What does Swansea and Gower mean to you? Is it a place of learning? A hub of industry? A city of sporting excellence? Or perhaps, a gateway to exploration and adventure? Do you picture endless days on pristine beaches, leisurely walks along rugged clifftops or a vibrant cultural tapestry? Swansea and Gower weave all these facets together, offering a captivating mosaic of experiences.

Meet sporting legends and trailblazing women who defied societal norms in an era dominated by men. Venture into the world of Ancient Egyptians, unraveling their lives – and deaths. Marvel at the grandeur of Norman lords’ ambitious creations and the fripperies of Victorian industrialists. Indulge your palate with the savory allure of lamb raised on Atlantic salt meadows. Feel the adrenaline rush as you hurtle downhill on a mountain board, crocodiles snap food from your grip, or you ride a wave.

Stroll around the coast and lakes, and meander through fields of fragrant lavender or golden sunflowers. Immerse yourself in nature’s symphony, from pounding waterfalls to the serene serenades of insects. Unearth a world brimming with wonder, right on your doorstep, here in Swansea and Gower.

The fourth and final volume of the photographic and editorial project Canova. Four Tempos, dedicated to the plaster casts by Antonio Canova at the Gypsotheca in Possagno (Italy), continues the investigation into the imperfect form: works that, with their small nails that allowed plaster to be reproduced in marble, are an expression of genius in his making.
Luigi Spina approaches the works in a completely new way, from mythological subjects to the faces of the commissioners, from Daedalus and Icarus, a masterpiece of youth, to Adonis crowned by Venus, unfinished and never translated into marble. From the eternal comparison between the sculpture of Hector in a dynamic pose and Ajax about to draw his sword. The sensuality of Venus while revealing herself as she emerges from her bath.
Finally, the volume takes a look at the commissioners: the sculpture of the little prince Heryk Lubominski dressed as Cupid with bow and quiver and the sculpture of Princess Leopoldina Esterhàzy Liechtenstein. In the sculptor’s mind dominates the classical model, a symbol of harmony and perfection.

The red-figure vases from the National Museum “Domenico Ridola” in Matera and the Rizzon Collection – rich in precious Apulian and Lucanian pieces – offer a unique opportunity to grasp Magna Graecia antiquity from an unusual perspective through the photographs by Luigi Spina. Significant testimony to vase painting between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, the museum’s artifacts largely date back to the discoveries of Domenico Ridola (1841-1932) and form part of elaborate funerary assemblages, possessing great aesthetic and historical value through which everyday life is reflected in myths.

In the book, black is the protagonist: it enhances the red figures and brings out the keen eye of photographer Luigi Spina. Anatomical details, drapery, and decorative motifs emerge in all their strength without the filter of museum cases, while touches of white enrich the vases’ bichrome palette.

Photographing a work of art means capturing its deep meaning to communicate it to the world. Far from the idea of a museum catalog, the volume is rather a figurative atlas of antiquity.

Text in English and Italian.

Tibetan Women’s Jewelry describes the cultural history of Central Tibet told through traditional jewelry and trade from the 17th century of the 5th Dalai Lama through the 14th Dalai Lama’s 1959 exile to India. This art book presents 10 distinctive styles of women’s relic boxes (Gaus), plus headdresses, ear pendants, shoulder chatelaines, and waist ornaments. The author’s fascinating interviews with the last living Lhasa noblewomen and master goldsmiths reveal original names and how and when these beautiful treasures were worn. This innovative study establishes for the first time that jewelry styles changed with each Dalai Lama, setting an important dating precedent for all Tibetan collectibles. Meticulous research makes this the definitive scholarly publication on Tibetan jewelry.

In An Artist’s Journey, artist Tiny de Vries takes you around the world in search of inspiration. She starts close to home in her Utrecht studio in the Netherlands, where she shows you how to use found treasures to personalize your interior. The book is a visual journey through her world, featuring beautiful photos, artworks and personal stories. Tiny talks about how to draw inspiration from your immediate surroundings, such as nature, handmade fabrics and books. She also shows how travel provides inspiration from ‘tiny little nothings’ from all over the world. This beautifully executed look book is an ode to wonder and connection. It encourages you to look around you with an open-minded, curious and playful eye, embrace your own creativity and let go of the urge for perfection.

