The second in the 20th Century Society Journal series has essays on modern houses open to the public, Harbour Meadow in Sussex, Dorich House in Kingston, Villa Savoy, and essays on patrons, textiles and plastics of the modern house and an interview with Elisabeth Benjamin and a discussion on F.R.S. Yorke. More
Accompanying a major international exhibition at the Wallace Collection (May–September 2012), this book celebrates the artistic and cultural importance of the sword, as a symbol of power and prestige, as a flamboyant fashion statement and as an icon of the Age of Discovery. More
This second publication in the series of small picture books on individual works of art in Sir John Soane's Museum features the anonymous North Italian Album, a unique work of the Italian Renaissance - 68 highly coloured designs on vellum for architecture, furniture, stage sets and decorative objects. More
This illuminated manuscript, a gradual of large size which the whole congregation of monks could see and read as they sang in choir (just as they are shown doing in an illustration in the manuscript itself), was previously unknown to scholars and has only recently come to light. It was clearly produced for a monastery of the Olivetan order, a branch of the Benedictines with a particular reverence for the Virgin Mary – probably Santa Maria di Baggio near Milan. More
When Oskar Reinhart (1885–1965) bequeathed a significant part of his remarkable art collection – chiefly of French nineteenth-century painting but also containing a number of outstanding Old Masters – to the Swiss nation, he did so on condition that the works of art would never be loaned. As a consequence the many very important works in the collection have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Artists represented in the collection that Reinhart made his monument include: Cézanne, Chardin, Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Delacroix, Géricault, Van Gogh, Maillol, Manet, Picasso, Pissarro, Renoir. More
Charmingly, this book provides delightful text and images explaining ‘deportment’. The text of 1737 is remarkably direct, precise and informative. Exactly how you should doff your hat and “retire gracefully from a room” and execute a curtsey are explained both in theory and practice... More
The lagoon in which the city of Venice rises is no more than a few thousand years old - not much older than the city itself. And it may not last another hundred, such is the damage that not only the city but also the lagoon have suffered during the twentieth century. This book succinctly examines the severe threat from human intervention and incursions on the one hand and on the other from climate change and natural erosion, and the oprions for the future. More
The Sixties: a time of sexual and cultural liberation, the Space Age and a tremendous optimism. There were radical new fashions in clothes, lifestyle objects and architecture - and also the rediscovery of Victoriana and Art Nouveau. This is a collection of essays by the architects and designers who were there, including Peter Smithson, Patrick Hodgkinson and Jane Dillon, and historians such as Gavin Stamp and Lesley Jackson with fresh insights on those enthusiastic, mixed-up times. More
A Rake’s Progress (1734-5) and An Election (1755) are the most famous of William Hogarth’s series of ‘modern moral subjects’. Hazlitt described Hogarth’s paintings as ‘A perpetual collision of eccentricities, a tilt and tournament of absurdities, the prejudices and caprices of mankind let loose’ and they still delight, interest and amuse as much today as two hundred years ago and the biting quality of their moral satire is undiminished. More
A Rake’s Progress (1734-5) and An Election (1755) are the most famous of William Hogarth’s series of ‘modern moral subjects’. Hazlitt described Hogarth’s paintings as ‘A perpetual collision of eccentricities, a tilt and tournament of absurdities, the prejudices and caprices of mankind let loose’ and they still delight, interest and amuse as much today as two hundred years ago and the biting quality of their moral satire is undiminished. More