This volume of post prints of a conference held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is a record of current perceptions and considerations of plastics within museum collections. Artist’s concepts of plastic as a medium and their views of ageing and decay challenge museum ethics. The dichotomy between an artist’s intent and engagement with their contemporary culture and longevity has resulted in many different resolutions. The balance between using and preserving ‘plastic’ artwork is a fine and delicate line of compromise, and the complex enigma of how to identify which of the many synthetic polymers, mass-produced ‘plastics’ within collections are formed from remains, as yet, unsolved. Now, through experience, observation and research, museums are developing collecting policies, recording techniques and preservation strategies which take pragmatic and utilitarian approaches, differentiating between stable and unstable plastics on the grounds of many aspects including age, color and design.

In five complementary contributions, recognized authors draw a fascinating and complex picture of contemporary jewelry in the twenty-first century. Through a rich palette of themes, works, reports and concepts from current art practices, they illuminate the conditions and interconnections of education, making, presentation, marketing and networking in design and art using the example of the New Zealand Handshake project. This book will enrich and bring pleasure to all who are interested in the visual arts in their broadest sense! Handshake is a unique mentoring programme in the art world, in which established artists spread their knowledge to less experienced protégés. The knowledge accumulated in this exchange, of a relationship based on feedback, is realized in exhibitions and joint projects. Exhibition at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt (NZ), 5th August to 3rd December 2017. www.http://handshakeproject.com/ https://handshake3.com/”

Fashion is fascination, cult, protection and adornment. We experience it daily on our own bodies and we notice it in our surroundings. The manifestations of fashion in magazines, advertisements and the Internet are never ending: sophisticated, erotic, provocative or overly aesthetic pictures create specific images, carrying the beholder off into their own world. To inspire such an eye-catching sensation requires a concept, an idea, which takes shape in an illustration. In the fast-moving age of digital photography, this art is disappearing from the everyday life of the fashion designer and media. In doing so it affords illustration great additional value: it bears witness to individuality, it conveys the zeitgeist and mood.

Text in English and German.

In the early nineteenth century, printed tablewares formed part of the new media of the age. Together with patterned textiles and wallpapers they assimilated, then disseminated the constructs of landscape imagery making the previously exclusive available to many. Printed tablewares played a significant role in the democratization of artistic imagery as well as the development of cultural and national identities. Eventually, as newer media forms began to supersede the vitrified print, meaning became diluted, so that the genre eventually reached obsolescence and kitsch.

Today there is a growing interest in this undervalued material from collectors, curators, museologists and contemporary artists who reference and celebrate the genre. The new artwork is international in nature, reflecting the significant cultural impact printed transferwares had as they were produced and exported around the world. Melding historical enquiry with contemporary practice, the book illustrates how artists re-appropriate this historical genre to observe, record, comment and re-animate.

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.

Gemstones have always been, since time immemorial, heavily charged with meaning and have even been regarded as magical objects. For that reason they have also been an art medium since the early modern age and have shaped as art symbols – in the form of the crystal – both Romanticism and Modernism, for example in the works of Caspar David Friedrich, Lyonel Feininger and many more. In the latter half of the twentieth century, not only have such artists as Bernd Munsteiner, Ute Eitzenhöfer and Bernhard Schobinger rediscovered the gemstone; through the Hochschule für Edelstein und Schmuck Trier/Idar-Oberstein and other similar specialist institutions it is also undergoing a revival in today’s art production – right up to Damien Hirst.

Text in English and German.

The Formula One book. Art of the Race – V18 is book 5 in a series that encapsulates the very essence of Formula 1 motor racing through the lens of Darren Heath, one of the sport’s most celebrated photographers. Art of The Race captures the key moments and rarely seen images of each race as the 2018 season unfolds, culminating in Lewis Hamilton winning his 5th World title. “Formula 1 is the aesthete’s ultimate sport: an intoxicating cocktail of speed, spectacle, competition and power, at the heart of which are the thoroughbred racing machines exquisite manifestations of form following function, driven at dizzying speeds by the quickest-of-the-quick, the best racing drivers on the planet. From a young age I dreamed of one day photographing the sport I adored. My one desire: to demonstrate through this creative art just how beautiful Formula 1 can be. This yearning has never dimmed. I hope you enjoy the pictures that follow as much as I enjoyed taking them.” Darren Heath – Multiple award-winning photographer with an Honorary Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society in 2005.

