Shadows of Boulder Hill presents a group of 50 powerful paintings in oil on linen by artist Tang Shuo (b. 1987 in Guangxi, China) that delve into his childhood experiences in rural southern China. This, Tang’s first book, documents the concurrent exhibitions of these works at Fabienne Levy’s galleries in Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2023.
Shadows of Boulder Hill marks a significant point in Tang’s career; in 2023 he incorporated narrative threads into his paintings for the first time, depicting young lovers, recluses, and wanderers lost in imagined and remembered landscapes of lush vegetation and wildflowers. A selection of the fascinating true stories from Boulder Hill that inform Tang’s practice, personal and collective, are detailed in the gallery notes.
Shadows of Boulder Hill includes a foreword by gallerist Fabienne Levy and an essay by multidisciplinary scholar Dr Matthew Holman. Here, Tang appears as an artist who has found his voice as he eloquently explores scenes of family, friendship, suffering, solitude, and survival.

This volume highlights the treasures of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, and houses a world-class collection of art objects. It is categorized primarily into three sections: Art, Archaeology and Natural History. The Museum has some fine and rare collections featuring ancient Indus Valley artifacts that date back to 3000 BC as well as relics from the Maurya and Gupta period (320 BC AD 800). The Indian Miniature Painting Gallery houses art treasures from almost every significant school of miniature painting.
This volume highlights the treasures of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India.

Sir Robert Walpole’s collection of Old Masters, and the building and furnishing of Houghton, the great Palladian house he built in Norfolk, have been the focus of extensive study in recent years, but his silver has not received the same attention. However, the discovery of inventories in the National Archives has allowed a picture to be built up of the sheer scale of Walpole’s silver holdings, which were, like everything else about the man, larger than life. What silver that survives includes some of the most celebrated pieces of Georgian silver, such as the square seal salver made by Paul de Lamerie and engraved by William Hogarth. Walpole probably had more silver than any of his contemporaries with the exception of the king, and the scale of his entertaining at court, in Downing Street and at Houghton was gargantuan.

Contents:
Chronology of Sir Robert Walpole’s life
Sir Robert Walpole’s Silver
Appendices (including plate in the Strawberry Hill sale, 1842)

The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University is honored to offer viewers in the United States their first opportunity to contemplate masterpieces from the leading historic private art collection in Spain. The treasures of the Alba family represent more than five hundred years of patronage and collecting of European art of the highest quality and importance. One hundred thirty-eight exemplary objects from these vast holdings will be presented in Dallas and then travel to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. Coinciding with the Meadows Museum s golden anniversary, the exhibition Treasures from the House of Alba: 500 Years of Art and Collecting and this companion publication trace the history of the Alba family from the fifteenth century through the present day through the works they collected. The book explores the family’s wealth of paintings, sculptures, furniture, tapestries, and other objects, as well as the Alba archives and library. The stature of the painting collection is clear from the artists represented in the exhibition, among them Fra Angelico, Titian, Rubens, Mengs, Goya, Ingres, Sorolla, and Renoir. The relationship of the Alba legacy to America is highlighted in decorative objects and in a selection of documents from the Alba library related to Columbus and his voyages. The ten essays in this publication shed light on the dynasty’s particular interest in collecting tapestries; its patronage of writers such as Garcilaso de la Vega; the influence of Eugenia de Montijo, empress of France, who was directly related to the Alba family; the pivotal roles of the Seventeenth Duke of Alba and his daughter, the Eighteenth Duchess, in the twentieth century, both of them keenly engaged with the art of their time; and the three palaces Liria, Monterrey, and Las Dueñas that house much of the collection today. Finally, there is one essay covering the biographical life of the Albas as well as an article that discusses their artistic legacy. As a result, the book provides an in-depth study of the rich life and cultural achievements of this legendary dynasty that still lives strong today.

