This beautiful illuminated manuscript, now in Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, is one of the earliest surviving examples of a unique group of Bibles containing the most extensive cycles of biblical illustrations juxtaposed with theological and allegorical interpretative images. The present moralized Bible was produced in Paris in the first half of the 13th century, and contains over 1000 exquisitely illuminated medallions accompanied by textual extracts and commentaries that act as captions to the illustrations and thus reveal, by word and image, the relevance of the Bible to contemporary life. They reflect the rapidly-changing world of the thirteenth century and highlight the many ideological problems prominent in the intellectual and political milieu of the time. It is a book that has long fascinated both historians and art-historians, since it stands out not only as one of the major artistic achievements of its time, but also as an important historical document for an understanding of medieval Europe. All illuminated pages of Codex 2554 are reproduced in full colour in this volume. In his commentary to the manuscript, Gerald Guest explains the origins of this type of Bible manuscript; he compares the work with other surviving examples, examines the style and meaning of the illuminations, poses the likely patrons and puts the creation of the moralized Bible in its intellectual and artistic context. The author has also translated all the French texts that accompany the illuminations into English.

Every great church makes a statement, and it is seldom simply theological. An offering of thanks to a beloved minister, a monument to a powerful ruler, a colonialist vaunt - a church is never really just a church. Ornate or spartan, immense or intimate, from the Middle East and across Europe, from Alaska to Argentina, Asia to Africa, the construction of churches has given the world some of its most beautiful buildings - its most splendid interiors, its most atmospheric spaces, an inspiration not just to Christians but to humankind. Including Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Coptic, Lutheran, Baptist, Calvinist, Pentecostal and Mormon places of worship, Amazing Churches of the World features early basilicas and magnificent medieval cathedrals, mud-hut churches and soaring 21st century edifices. In exploring these sacred places, Michael Kerrigan reveals not just the different approaches to faith across continents and over centuries, but gives us a glimpse into a wider history of the world touched by Christianity. Illustrated with more than 190 photographs, Amazing Churches of the World includes more than 150 chapels, basilicas and cathedrals dating from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The Art of Letter Carving in Wood is a thorough guide to this beautiful craft. Based on the v-cut method, it explains how to carve letters in a range of sizes, styles and different kinds of wood. The book progresses from the basic to the difficult, and from simply designing and carving letters to using them in a wide range of situations, from the purely practical and informative to the expressive and interpretative. Written by one of the UK's leading and most respected lettering artists, this book not only covers the process of letter carving in wood but also does much more by explaining how to convey a message effectively. It looks at every aspect of designing the piece - be that using italics, spacing the letters, using letters, using the grain or adding colour. With over 500 illustrations, it is the definitive text for all letter carvers in wood.

The ability to use imagination and envision future needs is crucial in art, design and architecture. Future thinking and making require imagination and capability to create narratives for near and far futures and the capacity to compose proposals to meet the imagined future needs. Future-oriented creative practices also require future literacy-understanding the temporal continuum in which the future-oriented work is created and being aware of underlying incentives, motivations and structures of the self-initiated works or commissions. Similarly, viewing or consuming the speculative creative works requires some level of understanding of the context of the works. Studio Time: Future Fictions in Art and Design approaches these questions with essays from international design and art thinkers, reflective shorter essays and a selection of art, design and architecture projects. The book consists of three parts that each focus on future fictions in art and design from different perspectives: future fictions and imagination in creative practices, future literacy, and future ethics. Each part consists of two essays, two practical, reflective contributions from artists and designers and a selection of art and design projects from practitioners around the world. The book is a closing chapter of Studio Future, which is one of the research studios developed by Belgian-based Z33 House for Contemporary Art. Since 2012, Studio Future has focused on a variety of aspects on future-oriented art and design practices through different research and exhibition projects, which have been accompanied by online and offline publishing.