“I love small-scale produced, inherited, vintage and homemade objects. Unique objects made by small makers and artisans are rich in stories, with all those beautiful subtle nuances. Together, they make a space unique.” – Tiny de Vries in Art & Home Magazine

During childhood holidays by the sea, the pristine Long Beach was full of treasures from the deep, sharks and dolphins swam near the shore, and the sea and air was vibrant with life and energy. Homo Gaia is written by lifelong environmentalist and citizen scientist, who wishes to pass on a thin strand of hope to the next generation. After a five year project on nature connection at the Greenworld foundation, Thailand, where she was chairperson, was halted by Covid, Oy decided to write a book instead. Showing how others can also experience the wondrous world that surrounds us, she weaves in her own experiences with information and insights from scientists.

This luxurious photo book commemorates the 600th anniversary of KU Leuven University, Belgium, featuring the work of renowned heritage and architecture photographer Karin Borghouts. Through her lens, Borghouts offers fresh and unexpected perspectives on the university’s rich architectural heritage, capturing everything from auditoriums and laboratories to student residences, sports facilities, libraries, chapels, and more. Accompanying her striking images, historian Liesbet Nys delves into the storied history of KU Leuven. She offers an insightful narrative that complements the visual journey through one of Europe’s oldest universities.

This is the first book to explore the work of the forgotten ceramics concern – Chetham & Woolley. The original partnership of James Chetham and Richard Woolley established a factory in Longton, Staffordshire in 1795. The partnership was responsible for developing a new ceramic body – semi-transparent stoneware, properly termed Feldspathic Stoneware. In its day the Chetham & Woolley factory occupied a very important position in the Staffordshire ceramics industry. Until recent research carried out by Colin Wyman practically all memory of Chetham & Woolley had been lost. This book re-establishes the factory’s well-deserved reputation.

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

“When one is tired of London, one is tired of life.” – Samuel Johnson London has long been a center of the literary world. From Shakespeare to Amis, Byron to Blake, Plath, Thomas, Christie and Rowling; many of the greatest names in literature have made this metropolis their home. Writers’ London guides the reader through homes, bookshops, pubs and cemeteries, in search of where literary greats loved and lost, drank and died. Discover the Islington building where Joe Orton was murdered by his lover, the Soho pub where Dylan Thomas left his manuscript, the Chelsea hotel where Oscar Wilde was arrested, and the Bank of England where Kenneth Graham was shot at (and missed) three times. Gathering hundreds of famous and less-well-known anecdotes, this meticulously researched volume will entertain any lover of literature. Also in the series: Vinyl London ISBN 9781788840156 Rock ‘n’ Roll London ISBN 9781788840163 Art London ISBN 9781788840385 London Peculiars ISBN 9781851499182

The wee folk have returned! Uncover the mystery of who they are and why they are here in the first book of the Vinetrope Adventures. Following a young girl, Sara, who has recently lost her mom to cancer, Return of the Vinetropes tells the story of a remarkable fairy-like creature found in Sara’s back yard. Lucinda Vinetrope: born wise, full-grown, and all alone. She may only be 12 inches high, but her personality is huge! Her arrival signifies the return of the Vinetrope nation, but also the return of their evil counterparts, the Chargons and the Vinkali. Joined by a supporting cast of comedic characters, animal and human alike, Sara and Lucinda set off on their quest to find the other Vinetropes and protect their world from danger.

This book is the story of the extensive travels made by two Peters in search of plants in Turkey, India, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Tibet. On nearly every expedition, they explored territory where no western plant hunters had been since such great explorers as Frank Kingdon Ward, and some of the trails they followed were so remote and rough that the plants had never before been studied. Every trip was an adventure, and every adventure bore the seeds of success. Where the Himalayan range meets the gorge country of south-west China lies the richest temperate flora in the world. Here the plant life can mate, mutate and migrate in an evolutionary stew that challenges the botanist to classify it. With their Chinese and Indian colleagues, the Peters introduced many plants, especially rhododendrons, new or lost to cultivation, often saving them from extinction, many of which can be grown outside in the temperate regions of Europe and the United States of America.

2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first international symposium of silver jewelry Jablonec ’68. Thanks to the liberalization endeavours as part of the ‘Prague Spring’, European jewelry artists from East and West came together for a ‘summit’ at the invitation of the Czech artists’ association in Jablonec, northern Bohemia. On the guest list were such renowned names as Anton Cepka, Hermann Junger and Bruno Martinazzi – artists celebrated today as the founders of studio jewelry. The jewelry pieces that developed at that time have remained in the Muzeum skla a bizuterie in Jablonec nad Nisou and to this day have lost nothing of their exceptional and pioneering aura. This publication – which contains a reprint of the original catalogue from 1968 – makes these pieces accessible to a wider audience for the very first time. A document that in a wholly authentic way allows the reader to experience this unique historical moment in the history of the international studio jewelry scene.

