first systematic review is an abundantly illustrated reference book on Tibetan ritual art that aids our understanding of its different types and forms, its sacred meanings and ceremonial functions. Eighteen chapters, several hundred different implements are documented in detail, in many cases for the first time and often in their various styles and iconographic forms: altar utensils and amulets, masks and mirrors, magic daggers and mandalas, torma sculptures and prayer objects, vajras and votive tablets, sacrificial vessels and oracle crowns, stupas and spirit traps, ritual vases, textiles, furniture, and symbolic emblems. These are accompanied by many historical and modern text sources, as well as rare recorded oral material from high-ranking Tibetan masters. This long-awaited handbook is a must-have for all those with an interest in Buddhist art and religion.

Ever since at least the ninth century, the Chinese province of Zhejiang has been known for its fine celadon porcelain with wonderful shimmering surfaces in qing, the magnificent shades of green. Chinese celadon enjoyed its golden age from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, a time when it found its way into the Imperial collections and was exported worldwide. A decline of craftsmanship followed, and by the end of the nineteenth century celadon had almost completely disappeared. It was not until the 1950s that this style of pottery was successfully brought back to life. In the 1990s changes to the market economy forced porcelain artisans to reorient; to this day they have been able to successfully align themselves, similar to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage system, as ‘Living State Treasures’ with their unparalleled celadon glazes. Seladon im Augenmerk offers an exciting social anthropological insight into the cultural history, technology and sociality of celadon production in the porcelain metropolis of Longquan, PR, China, up to the present day.

Text in German.

The unique cultural landscape of southern Africa (Nambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa) is a highly dynamic and complex area where old traditions are confronted by explosive social and political upheavals. The resulting contradictions and conflicts stimulate a directions as well as ancient roots. The collection of highly varied essays by knowledgeable experts on Africa ranges from historical and political problems to questions of artistic production and of how to deal with culture and nature in the face of industrialisation and globalisation. Art is one of the major subjects, and the contemporary artistic activities, including photography. The publication presents a picture of a vigorously alive southern Africa, contradicting common western Cliches which regard the region as having no art and solely being riddled with problems of post-apartheid, crime and AIDS.

Embossing, punching and guilloché engraving are techniques that have almost faded into oblivion. Today they are experiencing a new lease of life in contemporary jewelry. The Manufactory-Style Jewelry Design project fosters the passing down of experiential knowledge through the collaboration of artisans and designers from three generations. The book presents an excerpt of this success story by means of archive material and interviews with former masters, explains how the machines work, and illustrates contemporary examples.

Text in English and German.

Religion has always been a fundamental force for constructing identity, from antiquity to the contemporary world. The transformation of ancient cults into faith systems, which we recognize now as major world religions, took place in the first millennium AD, in the period we call ‘Late Antiquity’. Our argument is that the creative impetus for both the emergence, and much of the visual distinctiveness of the world religions came in contexts of cultural encounter. Bridging the traditional divide between classical, Asian, Islamic and Western history, this exhibition and its accompanying catalog highlights religious and artistic creativity at points of contact and cultural borders between late antique civilizations.

This catalog features the creation of specific visual languages that belong to five major world religions: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. The imagery still used by these belief systems today is evidence for the development of distinct religious identities in Late Antiquity. Emblematic visual forms like the figure of Buddha and Christ, or Islamic aniconism, only evolved in dialogue with a variety of coexisting visualizations of the sacred. As late antique believers appropriated some competing models and rejected others, they created compelling and long-lived representations of faith, but also revealed their indebtedness to a multitude of contemporaneous religious ideas and images.

The Jewish Journey tells the history of the Jewish people from antiquity to modern times through 22 objects from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, brought together here for the first time. Many of the objects are little-known treasures and all 22 have remarkable stories. Spanning 4000 years of history and covering 14 different countries, the objects trace the evolution of Jewish life and culture from its earliest beginnings in Ancient Mesopotamia through time and space to the modern day.

This book analyzes, from six standpoints, the different ways in which artists have represented the male nude body from modernity to the present day.

A hundred and seventy-two works of art created in various techniques and belonging to collections from all over the world engage in a dialogue that originates in modern eighteenth-century Europe, when the canon of classical antiquity was revived and identity between moral virtue and strength was assessed to define the heroic man.

The breaking of the conventions of academic representation, coupled with the decline of other values in visual arts, opened the possibility to discover other facets of the male nude. From manly strength to the most human pain, this book aims to show the reader both the ancient expression and its contemporary manifestations.