Beautiful photographs capture this artist's original approach to floral design Surrounded by flowers from a very young age, the decision to become a floral designer was anoabvious one for Hideyuki Niwa. To keep on challenging himself, Niwa often takes part in competitions and tries creating and photographing a new design every day to get a thorough understanding of the characteristics of flowers and their possibilities. His classic, linear style and minimalist expression with careful placement of plant materials, quintessential characteristics of the Japanese aesthetic concent wabi sabi , rightfully won him a Bronze Leaf in the 2010/2011 edition and the Gold Leaf in the 2012/2013 edition of Stichting Kunstboek's prestigious International Floral Art.

Alysn Midgelow-Marsden shows how to use both textile-based and mixed media techniques to create beautiful artworks using metal in the form of shim, foil and woven fabric alongside many other materials. She shares her expertise in an inspiring variety of techniques from free machine stitching to gilding, embossing, needle felting, beading, printing, applique, making stitched foil fabric and using dry decal transfer images. There are seven beautiful projects to inspire and instruct textile artists everywhere, including a lampshade, bauble pods, decorative panels and a tablet cover. Artists can take inspiration from the individual surfaces that make up the pieces, the completed projects, and from the developments from each project, which have full, instructive captions. This is an invaluable resource for textile artists looking for new and beautiful ideas. This book was previously published as part of the Textile Artist series.

Featuring art from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, this small book is sure to provoke the surprise and delight of discovering similarities among works in different media and from different periods. Illustrated with details of artworks from the collection, one pairing juxtaposes a woman's up-raised hands from an illuminated manuscript, while the facing page shows a close-up from a black-and-white photograph of the hands of a woman clutching her chest. In another a painting of two women sitting on a red and gold daybed is shown next to a similar piece of furniture in the Museum's galleries. Drawn from every curatorial department represented at the Center--Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Manuscripts, and Photography--the works included here span hundreds of years of art history.
The reader will enjoy leafing through this virtual tour and may notice familiar works that can be examined anew, and all readers will enjoy this compact and thought- provoking gem of a book.

Japanese Art: Critical and Primary Sources is a four-volume reference work offering a critical overview of the history and culture of Japanese art. Drawing upon a wide range of English-language texts, the volumes explore the diverse and changing material and visual cultures of Japan from the pre-modern period to the present day. Over 75 essays from Asia, North America and Europe are assembled in this set and they address four major themes - material cultures (Buddhist objects, ceramics, textiles, interiors), visual cultures (painting, calligraphy, photography), printed matter (wood-block prints, books) and the context for Japan's art history (networks of patronage, sites of artistic production and consumption). Each volume is separately introduced and the selected materials are presented thematically, and chronologically within categories. Together the four volumes of Japanese Art present a major scholarly resource for the field.

Contemporary artists such as Ghada Amer and Clare Twomey have gained international reputations for work that transforms ordinary craft media and processes into extraordinary conceptual art, from Amer's monumental stitched paintings to Twomey's large, ceramics-based installations. Despite the amount of attention that curators and gallery owners have paid to these and many other conceptual artists who incorporate craft into their work, few art critics or scholars have explored the historical or conceptual significance of craft in contemporary art. "Extra/Ordinary" takes up that task. Reflecting on what craft has come to mean in recent decades, artists, critics, curators, and scholars develop theories of craft in relation to art, chronicle how fine-art institutions understand and exhibit craft media, and offer accounts of activist crafting, or craftivism. Some contributors describe generational and institutional changes under way, while others signal new directions for scholarship, considering craft in relation to queer theory, masculinity, and science. Encompassing quilts, ceramics, letterpress books, wallpaper, and textiles, and moving from well-known museums to home workshops and political protests, "Extra/Ordinary" is an eclectic introduction to the "craft culture" referenced and celebrated by artists promoting new ways of thinking about the role of craft in contemporary art.

"Contributors." Elissa Auther, Anthea Black, Betty Bright, Nicole Burisch, Maria Elena Buszek, Jo Dahn, M. Anna Fariello, Betsy Greer, Andrew Jackson, Janis Jefferies, Louise Mazanti, Paula Owen, Karin E. Peterson, Lacey Jane Roberts, Kirsty Robertson, Dennis Stevens, Margaret Wertheim

Works by hundreds of prominent designers, including Alvar Aalto, Vignelli Associates, Aldo Rossi, Le Corbusier, and Paolo Nava, pack the pages. Over 2,000 important pieces arranged by type of furniture or fixture make this book the go-to guide for students and historians of modern furniture, as well as an essential tool for interior designers. Each entry gives the details of the design: date, model name or number, manufacturer, materials, and dimensions.

