FMR’s presentation issue features a panoply of delightful imagery. Linger over Canadian painter Alex Colville’s unique and engaging oeuvre, a loving lifelong self-portrait of his marriage (Kubrick famously used Colville’s work in The Shining). Savor sensuous Tagasode screens, the secret boudoir furnishings of Japan. Marvel at giddy laughing Mexican statuettes, enigmatic testimonials to forgotten traditions. Ponder the Biblia Pauperum – or Pauper’s Bible – painted and sculpted in the mountain town of Varallo by Gaudenzio Ferrari, a follower of Leonardo: a jewel of Renaissance painting that gleams in a humble mountain church. Lastly, explore the nonchalant cavalcade of arches and spaces in Catalan architect Xaviér Corberó’s monumental constructions. Each issue of FMR guides you through a world of heart-stopping thrills and discoveries. Our front-of-the-book columns update you on Dante, books, and auctions; the issue opens with a posthumously published essay by our founder, Franco Maria Ricci, recalling the effort and amazement of a journey of discovery – his last – to Portugal.
Because it was founded on water and marshes, Mantua is a wonderful water lily of a city. After a historical introduction, the volume focuses on the history of art and architecture in Renaissance Mantua, when the Gonzagas’ passion and the presence of extraordinary architects and artists, such as Leon Battista Alberti, Andrea Mantegna and Giulio Romano, imposed a character of princely magnificence, theatrical and dreamlike, on the city. Browsing through the images takes the reader to the city’s most beautiful spots, amid the most surprising monuments and works of art. Crossing the almost labyrinthine paths of the Doge’s Palace, stopping to linger on the Camera degli Sposi, and from a loggia, discovering an unexpected lake landscape. The wonder continues with Palazzo Te, the marvellous suburban villa, frescoed by Giulio Romano. Mantua hides other treasures: the church of Sant’Andrea, the Bibiena Scientific Theatre, the ancient aristocratic palaces, the artists’ houses…
“This is the very best of Antwerp and the best from here in Oxford.” — The Oxford Times Weekend
“This entertaining exhibition of the 16th- and 17th-century drawings from the Low Countries has energy to spare.” — The Telegraph
This catalogue will accompany the Bruegel to Rubens exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford between 23 March and 23 June 2024.
Through a selection of over 100 world-class drawings created by Flemish artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an insightful and comprehensive overview will be given into how these drawn sheets were used as part of artistic practice, within or beyond the artist’s studio. By revealing the drawings’ function, rather than on their attribution or iconography, these sheets will become more fully understood through the eyes of contemporary readers. Identifying how and why these sheets were created will render these artworks more accessible to a wider audience. The three main essays will each deal with one of the principal functions of drawings at the time: studies (copies and sketches), designs for other artworks (paintings, prints, tapestries, metalwork, stained glass, sculpture and architecture), and finally the independent drawings. Each essay will discuss the relevant works within their functional context and compared with other related objects. Introductory chapters will focus on what precisely can be considered a drawing, including its materials, media and techniques, in addition to an attempt to explain the notion of Flanders and Flemish art. Emphasis will be placed throughout the catalogue on how Flemish artists collaborated in creating the most astonishing artworks of their time, unveiling their networks and friendships, as well as their travels across Europe, revealing their international importance.
The exhibition is a partnership with the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp and will bring together for the first time the most stunning drawings from both the Ashmolean and the Plantin-Moretus collections, in addition to further loans from renowned Antwerp and Oxford institutions like the Rubenshuis and Christ Church Picture Gallery. Many of the sheets coming from Antwerp are registered on the Flemish Government’s Masterpieces List and will not be shown again for the next five to ten years to protect them from fading. Prominent artists featured in this catalogue include Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacques Jordaens, among many others. Highlights will include a sketchbook in which a young Rubens has copied Holbein’s Dance of Death woodcuts, intricate pen and ink drawings by Pieter Bruegel, meticulously drawn miniatures by Joris Hoefnagel, portrait studies by Anthony van Dyck, and a rare survival of a friendship album containing numerous drawings and poems dedicated to its owner. Two recently discovered sheets by Rubens will also be included, a design for a book-illustration on optics and an anatomical study of three legs.
