Beeldende kunst
The Artist's Garden
This sumptuously illustrated and fascinating book delves into the stories behind the gardens which inspired some of the most beautiful and important works of art.
These gardens not only supplied the inspiration for creative works but also illuminate the professional motivation and private life of the artists themselves – from Cezanne’s house in the south of France to Childe Hassam at Celia Thaxter’s garden off the coast off Maine.
Flowers and gardens have often been the first choice for artists looking for a subject. A garden close to the artist’s studio is not only convenient for daily material and ideas, but also has the advantage of changing through the seasons and over time. Claude Monet’s Giverny was the catalyst for hundreds of great paintings (by Monet and other artists), each one different from the one before. Sometimes a whole village becomes the focus for a colony of artists as at Gerberoy in Picardy and Skagen on the northernmost tip of Denmark.
This book is about the real homes and gardens that inspired these great artists – gardens that can still be visited today. The relationship between artist and garden is a complex one. A few artists, including Pierre Bonnard and his neighbour Monet were keen gardeners, as much in love with their plants as their work, while for others like Sorolla in Madrid, his courtyard home was both a sanctuary and a source of ideas.
This book is as unmissable for art lovers as it is for anyone who knows the joy of time spent in gardens, offering an intriguing insight into the lives of these great painters and the gardens which inspired them to their creative heights. Now available in paperback.
The Artist's Studio: A Little Sticker Book
Discover palettes, paints, brushes, and more, in this vibrant collection of over 100 stickers for all art lovers and creative journalers.
Featuring original illustrations of art materials, matched with joyful color-themed ephemera, these stickers will brighten your journals, diaries and sketchbooks! Rediscovered in original catalogues of art supplies, these vintage images have been given a new lease of life, and are a creative and artistic delight.
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The Atlas of World Embroidery
A richly illustrated history of embroidery and needlework, showcasing the glorious range of styles, motifs, and materials used around the world
Embroidery is one of the world’s most widely shared forms of creative expression—and one of its most varied and diverse. It can be found in every region, yet its visual languages, themes, and techniques vary greatly: some are marked by unique styles and others show influences from neighboring cultures. The Atlas of World Embroidery examines many distinctive embroidery styles and traditions found across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia.
From the quillwork and birch boxes of Indigenous North America to the decorative matyo style of Hungary, the zardozi embroiderers of India, and the satin stitches of Han Dynasty China, Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood provides a comprehensive history of embroidery, describing its materials and tools, its designs and symbols, and its uses and makers. Emphasizing the visual aspects of embroidery across cultures, the atlas features an unprecedented array of color images celebrating the art form.
Organized geographically by region and country, and focusing on hand needlework with relevant examples of machine forms, The Atlas of World Embroidery is a beautiful and authoritative exploration of this ancient craft.
- Lavishly illustrated throughout in full color with more than 300 images
- Features full and close-up images of embroidered fabrics, including household items and clothing, along with insightful analysis
- Includes sections on the Americas; Europe; Sub-Saharan Africa; the Arabic World; Turkey, the Iranian Plateau, and Central Asia; the Indian Subcontinent; East Asia; and Southeast Asia and Australasia—with subsections on individual countries, cultures, and kinds of embroidery
- Contains a directory of design motifs depicting patterns from around the world
The Beverly Hills Housewife
In the summer of 1966, David Hockney paid a visit to a wealthy Los Angeles art collector. Her name was Betty Freeman. He had intended to paint her swimming pool, but was rapidly entranced by Freeman herself.
Hockney, soon to embark on a series of Los Angeles paintings that would become icons of their time and place, immortalized Freeman in Beverly Hills Housewife (1966–67), a sunlit vision of the collector on the terrace of her modernist home. Evoking the light and easy glamour of 1960s Los Angeles, the painting is one of the artist's most seductive works, but it has always carried an air of mystery. Who was the woman in pink?