This book highlights the treasures of the extraordinary personal collection of the Salar Jung family. The Indian Art section focuses on ancient sculptures of the Andhra region and representative paintings of the medieval period. The ‘Asian Art’ section includes a few exceptional pieces of ceramic and other arts from China and Japan. The ‘European Art’ segment includes various pieces of art for which the Museum is famous such as the ‘Veiled Rebecca’ and oil and watercolor paintings by English, French and Dutch artists, apart from several other rare European pieces. ‘In the Palace’ has furniture and household collection of glass and ceramics from around the world. The ‘Arms Collection’ of the Museum has treasured items including weapons belonging to Mughal emperors such as Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb.
This book highlights treasures of the Salar Jung Museum, showcasing the extraordinary personal collection of the Salar Jung family, presented under five themes

In 1739, Qaraar Ali, a young craftsman from Delhi witnesses the destruction of his world as he has known it. His wondrous city where he found love, spirituality, the friendship of poets and philosophers becomes a desolate, scorching hell. From the embers of his past, a journey begins; one which takes him into the depths of Sufi philosophy. Traversing spectacular landscapes of a fading Mughal Empire, a turbulent Central Asia and Persia, a culturally retreating Ottoman Empire and declining Spanish influence, Qaraar Ali finds hope in the sacred geometry of the Sufis through which he attempts at rebuilding his life and rediscovering love. A deeply passionate love story imbued with spirituality, acceptance, compassion and redemption, The Lost Fragrance of Infinity gives a much-deserved voice to Sufism and its contributions to humanity, art, mathematics, mysticism and science.

In a series of color-saturated, dream-like, hallucinatory images taken at night, this second book in a trilogy by Kolkata-based photographer Arko Datto explores the shifting world of nature, society, and politics in Malaysia and Indonesia. Over the course of 4 years, he has captured both people and animals in confrontation with the changing urban environments they live in, with the subtext of the politics that made this change possible. In a place that used to be considered a tropical paradise, over- development and property speculation have forced residents out and have created deserts of empty real estate where neither locals nor animal life can thrive. SNAKEFIRE is dedicated to this paradise that has been lost to unmediated human greed and ponders the costs of untrammeled consumption. 

The hidden art of London is for the ever-curious roamer of both the back streets and the familiar places you never quite see – churches, gardens, graveyards, pubs. What little garden finds the poet John Keats sitting in the corner of a bench? Which abandoned building tells the story of a great Roman Road?
There are always marvels hidden in plain view – the back corner of a museum containing great sculptures by Rodin or the naked, street-corner golden boy, who marks where the Great Fire of London finally petered out. A famous literary cat or a painting by Hogarth on the bend of a stairs in an ancient hospital.
This guidebook takes you exploring London beyond its most famous sights to find the art we have never quite noticed before: the hidden statues, paintings, and murals that have escaped from the official museums, and often live unnoticed lives in tucked away places.

“It is fortunate that a scholar with Professor Abbi’s tenacity, as well as her scientific credentials, was available and willing to conduct this work… The volume is a superb introduction for the layperson to the wonderful world that Professor Abbi has opened up for us.” – Bernard Comrie, Santa Barbara, California.

“For two decades now, Abbi has marshalled the full intellectual and strategic weight of her training, disciplinary expertise and socio-cultural capital to document, preserve and share with the world the voices, songs, stories and laughter of the Great Andamanese.” – Mark Turin, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

The Andaman Islands — Great Andaman, Little Andaman, and North Sentinel Islands have been home for milleniums to four tribes: the Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa, and Sentinelese. Their languages are known by the same name as that of the tribes. ‘Great Andamanese’ is a generic term representing ten languages among a family of languages that were once spoken by ten different tribes living in the north, south, and middle of the Great Andaman Islands. These languages were mutually intelligible like a link in a chain.

However, today, Great Andamanese is a moribund language of the only-surviving pre-Neolithic tribe, breathing its last breath. When a language is on the verge of extinction, its history, culture, ecological base, knowledge of the biodiversity, ethno-linguistic practices, and the identity of its community — everything is endangered. This is what prompted Prof. Anvita Abbi to conduct a research study to give life to the lost oral heritage of the vanishing world of the Great Andamanese.

Voices from the Lost Horizon is a collection of a number of folk tales and songs of the Great Andamanese. These stories and songs represent the first-ever collection rendered to the Prof. Abbi and her team by the Great Andamanese people in local settings. The compilation comes with audio and video recordings of the stories and songs to retain the originality and orality of the narratives. 