Numinous presents the monochromatic, radiant and accomplished paintings of British artist Marguerite Horner (b. 1954), inspired by a trip to Beachwood Canyon, California, and produced in 2023. The twenty-one watercolors and two oil paintings which make up the series of the same name depict flat expanses of sand, the sunlit sea, cacti, American highways and the silhouettes of distant people seen from above.
The publication features a foreword by writer Matt Price, describing the charged, luminous moments depicted in the Numinous series. In his essay, multi-disciplinary scholar Dr Matthew Holman discusses the setting of California and Horner’s painting style within the context of British and American painting and her previous bodies of work.
Through the series, Horner explores the ‘numinous’, a concept defined by Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto that indicates the presence of divinity. A keen observer, she is interested in the possibility of transcendence in everyday life and places.
In 2023 the Danner Foundation is honoring exceptional achievements in craft at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Landshut, Germany, with the Danner Prize, four additional honorary awards, and a remarkable exhibition featuring a total of 41 artists.
Gunther Pfeffer received the Danner Prize for his display cabinet Raster. The unit comprises fir slats arranged in a grid, which, depending on the angle of view, reveal what is inside and render the grid visible, or obscure the view and meld into a single surface.
The objects are presented in the publication in large-format photographs and informative descriptions of the concepts. Personal statements by the artists provide insights into their various working methods. To conclude, texts by renowned authors look into the significance and development of handicraft today from different perspectives.
Text in English and German.
A stairway to Heaven: this is the perfect description for this publication on one of the most significant places to stay in the world: Hotel Hassler Roma. Never before has a hotel so full of historical and cultural significance been able to create indelible memories for those who stay there (even if only for a few days!). Owned and managed by Roberto Jr. and Veruschka Wirth, the sixth generation of a famous Swiss dynasty of hoteliers, the hotel as it stands today is one of the finest 5-star hotels in Rome. As well as a panoramic Michelin-starred restaurant and luxurious beauty and wellness facilities, the imcomparable and breathtaking views are a feast for the eyes thanks to the hotel’s location at the top of the famous Spanish Steps; a monumental stairway of 135 steps built in 1723–1725, linking the Bourbon Spanish Embassy and the Trinità dei Monti church.
Images of royalty and VIPs (really everyone has stayed at the Hassler!) together with family snaps, and interviews with the protagonists of hospitality intertwine this unique publication, making this is an ideal gift for those with a passion for history and appreciation of refined hospitality.
Text in English and Italian.
“… In fact, my entire journey through Amsterdam’s vibrant house museums was one great historical sensation in a variety of contexts. I followed in the footsteps of Dutch East India Company directors, workers, orphans, writers, artists, architects, and many others, seeing how they lived and worked. How they ate in poverty-stricken 19th-century slums or at lavishly laid tables in canal-side mansions of Van Loon or Bartolotti. How they prayed in secret with Father Parmentier in a clandestine attic church. I am not longer just an Amsterdammer: now I’m an Amsterdammer with a past.” – Froukje Wattel.
Text in English and Dutch.
My first books collection box with four exciting and educational books for children, covering numbers, shapes, colors and opposites, all inspired by Edvard Munch.
Circle? Or Oval? And a diamond shape on the bedspread! My first book of shapes. Yellow hats, purple forest – and what is the color of the moon? My first book of colors. Day and night, light and …? My first book of opposites. I, 2, 7, 9! How many people do you see on the bridge? My first book of numbers.
Ages 3-5.
Also available: Boxed-set, ISBN 9788293560906; Colours, ISBN 9788293560944; Opposites, ISBN 9788293560982; Numbers, ISBN 9788293560869.
Chablis has a distinct identity amongst the wines of Burgundy. The gently sloping vineyards of this small, scenic region produce a remarkably diverse range of wines, even though all are made from just one variety – Chardonnay.
