Our memories define our lives. So we owe it ourselves to create as many wonderful memories as we can. Travel is great at creating memories and travel adventures create the most ‘memorable’ of memories. As they say: ‘travel is the only thing we pay for that makes us richer’. The world is a big and fascinating place and affordable airfares have made it accessible for all of us. But what will you do when you get there? Will you sit on a beach or will you embark on an adventure that will enrich your life? If you prefer the latter then this book is for you. It took more than 20 years to assemble these adventures. They are not the result of online search; they were discovered the old fashioned way: by trial and error and by luck and happenstance. The one thing they all have in common is that the author has personally experienced each adventure so there is a reliable consistency to these 111 adventures as much as there is an exotic variety.
Using mariners’ logs, journals, letters, business papers and Indian commodities and curiosities brought home as gifts and mementos, Susan Bean presents a readable, scholarly and visually opulent study of material and cultural exchange. It is a beautifully illustrated story of America’s “commerce” with the subcontinent after independence from Britain in 1783. This is not only a question of trade but also the opening out of channels of influence in religion, culture and social mores. It is a valuable account of American orientalism which brought the Gita to New England.
This wide-ranging study is the outcome of the author’s thirty-year quest to collect information about a neglected and almost forgotten field of history – the prisoner of war, the conditions under which he was held and how he employed his time during long years of captivity. In this instance, the whole is set against an historical background dating from the Seven Years War (1756-63) to Napoleon’s downfall in 1816. Information has been painstakingly acquired by detailed searches through the Public Records Offices of England, Scotland and Wales and the archives of numerous county towns. The author has also studied more than one hundred towns and villages, where paroled captured officers were detained, and visited the sites of prison depots – great and small – and ports and rivers where the dreaded prison hulks had once been moored. The gathering and examination of artefacts, relics and other relevant material was a further important aspect of this extensive study. During the course of his lengthy researches, the author assembled what may well be one of the largest private collections of prisoner of war artefacts in existence. Although thousands of items of prisoners’ work have survived to the present day, most have disappeared into private collections and museums, at home or abroad. A representative selection of items from the author’s own extensive collection is featured in the second volume and shows the extraordinary high standard of workmanship achieved by many of the prisoners of war.
After more than eight years of intensive research this is the first and only encyclopaedia of glass marks from the 17th to the 20th century and its at last available
Collage is one of the most popular and pervasive of all art-forms, yet this is the first historical survey book ever published on the subject. Featuring over 200 works, ranging from the 1500s to the present day, it offers an entirely new approach. Hitherto, collage has been presented as a twentieth-century phenomenon, linked in particular to Pablo Picasso and Cubism in the years just before the First World War. In Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, we trace its origins back to books and prints of the 1500s, through to the boom in popularity of scrapbooks and do-it-yourself collage during the Victorian period, and then through Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. Collage became the technique of choice in the 1960s and 1970s for anti-establishment protest, and in the present day is used by millions of us through digital devices. The definition of collage employed here is a broad one, encompassing cut-and-pasted paper, photography, patchwork, film and digital technology and ranging from work by professionals to unknown makers, amateurs and children.
Contents:
Collage Over the Centuries, an introductory essay by Patrick Elliott; Collage Before Modernism by Freya Gowrley; On Edge: Exploring Collage Tactics and Terminology by Yuval Etgar; catalogue of exhibition works; a Chronology of Collage.
In 1946 (after a stint as a World War II military hospital), quintessential American decorator Dorothy Draper was brought in to restore the Greenbrier hotel. She created a signature look – described at the time as ‘Romance and Rhododendrons’ – that has influenced and delighted not only designers and decorators but also travelers, weary of the gray and beige color schemes that permeate most hospitality properties even now. Draper transformed the interiors with bold colors, classical influences and modern touches.
When Carleton Varney arrived in Mrs. Draper’s office in 1961 to work as an assistant in the design department, one of his first tasks was to accompany the design icon by train to one of her most well-known and publicised projects. Since that time, he has been involved with every aspect of the hotel’s design, maintaining and continuing the look that Draper designed, as well as modernizing, upgrading and putting his own stamp on it. Working with his experienced and innovative team, Varney has turned the historic hotel into a resort for the 21st century.