Text in English and German.

Accompanies the exhibition at Die Neue Sammlung The Design Museum, Munich (DE), 10 March-3 June 2018.

Photographs taken in Japan between the late Edo period and early Meiji periods found their way overseas, and played a major role in forming Westerners’ image of Japan. Among these collections, the pictures gathered by the Swiss diplomat Aimé Humbert (1819-1900) in the 1860s were crucial in building lasting representations of the island nation: many of these, mainly collected in 1863/64 during a sojourn in Yokohama and Edo, were used as sources for the well-known and largely distributed engravings of his famous book Le Japon illustré, published in Paris in 1870. Belonging to the collection of the MEN, these beautiful and well-preserved photographs are published here for the first time. Presented by Japanese and Swiss scholars before the narrative backdrop of their acquisition and application by foreigners, they offer a striking view of a lost world.

By radically turning his back on the crystal cutting technique that was prevalent worldwide at the time, Bernd Munsteiner started to revolutionize the shaping of gemstones in the 1970s. For him, the aesthetic quality of the gemstones represented a rediscovery and it formed the basis of his worldwide success. Since 1997, his son Tom and daughter-in-law Jutta have taken over the atelier in Stipshausen near Idar-Oberstein. Over the past 15 years, ‘The Young Generation’ have developed their own very characteristic form language, based on Bernd Munsteiner’s work, which makes the virtual interior space of the cut gemstone the focus of aesthetic contemplations. Tom Munsteiner is a gemstone designer, Jutta Munsteiner is a jewelry and gemstone designer and goldsmith. This richly illustrated book presents a comprehensive overview of Tom and Jutta Munsteiner’s artistic creations. It provides not only a deep insight into the crystalline world of gemstones, but also shows that crystals have lost nothing of their centuries-old fascination as an artistic material. Text in English & German. Contents: Wilhelm Lindemann – Introduction; Artworks – Tom Munsteiner: Magic Eye; Ritmo; Prisma; Spirit of Nature; Imagination; Mantis; Kaskaden; Hexagonal; Sculptures and Objects; Special unique Stone Objects; Art Objects; Jutta Munsteiner: Onda; Personalities; Tom + Jutta Munsteiner: Twins; Ikarus; Extensions; Unique Pieces; Biography of the Artists

Hugely popular in his own day and an enormous influence on Monet, van Gogh and other leading European artists, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 1858) has never lost his appeal. A prolific artist, he produced between 4,000 and 5,000 woodblock print designs. He is particularly renowned for his landscape prints, which are among the most frequently reproduced of all Japanese art in both Japan and the West. Hiroshige’s unusual compositions, humorous depictions of people involved in everyday activities and masterly expression of weather, light and season, are explored in this publication with its especially fine printing and experts’ notations. It is part of a series featuring the depth of the Japanese art holdings at the Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford, the world’s first university art museum. The gems of information are numerous, including a page on “how to read a print” — with such as a note on “the censor’s mark,” a detail that only the cognoscenti might recognize. The book adds greatly to the art lover’s knowledge and pleasure.

Contents:
How to ‘read’ a Japanese Print, Preface, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) Woodblock Print Designer, Making a Japanese Woodblock Print, I Views along the Tokaido, II Views of the Provinces, III Views of Edo, IV Views of Mount Fuji, Further Reading.

The retail world must keep up with digitization. Shops compete with online stores that operate in an augmented or virtual reality. However, despite the recent boom in internet shopping, the tangible human component has never quite lost its appeal. This standard work about the retail sector shows how new forms of spatial expression can be created to appeal to all the senses. It provides an overview of innovations in multi-channel and omni-channel commerce, from pioneering in-store technology to new products. Around 50 current best-practice examples, from temporary pop-up stores to avant-garde brand worlds and hybrid retail centers, offer an inspiring cross section of retail designs from around the world.

In this book of poignant and expressive images, Stockholm-based photographer Christer Löfgren captures the fundamental humanity of people from around the world. He addresses the credibility of documentary photography, which many believe was lost with the advent of Photoshop. The widespread practice of manipulating photos makes it difficult to judge their authenticity. In these images, the artist asserts that documentary photography has not drowned in the world of Photoshop, and addresses the importance of the ‘uncensored’ image.