The Wellby Bequest, received by the Ashmolean Museum in 2013, consists of some 500 precious and exotic objects, mainly from Continental Europe, from the late medieval to the rococo, and is the most remarkable accession of this kind of material to any museum in the UK since the bequest of Ferdinand de Rothschild to the British Museum in 1898 (the Waddesdon Bequest). The collection was assembled by three generations of the Wellby family with an intention that it should reflect the great princely treasure chambers (Kunstkammer) preserved in Dresden, Vienna, Innsbruck, and elsewhere. Many of these objects have never been previously published. This beautiful and accessible book introduces over sixty of the prime pieces from this astonishing addition to the Ashmolean, presenting material of the type incomparably superior to anything in other UK museums outside London. Both authors are specialists in European decorative arts of the Renaissance and later periods.

Published to coincide with the opening of the new Wellby Bequest Gallery in the Ashmolean Museum September 2015

Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements; Introduction to the Michael Wellby Bequest (by Timothy Wilson); Introductory essay on the Kunstkammer tradition (by Matthew Winterbottom); 50 catalogue entries on highlights of the Wellby Collection; Glossary, Bibliography; Index

Accompanying a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, this catalog presents a broad selection of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century French and Danish art from the celebrated Ordrupgaard museum near Copenhagen. Assembled for the most part between 1892 and 1931 by the Danish insurance magnate Wilhelm Hansen (1868-1936), the Ordrupgaard collection offers a spectacular overview of French painting from Eugène Delacroix through to Paul Cézanne, as well as magnificent examples from the Danish Golden Age.

Fully illustrated and including an essay by Dr. Paul Lang, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada, the catalog provides the opportunity to experience the highlights of the Ordrupgaard collection. It includes remarkable groupings of works that reflect various stages in the careers of painters such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Paul Gauguin, C.W. Eckersberg, and Vilhelm Hammershøi. While French Impressionist and Danish works are a focus, other-often contradictory-art movements of nineteenth-century France, including the Barbizon school and Realism, are also well represented.

Text in English and French.

Treasures of the Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur catalogues a selection of the marvelous artworks on display at Albert Hall, Jaipur. Envisioned by Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II of Jaipur and executed by his successor Sawai Madhao Rao Singh II, to preserve the heritage of local arts and crafts, it was designed and built in 1897 by Thomas Holbein Hendley. The 19,000 artworks of the museum include pottery, stonework, woodwork, arms and armour, sculpture, jewelry, musical instruments, coins and seals, carpets and miniature paintings. Some of the best artworks and architectural features of the museum are produced in this book along with concise text.

Featuring over 140 jades, dating mostly to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), this volume brings together jades from several private collections alongside examples from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong to illustrate the extraordinary achievements of jade carving. The book includes examples carved into pleasingly tactile forms that were carried around to bring delight and inspiration to their owners. Features specially-commissioned items bearing the mark of individual artists such as Lu Zigang of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and monumental jades imitating mountains or ritual bronze vessels that declared not only the immaculate taste of the owners but their wealth as well. This catalog consists of an important essay “Features of Qing Imperial Jades Produced under the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors” written by Zhang Guangwen from the Palace Musuem, Beijing.

Leon Keer is the master of optical illusion. The ‘Dutch JR’ plays with perspectives and creates a whole new world. One in which Snow White is stuck under a door. Or a world in which you unexpectedly enter a seventies living room. This is his first monograph. He allows the reader an exclusive look into his world and imagination. How does he work? And how does a wild idea develop into a gigantic 3D artwork?

To many the words Hill Station are evocative of an exotic and exciting vision when the subjects of the British Colonial Government gloried in the Hill Stations of India and Burma. Beautifully constructed holiday towns built at 3,000 feet or more where people flocked to escape the heats of the plains. High up the Shan hills of east Burma stood Maymyo. This book tells the stories of the people for whom Maymyo really was a heaven ‘lost on the clouds’.