From ceramics to silversmithing, calligraphy to textiles, hot glass to bookbinding, crafts have played a rich and complex role in the social, cultural, and artistic history of twentieth-century Britain. This all-encompassing book is the first to survey the full range of individual craft disciplines and key practitioners from the pre-World War I years of the Arts and Crafts Movement to the 1990s. Tanya Harrod shows how the crafts movement emerged in response to generalized anxiety about the production, commodification, and consumption of objects in a highly industrialized society. Caught between the more powerful disciplines of fine art, architecture, and design for industry, crafts have defined and redefined themselves throughout the century. The book begins with the craft revival of the early 1900s, tracing the complex legacy of John Ruskin and William Morris. The author then discusses how the Arts and Crafts Movement was forced to reexamine its aims during the Great War; how the development of the crafts was closely connected to the development of modernism between the wars; and how during World War II the idea of the handmade, often in the form of vernacular craft discovered in remote pockets of England, played a significant part in propagandizing a national culture worth defending. The book also explores the postwar beginnings of a countercultural workshop-based craft movement led by Bernard Leach and the continuing redefinition of crafts as the government-funded Crafts Council pushed them toward the fine arts and then the government attempted in the 1980s to recast them as exemplars of enterprise culture. Harrod describes the increasingly blurred division between craft and design for mass production at the conclusion of the book. Along with historians, educators, artists, craftspersons, and collectors, readers with an interest in British cultural history will find in this book much to delight and fascinate. This book accompanies an exhibition of British crafts, "The Pleasures of Peace: Craft, Art and Design in Britain from the 1940s to the 1960s," that will open at the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia in spring 1999. Published in association with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts

The rich beauty and craftsmanship of leather objects dating from 1900-1929 is captured here in 540 beautiful color photos. These items include fine leather accessories, such as billfolds, blotters, bookends boxes, cigar cases, document cases, glove cases, mats napkin rings, paperweights, purses, and wastebaskets. They were made to enhance American interiors with Stickley furniture, Van Erp lamps, and Roycroft hammered copper vessels. Historical information features individual artists and commercial firms includes Roycroft, Newcomb College, and Elizabeth Eaton Burton. German design influence that became known as "Buffalo Nouveau" is included. This is an essential guide to the hand-tooled craftsmanship of this bygone era.

Build one of the most iconic and elegant forms in American furniture history. Expert furniture crafter Kubalak teaches how to craft a reproduction of one of the most highly embellished and finest examples ever made. Using step-by-step photos, Kubalak directs the serious student through this complex project by breaking it into several subprojects, then combining them into the completed piece. Each subproject has its own chapter that provides pattern drawings, exploded views, detailed instructions, and abundant photographs of every step. Additional chapters focus on case construction, subassemblies, and finishing. Although this is an advanced project, the instruction is logical and complete so that the serious reader, independent of skill, can successfully work through the steps. Full-size project plans are included. Build your own version that will be a family heirloom for generations.

Aesthetic seduction, superb workmanship, and historical interest are the three central themes in the collection of Fondation Gandur pour l'Art (Geneva), created in 2010 and still expanding. The aim of this first volume is to catalogue the works in the collection, whose decorative aspects are every bit as important as their narrative content. The works are for the most part sculptures - statuettes and ornamental reliefs - although two-dimensional decorations depicting figurative scenes associated with classical antiquity or Christianity are no less important. The periods represented by the sculptural works discussed in this book reflect the scope of the whole collection, which ranges from the 12th to the 18th century. And since the goal of the collection is to document centuries of cultural exchange between France and neighbouring countries, all the works included in the book come from these latter regions. The hybrid styles are closely linked, and this is an aspect of considerable importance, as is the originality certain pieces display and, last but not least, their aesthetic quality. The book is arranged by topic, which brings out the great originality and extraordinary richness of the collection, as well as the extremely varied nature of the subjects, narrative episodes, and figures portrayed. More specifically, the topics are divided into five sections: ancient gods and heroes; biblical and allegorical figures; scenes from the life of the Virgin; episodes from the life of Christ; and saints and intercessors. Each work has its own entry that describes the historical and geographical context in which it was made, analyses its iconographic content, and includes a bibliography and a list of the exhibitions where the work was exhibited.