In the age of online shopping, how can physical stores attract shoppers, stimulate buying behaviour, and compete with their virtual rivals? Impressive visual merchandising design may tilt matters in their favour. Not only can it lure the customers across the threshold, but it also establishes and reinforces a unique brand image, anchoring the company in the customer’s mind. Revolving around fashion, lifestyle and food stores, Fantastic Designs in the Store presents over 50 of the hottest and most exciting shop layouts from all over the world. It demonstrates how a shop’s visual dimension influences customer psyche, drawing people in and inviting them to browse. Each project is presented with high-res images and sophisticated description, making this book both an aesthetic journey into the heart of commercial style, and a wonderful reference for designers. No matter whether you are a designer seeking inspiration or a shop manager looking for integrated visual design, this collection will serve you well.

Wood is a fundamental natural resource for building. Environmentally sustainable building is a worldwide trend.

Wood is widely available and widely used, particularly in creating buildings that connect to the environment and have low energy consumption.

This book brings together wooden houses of different styles from all over the world, featuring contrasting yet contemporary residential homes for a new age of environmentally responsible construction.

The collection of British silver at the Ashmolean Museum has all, with one notable exception (a tankard of 1574 given in 1790), been acquired since shortly after World War II. In relation to other major museum collections, therefore, it is young. Yet amounting to over 550 objects, many of which are of spectacular quality and rarity, it is one of the most important collections of its kind in the world, equaled only for the ‘golden age’ of English silver by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The collection has never been fully catalogued and this will be the first time a complete catalogue has been published.

Weimin He’s 324 ink drawings, pen sketches and woodblock prints comprise an intimate record of the progress of construction in the newly designed Ashmolean Museum that opened late last year. An unusual approach to documentation in the age of digital photography, the catalogue provides a delightful experience for readers who will never set foot in the Ashmolean.

Weimin has drawn workers lifting roof beams, welding metal rods and pouring cement into the mixer. He gives us behind-the-scenes portraits of museum personnel, making each individual come alive, for example, an objects conservator at her work and a researcher in the prints room at his. An artist-in-residence at the museum and an art scholar, Weimin employed Chinese drawing and woodblock printmaking methods. His portraits were drawn on pi, xuan papers or album leaves, with Chinese brushes and inks that have been used for over a millennium. Seven of the prints and the catalogue were presented to Queen Elizabeth for the museum’s opening.

The Ashmolean Museum holds a world-class collection of over 200 prints made by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669). Widely hailed as the greatest painter of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt was also one of the most innovative and experimental printmakers of the seventeenth century. Rembrandt was extraordinary in creating prints not merely as multiples to be distributed but also as artistic expressions by using the etching printmaking technique for the sketchy compositions so typical of him. Almost drawing-like in appearance, these images were created by combining spontaneous lines with his remarkable sense for detail.

Rembrandt was a keen observer and this clearly shows in his choice of subjects for his etchings: intense self-portraits with their penetrating gaze; atmospheric views of the Dutch countryside; lifelike beggars seen in the streets of his native Leiden; intimate family portraits as well as portrayals of his wealthy friends in Amsterdam; and biblical stories illustrated with numerous figures. This book presents Rembrandt as an unrivalled storyteller through a selection of over 70 prints from the Ashmolean collection through a variety of subjects ranging from 1630 until the late 1650s.

Automotive journalist Karl Ludvigsen, born in 1934 in the USA and one of the greats in automobile history, opens his archives in this book. In more than 50 years as a motor journalist, author, and an automobile historian, he has accumulated a comprehensive knowledge of his subject, and has met all the prominent figures of the automobile’s golden age.

In this book we meet Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart, Juan Manuel Fangio, Bruce McLaren, Emerson Fittipaldi, Dan Gurney and many more. A look in ‘Ludvigsens rear-view mirror’ takes us back to a time when cars definitely had combustion engines, when motor races were life and death struggles, and groundbreaking successes were made in the fields of safety, design and technology.

Ex Animo represents the most complete and exhaustive collection of artist Faith XLVII’s works, both from the streets and her studio. The book contains critical texts by Kristin Farr (Deputy Editor at Juxtapoz Magazine), Carlo Mc Cormick (famous critic and curator from New York) and Jaqueline Flint. Ex Animo is a monograph exploring the artist’s greatest projects from The Psychic Power of Animals, in which Faith represents in full scale the strength and power of alpha animals, to The Long Wait, a series of murals representing Johannesburg men waiting. “I want to hear the voice that is silenced; the quieter but profound comments on living”, says the artist in an interview. “Turning a blind eye to injustice is not an option in a country like South Africa, whose cruel history still permeates the present.”