Since the practical invention of photography in the 1840s, Scotland has been at the centre of the history and development of the medium. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery – which houses the Scottish National Photography Collection – and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hold outstanding collections of photographic art spanning three centuries. Included are figures such as D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, Annie Leibovitz and Andreas Gursky. This book offers a detailed guide to the collections as well as an accessible and informative introduction to photography. This revised edition includes recently commissioned photography and significant new acquisitions, with works by Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Cycling has never lost its appeal. Alongside mass-produced models, the craftsmanship of bespoke bicycle makers has emerged to satisfy the passion of people who ride bikes as a means of daily transport, as a sport and for recreation. This book by passionate cyclists Christine Elliott and David Jablonka is the product of a worldwide search for the most influential custom bicycle makers on the planet. The result is a presentation of a wonderful collection of expertly honed, human-powered machines, built by some of the most creative bicycle makers in the world. It highlights the range of techniques, materials, design elements, and dedication that go into producing a custom handmade bicycle. It is guaranteed to take you on the ride of your life. Bicycle brands featured include: Anderson Custom Bicycles, Baum Cycles, Bilkeny Cycle Works, Black Sheep Bikes, Bob Brown Cycles, Bohemian Cycles, Bruce Gordon Cycles, Calfee Design, Columbine Cycle Works, Crisp Titanium, Cycles Alex Singer, Cyfac, Davidson Handbuilt Bicycles, Don Walker Cycles, GURU Bikes, Independent Fabrication, Ira Ryan Cycles, Jeff Jones Custom Bicycles, Keith Anderson Cycles, Kirk Frameworks, Kish Fabrication, Llewelyn Custom Bicycles, Lynskey, Marschall Framework, Moots, Naked Bicycles and Design, Pegoretti, Richard Sachs Cycles, Roark Custom Titanium Bicycles, Robin Mather, Signal Cycles, Steve Potts Bicycles, Strawberry, Sweet Pea Cycles, Vanilla Bicycles, Vendetta Cycles, Vicious Cycles, Wolfhound Cycles. Also available: Racing Bicycles ISBN: 9781864704822

“And, wow, what treasures Michael Kathrens’s beautiful book brings out of this city’s neighborhoods… some of the most magnificent homes in the country.” – William O’Connor, Daily Beast

2019 Osmund Overby Award, Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation
Back in stock March 2023!
House lovers have cherished Michael C. Kathrens’s survey of historic homes in Kansas City, another important volume documenting 19th- and early-20th-century high-end residential architecture in America. The third printing of Kansas City Houses is now available (coinciding with the release of Michael C. Kathrens’s most recent book, Newport Cottages 1835-1890: Summer Villas Before the Vanderbilt Era). Readers can once again marvel at the beauty and craftsmanship of the midwestern gems they discover inside. Built between 1880 and 1930-the city’s boom years-these houses, mostly in revival and Beaux Arts styles, reflect the outsized fortunes of the influential Kansas Citians who built them and speak to the importance of this Midwestern metropolis.
Among the 40 superb homes featured-each well documented with archival and new photography as well as floor plans-are Oak Hall (1887) built for newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson, whose fortune helped establish the Nelson-Atkins Museum; the magnificent Corinthian Hall (1910), the classical mansion built by Henry F. Hoit for lumber baron Robert A. Long; the modern masterpiece designed by Edward W. Tanner for Walter E. Bixby of Kansas City Life Insurance, with Kem Weber’s widely admired interiors; Bernard Corrigan’s mansion (1913) designed by Louis S. Curtiss with a nod to the Vienna Secession; and two beautifully eclectic houses by local architect Mary Rockwell Hook, one of the first women to study at the E´cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Kathrens’s authoritative yet accessible text is complemented throughout by drawings, floor plans, archival images, and newly commissioned photographs–a treat for architectural scholars and enthusiasts alike.

Passing Through is a book concerned with nature, and our transient connection to it. Consequently, the human figure is seen only occasionally and rather vague, like something from the imagination or a memory. Nigel Grierson’s visual journey through the seasons, treads a fine line between reality and fiction, in his search for abstraction and spirituality:

“As adults, in search of sophistication, and jaded by the rigours of work, it’s easy to lose the natural sense of wonder, and to take for granted the things that fascinated us so much as children. For Rudolph Steiner, the most direct route to spirituality for the adult, involves finding the inner child via the occupation of playing. For me, spirituality lies in nature, in its myriad of forms and colors, and in the elements; earth’s chaotic beauty. On a personal level this book represents a journey; a return to childhood, exploring woodlands, playing in the dirt, finding little treasures and taking something home as a souvenir; the photograph.

I once heard it said that spirits are in fact traces or energies left behind when beings repeat the same actions over and over on the same pathways. Perhaps that is why we can sometimes hear voices in the woods, even after the people have long gone.”