The techniques of depositing a thin metallic layer on an object for decoration, corrosion protection, electrical conductivity, wear resistance and so on have been known for many years but have been developed and improved to a remarkable extent in the second half of this century. This book sets out to discuss the principles and practice of those forms of plating most suited to the amateur and small workshop, using relatively simple and inexpensive equipment to produce results virtually undetectable from work carried out by major plating concerns. Jack Poyner, a professional involved in all forms of plating for many years, is also a keen model engineer able to recognise the dividing line between what his average fellow enthusiast would consider practical and worthwhile and what is really better left to experts in the field. The result is a really useful and practical book, which will be of value to both amateur and light industrial users in many diverse fields.

Sir William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851-1925), was among the foremost collectors of his age with as great a passion for the decorative arts as for painting and sculpture. This magnificent book explores one aspect of the outstanding collection of furniture that he bequeathed to the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, Merseyside: pieces designed for human support - primarily seat furniture, but also beds, footstools and a coach model. Most of this remarkable collection in British, but the largest and one of the most important sets was made in Rome for Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch. For each piece the patrons, designers and makers, as well as wider aspects of design, manufacture and upholstery, and usage are all investigated in a meticulous examination of the evidence.

A new, up-to-date edition of the popular and comprehensive encyclopedia by award-winning furniture designer, Jeremy Broun. This unique visual encyclopedia of woodworking techniques is the essential benchtop reference for all woodworkers. Divided into two parts, the first section introduces you to the tools, timbers and techniques that are used in basic woodworking. These are fully demonstrated and described through helpful step-by-step photographs and text, from drawing and marking out; through chiselling, drilling and routing; joint making, bending, shaping and turning; to abrading, scraping and finishing. Power-tool, machine-tool and hand-tool variations are fully detailed, providing you with that much-needed flexibility in your own workshop. Finally, a theme section provides a gallery of finished examples by leading designers of cabinets, chests, chairs, benches, tables, desks and decorative woodwork, demonstrating the principles of design and construction and inspiring both novice woodworkers as well as the more experienced craftsperson to design and create their own items from wood.

Precious Metal Clay (referred to as 'PMC') is one of the most remarkable developments in silver and gold metal working since lost wax casting was developed thousands of years ago. This product is manufactured by Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and is available in fine silver (0.999%) and 24K gold. It is composed of microscopic metal particles, a non-toxic organic binder and water. It looks, feels and is shaped just like potter's clay but after firing all that is left is solid precious metal.

Simple geometric techniques for making Celtic interlacements, spirals, Kellstype initials, animals, humans, etc. Lavishly illustrated.

This book reproduces in colour, with commentary and full contextual discussion, all the miniatures from unpublished illuminated manuscripts of Le Roman de la Rose in the National Library of Wales. A central work in medieval culture, the Rose was among the most consistently illustrated of medieval secular texts. By presenting all the illuminations from all five illuminated Aberystwyth manuscripts the present study enables absorbing comparisons to be made. This is a book that will stir controversy through its scepticism about moral readings of Rose illustrations and through its insistence on an "accidental" element in the interpretative value of miniatures in secular texts. It will interest anyone who studies art and literature, including students of Chaucer - a poet who absorbed the Roman de la Rose to the core by translating it. The reader is first introduced to the narrative and to characteristic sites of illustration within it. The introduction goes on to identify existing published sources of reproductions, and then to argue the crucial role that a grasp of the practical circumstances of production should play in interpreting medieval miniatures. A final complementary chapter formally describes all seven Aberystwyth Rose manuscripts.