As in other parts of France, it was the Romans who introduced vines and the medieval Church which expanded the vineyard. By the twelfth century the wines of Chablis, were already being celebrated in poetry. However, over the centuries a considerable amount of everyday wine also found its way via the river Yonne to the cafés of Paris. In its heyday of production towards the end of the nineteenth century the region encompassed 40,000 hectares of vines. But that was before phylloxera and oidium ravaged the vineyards and the railways brought competition from further south to the capital’s wine drinkers.
From a low point of 500 hectares just after the Second World War, the vineyard has now expanded more than tenfold, and quality has increased too. Wines in the appellation’s four categories – grand cru, premier cru, Chablis and Petit Chablis – are created by vignerons keen to work with the terroir to produce the elegant, mineral, long-lived wines for which the region earned its reputation. To this end, ever greater care is being taken in the vineyards and the routine use of chemicals is becoming increasingly uncommon.
The region’s history, unique soil, geography and climate are all covered in detail, but it is Rosemary George’s lively and insightful profiles of those who make the region’s wines that form the body of The wines of Chablis and the Grand Auxerrois. Through the lives of these vignerons – from the lows of disastrous weather to their love of the land – she paints a unique picture of a much-admired region.
Australia’s wine history dates back almost 250 years, to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The first commercial wine region, the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, was created a mere 40 years later, and by as early as the 1850s small amounts of wine were being exported to the UK. In the modern era, Australian wine became known for fortified wine styles modeled on Port and Sherry. These were the main wine styles consumed for several decades, but by the mid-1990s nearly all grapes were going into table wine and Australia was the sixth largest global exporter of wine. Vibrant, varietally expressive and affordable wines introduced new generations of drinkers to the joys of wine. The popularity of Australian wine has ebbed and flowed over the years but experimentation, innovation and the illumination of newer regions has created a quiet revolution, challenging preconceptions of what is possible.
In The Wines of Australia, sommelier Mark Davidson tastes his way round this new Australian wine world. European immigration was an important factor in the development of wine but it also had a dramatic and negative impact on the indigenous peoples, an issue that Davidson addresses in a chapter on history and culture, explaining how the wine industry is taking steps to involve First Nations peoples in grape growing and winemaking. The growing environment, including the critical question of climate change, is tackled, and today’s most important grape varieties, along with those that can take Australian wine into the future, are profiled. This is followed by a chapter explaining why the country is home to some of the oldest vines in the world. Every region is clearly delineated, its key producers introduced and their wines assessed. The Wines of Australia captures the character of one of the most exciting wine-producing countries on the planet.
Gertrude Vernon, or Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, was an English woman who married a Scot. The American artist John Singer Sargent excelled as a painter in Europe. His portrait of Lady Agnew was painted in London but has found its definitive home in Edinburgh. All these contexts converge in a supremely beautiful painting which is one the icons of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.
Created in the 1890s, it proved to be a seminal work in the lives of the artist and his subject and has enjoyed a rich afterlife, inspiring artistic and written responses. This book offers a fascinating biography of this most accomplished, evocative and admired of portraits, placing it in the context of Sargent’s career and how he worked, discussing the life of the sitter and unveiling the picture’s rich critical history.
Santa Maria Assunta in Cremona, among the great Romanesque cathedrals of the Po Valley in northern Italy, is not only one of the most renowned for its artwork, but also one in which the slow stratification of time is most evident. The names of the greatest masters, in the first person or in the medieval sense of workshop, follow one another in quick succession: Wiligelmo, Antelami, the excellent Marco Romano, the Campionesi, enrich the façade with grandiose and superb sculptures, aristocratic and earthy. In the interior, the cycle of frescoes in the main nave with the Stories from the Life of the Virgin and Christ shows, as nowhere else, the symptoms of the pressing renewal taking place in early 16th century Italian painting, from the faultless classicism of Boccaccio Boccaccino to the eccentric Altobello Melone and Gianfrancesco Bembo, the Brescian Romanino and the Friulian Pordenone, who is given the grand finale with the resounding Crucifixion on the counter façade. Alongside these two poles, the façade and the nave, there are masterpieces from all centuries: paintings, sculptures, and goldsmithing, including frescoes and canvases by the Campi, the greatest exponents of the 16th-century Cremonese school of painting.