“In the beginning, there was tagging and writing on the walls.” From Style Writing to Art is the first anthology of Street Art ever published worldwide. Magda Danysz, the internationally renowned Street Art gallerist, guides the reader on this immersive journey into the heart of the most interesting artistic movement at the turn of the century. This book grapples with Style Writing, Graffiti, and Street Art. It focuses on the fascinating emergence of the movement amongst the graffiti pioneers of the 1960s, their first appearance in galleries in the 1980s, right up to the cutting-edge works made by the Street Artists of today. Spanning over four decades, the book is divided into three sections with each containing detailed accounts of the surfacing of different styles and techniques. Each period is complete with extensive biographies and analysis covering 50 legendary artists including Seen, JR, Miss Van, JonOne, Shepard Fairey, Quik, Blade, Doze Green, and Keith Haring. “Let me repeat myself,” Danysz writes, “if only for the sceptic eye, for the blind and lost or for the latecomers who ve simply just missed the boat: I believe this type of urban art to be the most important artistic movement at the turn of the century.”

In Let the Kids Play, Drago’s 36 Chambers series exalts the beauty and exuberance of youth as embodied by the renowned street artist, Pax Poloscia. The book is a reaction to the cynicism and monotony of the adult world and a celebration of youthful creativity.

Drago’s impressive library already includes the works of many internationally celebrated and influential photographers such as Boogie, Estevan Oriol, Ed Templeton and JR. The Street is Watching encapsulates the talent of these artists together with over 100 contributing photographers in a single and revolutionary anthology. These featured photographers include Larry Clark, Glen E. Friedman, Martha Cooper, Jamel Shabazz, Bruce Davidson, Jim Goldberg, Mary Ellen Mark, Bruce Gilden, Ryan McGinley, Hugh Holland, Jill Freedman, C.R. Stecyk, Dash Snow, Bruce LaBruce, Ivory Serra, Olivia Bee and many more. The book also features insightful contributions from the curator, Paulo Luca von Vacano; Miss Rosen, a New York-based photo editor and photography book specialist and Ethel Seno, a project manager and curatorial coordinator at MOCA, Los Angeles.

The American passion for collecting Spanish art has resulted in superb collections in a wide number of museums from the east to the west coast. This beautifully photographed, oversized book discusses each collection in separate chapters, exploring the background to the collections and how they were acquired. The text addresses the economic as well as cultural frameworks for acquisitions, which expanded significantly in the second half of the 19th century with the increasing wealth of industrial America.

Works in these collections include outstanding paintings by the great Golden Age masters, including Zurbarán, Murillo, Velázquez, El Greco, and Goya, and 20th century masterpieces by Dali, Miró, Picasso, Gris, Zuloaga, and Sorolla. Curators from the collections and independent scholars contributed the text, expanding our understanding of the artists, their works, and the cultural richness they represent.

The story of Ladurée started in 1862 when Louis Ernest Ladurée opened a bakery in the heart of Paris at 16, rue Royale. In 1872, following a fire, the little bakery became a pastry shop and the decoration was then done by Jules Cheret, a famous painter and poster-designer of the time. Jeanne Souchard, Ernest Ladurée’s wife, then had the idea of combining the Parisian café with a pastry-shop. She therefore created one of Paris’ first tea-rooms. In 1993 Ladurée was bought by Francis and David Holder and became one of the best-known gourmet addresses in Paris, a veritable institution with its famous “macaron” as its emblem. In 1997 Ladurée opened a tea-room/restaurant on the prestigious Champs-Elysées, followed by another in the Printemps department store and on the Left Bank as well as the beginning of their international adventure with branches in London, Geneva, Monaco and Tokyo.

In this book Michel Lerouet, the Chef at Ladurée, reveals 100 of the most famous Ladurée recipes, adapted for the general public. From duck foie gras with rose macaroon to vegetable tagliatelles with Ladurée tea and cardamom, as well as the taramasalata éclair with rose petals, the Chef presents us with an entire artist’s pallet of appetizers, main courses, fish, meat, salads, omelettes… All with the Ladurée quality and creativity.

The arts of southeast Africa embrace astounding diversity and limitless inventiveness in materials, forms, and styles. Small and portable in nature – snuff containers, pipes, headrests, staffs, clubs, beer vessels, beaded garments – they were created by semi-nomadic pastoral peoples and primarly intended for daily use. Whether figurative or abstract, carved out of wood, ivory, or horn, or made of cloth, glass beads, or clay, most of these works were much more than exquisitely designed functional objects. Some signalled status, gender, or age; others served as symbolic intermediaries between the world of humans and the realm of the ancestors.