A guide to finding, researching and using historical textiles in your stitched work, to bring layers of meaning and a rich sense of emotional connection through place and time.

Renowned textile artist and tutor Hannah Lamb frequently uses and is inspired by old fabrics in her work, from age-worn cotton and linen sheets to delicate lace collars, vintage patchwork to snippets of colourful printed silk. In this book she explores many creative ways to incorporate historical textiles into your own work, from first conception and initial research to the finished piece. Chapters cover:

• Unfolding: how to track down historical textiles in shops, markets, antiques fairs, museum collections and online, or in your own family scrap bag, and how to conduct thorough and meaningful research into them.

• Connecting: how to design and plan your work with historical textiles, starting with mood boards and sketchbooks and progressing to practical creative experimentation, including old-fashioned techniques such as the ‘prick and pounce’ method of pattern transfer, popular in Tudor times.

• Making: the practicalities of using old and fragile materials in your work, and how to combine them with newer fabrics to make cohesive and beautiful pieces that tell powerful stories. This chapter also explores alternative ideas, such as digital printing, that allow you to import the fabric’s essence but leave the original piece intact.

• Gathering: this chapter considers examples of contemporary artworks that respond to textile heritage and place, and studies how we tell histories and whose perspective we tell them from.

This thoughtful, imaginative book is illustrated with inspirational examples of the author’s own work and that of other leading textile artists, and provides a valuable introduction to working with historical textiles to enhance your own pieces of textile art.

...give(s) readers a stirring sense of place in which the history of an era springs to life and captivates one's imagination.-- The Quoddy Times

Venture into Sicily’s stunning homes, a mix of centuries-old Baroque palazzos, generous farmhouses, and modernvillas owned by the Italian island’s most interesting residents

Ancient Sicily, the Mediterranean’s largest island, has been a land of fascination from antiquity to 'The White Lotus'. So it is no wonder that today’s Sicily boasts homes of every variety, and some of the most exceptional have been selected for this new book by writer Christopher Garis and beautifully photographed by Guido Taroni. While Sicily is well known for its dazzling beaches, beautiful countryside, archaeological treasures, and of course Etna, its active volcano, Inside Sicily offers an exclusive look at the private side of the island: gorgeous palaces, baroque castles and generous farmhouses where Sicilians live and entertain with flair and elegance. Here is Casa Cuseni in Taormina, the historic house of English painter Robert Kitson, where other artists and writers - Giacomo Balla and D. H. Lawrence among them - contributed to the décor. Whether sophisticated in muted tones and clean lines, bursting with art or a riot of color, these apartments, houses, and palaces represent the diversity of design found in this enigmatic region.

There have been major advances in therapeutic photography since Del's first book in 2013, and the recent lockdowns have accelerated the field further.

The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of world photography up to the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets out to be the standard, definitive reference work on the subject for years to come.

Its coverage is global an important first in that authorities from all over the world have contributed their expertise and scholarship towards making this a truly comprehensive publication. The Encyclopedia presents new and ground-breaking research alongside accounts of the major established figures in the nineteenth century arena.

Coverage includes all the key people, processes, equipment, movements, styles, debates and groupings which helped photography develop from being a solution in search of a problem when first invented, to the essential communication tool, creative medium, and recorder of everyday life which it had become by the dawn of the twentieth century.

The sheer breadth of coverage in the 1200 essays makes the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography an essential reference source for academics, students, researchers and libraries worldwide.

What sort of a life do you make for yourself when there is no focus? How does your life pan out as you ride the vicissitudes of a dog eat dog, cut throat employment market? How do you chase your dreams into adulthood to find love, happiness and success, when you carry inside yourself a childhood, dejected, insecure, unstable and with what tiny morsel of confidence you possess - in tatters, because you've been at the mercy of a bullying control freak - your own father? I have survived so much mental anguish with confidence renewed following a difficult and painful education in Blackpool. After handwriting 100 letters, I landed my first job - cutting my teeth as a London-based portrait and wedding photographer in early summer 1986. A life on the ocean wave then beckoned, which turned me from nervous novice ship's photographer to expert smudger working aboard cruise liners worldwide. In 1990 I settled down, met the girl of my dreams and landed a fabulous job - Metropolitan Police Service forensic photographer. In the late 1990s I qualified as a Hendon-based instructor, leaving the police in 2004 to set up a business. If that wasn't enough, I then retrained as a medical photographer in 2008 and I'm now a medical photography manager working for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Both journey and path to success have been a miracle in the making.

When he arrived in Paris, Koudelka had already produced two outstanding works of reportage. One documented the Prague Spring, while the other, on gypsies, could almost have been an ethnological study had its images not been charged with so much emotion. Unknown in 1970, he rose to become one of the most powerful photographers of his day.This book shows that in the lands of exile through which he travels with his amazing urge to see, Koudelka's own particular talent has been affirmed and expanded.

Whats in a shadow? Menace, seduction, or salvation? Immaterial but profound, shadows lurk everywhere in literature and the visual arts, signifying everything from the treachery of appearances to the unfathomable power of God. From Plato to Picasso, from Rembrandt to Welles and Warhol, from Lord of the Rings to the latest video game, shadows act as central players in the drama of Western culture. Yet because they work silently, artistic shadows often slip unnoticed past audiences and critics. Conceived as an accessible introduction to this elusive phenomenon, Grasping Shadows is the first book that offers a general theory of how all shadows function in texts and visual media. Arguing that shadow images take shape within a common cultural field where visual and verbal meanings overlap, William Sharpe ranges widely among classic and modern works, revealing the key motifs that link apparently disparate works such as those by Fra Angelico and James Joyce, Clementina Hawarden and Kara Walker, Charles Dickens and Kumi Yamashita. Showing how real-world shadows have shaped the meanings of shadow imagery, Grasping Shadows guides the reader through the techniques used by writers and artists to represent shadows from the Renaissance onward. The last chapter traces how shadows impact the art of the modern city, from Renoir and Zola to film noir and projection systems that capture the shadows of passers-by on streets around the globe. Extending his analysis to contemporary street art, popular songs, billboards, and shadow-theatre, Sharpe demonstrates a practical way to grasp the dark side that looms all around us.

This innovative volume explores the idea that while photographs are images, they are also objects, and this materiality is integral to their meaning and use. The case studies presented focus on photographs active in different institutional, political, religious and domestic spheres, where physical properties, the nature of their use and the cultural formations in which they function make their 'objectness' central to how we should understand them. The international contributors are drawn from disciplines including the history of photogarphy, visual anthropology and art history, and their pieces focus on areas ranging from the Netherlands, North America and Australia to Japan, Romania and Tibet. Each shows the methodological strategies they have developed in order to fully exploit the idea of the materiality of photographic images. Inspiring and instructive, the book can be used either as an overview of this exciting new area of investigation, or as a practical guide to the student or academic on how to understand photographs as objects in diverse contexts.

Still Life Notecards feature 20 beautiful, floral photographs by New York City–based florist, artist, and photographer Doan Ly and her studio, a.p. bio.

Doan Ly’s striking photography elevates floral design to an art form. Her playful and innovative floral arrangements and her use of color and lighting are visually stunning. This lovely stationery set of 20 blank notecards with accompanying envelopes comes in a keepsake box featuring a pull-out tray with a thumb-cut detail, making it perfect to use for any occasion or give as a gift. It also pairs beautifully with Still Life, Ly's hardcover coffee table photography book of the same name.