What do movable dolls’ eyes have to do with a Catholic church? Where could you meet Plain Bob Maximus and Surprise Major? Why does just one person know where Oliver Cromwell’s head is buried? And where is a dog a very large cat?
The answers to all these questions lie in Cambridge, which combines the magnificence of a medieval university with the dynamism of a high-technology hub. Tens of thousands of visitors flock to Cambridge every year to see the colleges, go punting on the river, and shop. But there is much more to Cambridge than its university and Silicon Fen. Over the centuries, town and gown together have transformed this city, which was an inland port until the 17th century. Eccentricity is something of a Cambridge tradition, and the town seems to delight in taking its visitors by surprise, whether that’s with a huge metal time-eating grasshopper, May Balls held in June, sculptures that dive into the ground feet first, or a museum that makes a feature of broken pottery. You will find these and many more curiosities in this book.
On 27 April 1867, a month before the opening of the sensational World’s Fair in Paris, Claude Monet officially requested permission to paint views of the city from the balcony of the Louvre. His painting sessions resulted in three paintings: a view of the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, a view of the tightly landscaped greenery of the Jardin l’Infante, and a depiction of the bustle on the Seine around the Quai du Louvre. This book masterfully brings those three works together, while reflecting on the development of the Impressionist cityscape during a turbulent period in the history of Paris. Artists such as Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and Caillebotte each approached the depiction of Paris in their own unique way, portraying all kinds of facets of this city in transition.
Image © Kunstmuseum Den Haag
The papers in this volume were presented at the 7th International Architectural Finishes Research Conference held virtually in Tel Aviv in 2021. They provide ample evidence of the importance of research into contemporary and historic finishes in expanding our comprehension of the built environment. The case studies cover a wide geographical area and examine various finishes including mural paintings in a Roman palace, a late 19th-century US penitentiary and a fire-damaged English church; tiles in 18th-century Portuguese interiors; the properties of latex paint; a linoleum-covered table; internal and external finishes of the houses of a Ukrainian settlement in Canada; building façades in Gdansk; and the preservation of graffiti.
Britain has been blessed with many fine poets; Simon Drew isn’t one of them. It is tempting to call this a book of doggerel, but maybe that’s aiming a little high. This book makes a Co-op receipt seem intellectual. However, there are many collectors of Drew’s work (some of them locked up) who will welcome a collection of all the best verses. This book will be left lying around the best homes with the aim of impressing odd people and passing hyenas. A selection of Simon’s work can be found at: simondrew.co.uk
The Golden Age of English Glass features 150 objects from the collection of John H. Bryan, ranging in date from c.1650-1809. These enable a full and detailed discussion of the history of English glassmaking during its critical period of innovation (c.1650-1675) and its world triumph (c.1700-1775), including discussions of crystal table glass, ‘black’ glass bottles, window glass, mirrors and lighting (glass candlesticks and chandeliers). In spite of the fact that these pieces are among the most important examples of English glass known (the collection includes, for instance, twenty-five drinking glasses made between about 1690 and 1720, when English table glass is widely regarded as being among the most refined and perfect expression of the glassmakers’ art anywhere in the world), few have ever been published. The scholarly text brings together the latest information in a dynamic area of research. Essays accompanying catalogue discussions of individual glasses place them in their wider historical and technical settings. The book is illustrated with some 215 colour photographs of the objects in the collection (including groups and details), some seventy-five comparative objects from other collections and fifty-five period prints, paintings, drawings and other documents that convey the historic context of their use and also document processes of manufacture and decoration. Also available:
British Glass 1800-1914 ISBN 9781851491414 20th Century British Glass ISBN 9781851495870