A South Seas dream and dangerous Other – the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific Ocean captivated such figures as Paul Gauguin and Herman Melville. Tikimania embarks on a unique journey to unravel the fascination, presenting the Tiki works of the Junge Wilde painter Bernd Zimmer alongside the Indigenous Marquesan art from the collection of the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich. An entirely new interplay of European art and Oceanic culture arises through the contrasts and harmonies as a result. In addition the catalog traces European images of these islands, accompanies Karl von den Steinen on an ethnological expedition, and invites the reader to revive Tiki pop culture in America.
Text in German.
Published to accompany an exhibition at Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich (DE) from 10 July 2020 to 28 February 2021.
Eleanor Moty (b. 1945) from the US is a seminal figure in the field of contemporary international studio jewelry. In a career that has spanned more than 50 years, she has been both a dedicated practitioner and a devoted teacher who has inspired succeeding generations of artists, collectors, and fellow professionals. She began to attract national attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s for her experiments with photoetching and electroforming metal. Later, mid-career, Moty made what seems like an abrupt shift in style and focus, with more abstract works whose designs were inspired by the natural inclusions within the non-precious gems used in their fabrication. While her works have been published in prominent books, catalogs, and journals internationally, this monograph is the first comprehensive in-depth examination of her career from its inception in 1967 through the present day.
This photo book presents a series of bus stops photographed by Michael Kruscha while traveling. The pictures were taken in Eastern Europe, Kazakhstan/Armenia, Arabia/Middle East, North and South Africa, South America and Asia. The trip began in Oman, where the artist encountered bus stops strewn along hundreds of kilometers of desert road. They seem paradoxical: the structures built for the purpose of waiting appear to be deprived of their role, a l’art-pour-l’art product? All the more astonishing is the design. The small secular constructions vary in material, shape and condition: they are a mix of geometrically reduced decorative architecture and futuristic plastic, with reliefs, paintings or mosaics, and ornamentation or figures. Some are serially produced, while others are individual, some palatial and ornate, while others are only semi-erected in a provisional state or dilapidated. Close-ups of evocative landscapes and unusual details, picturesque transitions of color and contrasting compositions alternate with every page in the book. Portrayals of art history, an interview with the artist and quotes from wellknown authors intensify the traveling experience. The viewer is fascinated by the aesthetic appeal of foreign landscapes and the diversity of international architectural styles that uniquely coalesce.
Mayra Martell (b. 1979) is a documentary photographer from Ciudad Juárez, México. She has worked primarily in areas of Latin America and Africa subjected to forced disappearance. Her newest project, the book Ciudad Juárez, is about a city whose social fabric has been torn by violence. Martell has received many distinctions and awards. In 2011, at the 4th International Fotobook Festival in Kassel, Germany, she won the first prize in the Reviewer Award and second prize in the Dummy Award. She also obtained an honorable mention in Lens Culture International Exposure Awards in París, France.
This fully illustrated and researched catalog commemorates an exhibition of over 200 pieces of Chinese and related ceramics collected within the members of the Oriental Ceramic Society of London. The selection spans the complete range from Neolithic to contemporary ceramics, from minor kilns in many different regions to the major kilns working for the court, and from pieces of academic interest to world-famous masterpieces. It privileges unusual and rarely seen artifacts and avoids well known, repetitive designs such as that of the dragon, which is so firmly identified with China that it has become a cliche of Chinese art. It also aims to demonstrate the vast variety of wares and the inventiveness of Asian potters well beyond the classic confines.
Text in English and Chinese.
“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.
This catalog is published on the occasion of the photo exhibition in Cologne, which will take place from September 17, 2020 to January 31, 2021.
Text in English and German.