Simon Drew has produced this book in much the same way he played golf. In the dim distant past he would attempt to drive a ball straight down the fairway only to see it fly off at a tangent in a direction the ball had chosen all on its own. Now he finds his drawings behave in a similar manner; whatever the intention, you never know what the end result will be. This book will poke fun at almost anyone who loves golf and a few who don’t. Most of the verses and word plays are by Simon Drew though a couple of well-known quotations were too good to ignore. It includes the Ballad of the Lost Ball, which turns golf into pantomime: something that happens to most golfers sooner or later. Simon Drew’s Birthday Book ISBN: 9781905377619 £9.50 Gin’ll Fix It ISBN: 9781905377558 £7.50 Simon Drew’s Inappropriate Address Book ISBN: 9781905377039 £9.95 Spot the Book Title ISBN: 9781851493562 £7.50 …And So I face the Vinyl Curtain ISBN: 9781905377015 £7.50 A Collection of the Most Pointless Verses of Simon Drew ISBN: 9781905377077 £7.50 A is for Aardvark ISBN: 9781851496549 £7.50 Dogsbodies ISBN: 9781851492718 £7.50 Shepherd Spy ISBN: 9781905377169 £7.50 Simon Drew’s Book of Ludicrous Limericks ISBN: 9781905377367 £7.50 The Plot Thickens ISBN: 9781905377299 £7.50 The Quotations of Oscar Wilde ISBN: 9781851494774 £7.50 The Very Worst of Simon Drew ISBN: 9781851493319 £8.50
The finest books produced during the quarter century prior to the outbreak of the Great War were almost invariably printed by the private presses, but post-war, with the development of new technology, the accolade of excellence passed into the hands of a small number of commercial firms, with the Curwen Press very much to the fore. Like those earlier printers, Harold Curwen was inspired by the Morrisian ideal, but he did not adhere to the tenet that ‘hand made’ was necessarily better than ‘machine made’, which led him to become one of the pioneering figures in the technical revolution that transformed the printing industry. Harold Curwen joined the family firm in 1908 and by 1916 had instigated a general replanning of the works and, aided by the wartime staff shortage, felt able to push ahead with the installation of modern machinery. He was in the forefront of the development of offset lithography, which ensured that the Curwen Press would be in the vanguard of fine color printing throughout the next decade. Harold also pioneered, as far as England was concerned, the pochoir technique of hand-stencilling. 1922 was the beginning of the Curwen Press’s golden decade, during which it produced The Woodcutter’s Dog, the English language edition of Julius Meier-Graefe’s two volume biography of Van Gogh for the Medici Society, the exhibition catalogue of books and manuscripts for The First Edition Club, Goldoni’s Four Comedies and the delightful little pocket engagement book, The Four Seasons, illustrated by Albert Rutherston. Rutherston was later to illustrate Thomas Hardy’s Yuletide in a Younger World, the first of the Ariel Poems for Faber & Gwyer which were to become a feature of the collaboration between the two firms. In addition there was the ‘Safety First’ Calendar, adorned with Lovat Fraser’s cautionary illustrations. Following restructuring in 1933 the Curwen Press had a further forty years of distinguished work ahead both in the printing of books, particularly those illustrated by Barnett Freedman, as well as jobbing work, including some of the finest posters for the London Underground by Bawden, Wadsworth, John Banting, Betty Swanwick, Barnett Freedman and others. Also avaliable: Claud Lovat Fraser ISBN: 9781851496631 GPO ISBN: 9781851495962 Peter Blake ISBN: 9781851496181 FHK Henrion ISBN: 9781851496327 David Gentleman ISBN: 9781851495955 David Mellor ISBN: 9781851496037 E.McKnight Kauffer ISBN: 9781851495207 Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious ISBN: 9781851495009 El Lissitzky ISBN: 9781851496198 Festival of Britain 1951 ISBN: 9781851495337 Jan Le Witt and George Him ISBN: 9781851495665 Paul Nash and John Nash ISBN: 9781851495191 Rodchenko ISBN: 9781851495917 Abram Games ISBN: 9781851496778
Welcome back to the wonderful world of Simon Drew! A combination of artist and wordsmith, Simon combines these talents with an inventive and quirky sense of humor in his range of books, this being his twenty-seventh. Gifted with a keen sense of fun and a lively imagination, Simon Drew interprets conventional words and phrases, situations and circumstances in pictures and prose, turning his attention this time to the alphabet.