Nineteenth-Century European Painting: From Barbizon to Belle Époque represents a comprehensive guide to the range of stylistically diverse genres of nineteenth-century European painting. Accessible and insightful, this exquisitely illustrated volume presents the historical context behind the century’s essential artistic movements including Romantic Painting, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Realist Painting, Academic Painting, and Impressionist Painting. Influenced by an overwhelming wave of political, military and social change, nineteenth-century Europe represented an era more diverse in painterly subjects and styles than any before it. Indeed, it was a period that saw many European painters moving away from the strictures of the academy system, choosing instead to use their training to develop new techniques and traditions. A collection of independent stories, this book also outlines the unique progression between the different movements, exciting and enlightening the reader about the most magnificent period of art the world has ever known. Contents: Foreword; Dr. Vern G. Swanson; Introduction; Author’s Note; STYLES: The Barbizon School; Romantic Painting; Orientalist Painting; The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Realist Painting; Academic Painting; Impressionist Painting; The Newlyn School; Post-Impressionist Painting; SUBJECTS: Landscape Painting; Venetian View Painting; Maritime Painting; Sporting Painting; Animal Painting; Genre Painting; Cardinal Painting; Costume Painting; British Neoclassical Revival Painting; Belle Époque Painting; Conclusion; Endnotes; Bibliography. Featured works from museums and collections including: Louvre, Paris, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Wallace Collection, London, Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, The Tate Gallery, London, The Schaeffer Collection, New South Wales, The Royal Collection, The Royal Academy of Arts, England, The Musée D Orsay Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Collection), The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, England, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Stanhope Forbes, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA, USA, Paisnel Gallery, London, National Gallery, London, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy, Museo de Arte, Ponte, Puerto Rico, Musée Marmottan, Paris, Musée D Orsay, Paris, Auguste Renoir, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among many others.
This lavishly illustrated book concentrates on pieces related to eating and drinking and celebrates the range and richness of the turner’s art from 1600 to 1900. It covers a wide range of objects for everyday and ceremonial use; goblets to nutcrackers, platters to lemon squeezers, mortars to salts, wassail bowls to egg cups. It discusses the work of the ‘jobbing’ village turner or ‘bodger’, the skilled craftsman’s workshop and the grand Court turner producing complex rose engine turning. It illustrates pieces only to be found in museums and examples you can find today in your local antiques market or fair.
Information is given on where treen may be seen and found and there is practical advice on pitfalls for the collector, dating and cleaning, as well as a chapter dealing with surfaces and patina and one asking for readers’ help in identifying the purpose of some curious objects. This volume will appeal not only to new collectors seeking guidance and inspiration and antique dealers who may come across treen, but also to experts who can compare the objects in their own collections with those illustrated in this veritable feast of treen.
A multitude of colorful and naïve biblical and other religious pottery figures found their way into 19th century Victorian homes in Britain. They were bought by tradesmen, shop-keepers, clerks, teachers and the more skilled working class people. This book tells the story of these Staffordshire pottery figures, which sold in their thousands to stand on the mantelpieces of Christian families, both Protestant and Catholic.
Three chapters provide a social history context: the religious background, an assessment of who purchased the figures, the Victorian home and how it was furnished. The final four chapters review the pottery figures themselves, which are based on the Old Testament, the New Testament, relevant religious themes and portraits of preachers. A catalogue of well over 200 figures in full color with an assessment of their dating and rarity completes the book.
This is the first comprehensive record of Victorian religious figures placed in the context of their times.
Rayne is the name synonymous with the best in British 20th-century shoe design. Re-launched as a British-owned company in 2013, the remarkable design achievements of the company in the 20th-century are illustrated in this sumptuous book. The business began in the late 19th-century as a theatrical costumier and soon added shoes to its products, with a factory in Bermondsey near the current Fashion & Textile Museum. Early clients included the Ballet Russes and Nijinsky. By the 1920s, members of the British Royal family and aristocracy were clients and a shop was opened on Bond Street with a new factory based at King’s Cross. By 1950, the company had three royal warrants, had supplied shoes for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) in 1947, and had a strong American presence with Delman Shoes at Bergdorf Goodman, NYC, amongst other locations. Sir Edward Rayne became a celebrity in his own right and collaborated with many famous designers such as Roger Vivier, Bruce Oldfield, Jean Muir, and the “Fashion Knight” Sir Norman Hartnell, and Hardy Amies. In the 1970s, Bill Gibb designed collections for Rayne, and Rayne supplied the shoes for several leading French couturiers houses such as Lanvin and Nina Ricci. In the 1980s Bruce Oldfield designed collections for them. Oliver Messel re-designed the famous Bond Street Store, which attracted stars of stage and screen, such as Elizabeth Taylor, as well as society ladies. Beautifully illustrated, this book offers a complete history of this remarkable brand.