Like Hockney driving through the Hollywood Hills, James Cahill meanders—interweaving the artist’s discovery of Los Angeles with Freeman’s own evolution from aspiring pianist to photographer, philanthropist, and collector—but never loses focus on the art. Oscillating between art history and anecdote, this is an eclectic study of an artist, his enigmatic muse, and the beginning of a friendship that would shape the course of each of their lives.
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The Book of Printed Fabrics
In eastern France, close to the German and Swiss borders, lies the historic city of Mulhouse. During the early 19th century, it became one of the leading centres of textile manufacture in the country. Today it is home to the Musée de l’Impression sur Étoffes, a museum dedicated entirely to the history of fabric printing from the 17th century right up to the present day.
Few are the serious fashion designers who have not come to visit this astonishing temple to textiles. This book, however, gives you the key to those vaults, presenting perfectly captured images of its collections that span four different continents – recounting a fascinating artistic and technological adventure across the world, from its origins in India to the most contemporary creations.
You’ll discover luxuriantly illustrated chapters that bring to glorious life a chronological and thematic overview of the Musée’s unprecedented retrospective of the art of printed fabrics. And that journey begins in India, exploring the origins of the designs that made these prints famous and how they travelled to the factories of Europe. You’ll also find stories and images detailing artistic innovations such as toile de Jouy and the development of new colour ranges.
The reader can also look back at the incredible inventiveness of manufacturers and their designers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Explore eye-catching cashmere motifs and the intense passion for nature and flowers that emerged under the Second Empire, before the artistic avant-gardes and modernity profoundly evolved the artistic creation of textile prints.
With hundreds of pieces reproduced here to the highest standard, you will journey through the extraordinary tapestry of motifs and colours that make this book such a peerless source of inspiration for textile enthusiasts of all kinds.
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The Collage Compendium
Cut, collage, and craft your way through this elegant collection of vintage images, including botanical illustrations, playful animals, nostalgic typography, decorative patterns, and more!
Inside, you’ll find a carefully curated collection of 2,000 vintage images ready for you to cut, layer, and transform into your own works of art. Luxe materials—including 16 pages printed with shimmering gold ink—mean that each page cuts, handles, and glues like a dream.
Each spread has been expertly compiled by the team at English design studio Roomytown to create a portal to the past. They have spent countless hours trawling through hidden corners of history to find these gems, and each piece is a fragment of design ephemera waiting for a new chapter.
Now it’s your turn to bring them into your own creative projects. Whether you’re journaling, making art, or just rediscovering the simple joy of cutting and sticking, this book is designed to inspire. There are no rules—only possibilities. Use these images to personalize your journal, make unique cards for friends, dream up wall art, or simply explore ideas on a rainy afternoon.
The Collage Compendium is the perfect gift or self-purchase for any artist or crafter.
The Curious Collections Sticker Book
With hundreds of sticky curiosities ready to beautify your junk journal or collage, this book is the perfect companion to The Ransom Note Sticker Book.
This cute little sticker book is packed with extraordinary images that can be used for scrapbooks, journals, collaging, and many other creative pursuits. The stickers are all vintage illustrations.
There are 40 spreads of stickers, over 800 altogether, presented in categories and interspersed with quirky vintage backgrounds.
Examples include:
Vintage cute things
- old stamps
- flower fairies
- bus tickets
- paint swatches
- zodiac signs
- pointing hands
- dancing figures
The Drawing Ideas Book
The Drawings of Vincent van Gogh
The Glove Makers 1
The Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish Painting
The Golden Age in Holland and Flanders roughly spanned the 17th century and was a period of enormous advances in the fields of commerce, science—and art. Still lifes, landscape paintings, and romantic depictions of everyday life became valued by the increasingly wealthy merchant classes in the Dutch provinces, while religious and historic paintings as well as portraits continued to appeal to the Flemish patronage.
The Golden Age brought us Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, and Van Dyck, but it was also the period of Frans Hals’ revolutionary portraiture, Adriaen Brouwer’s depictions of the working class at play, Jan Brueghel’s velvety miniatures, and Hendrick Avercamp’s lively winter landscapes. Norbert Wolf applies his vast understanding of the interplay between history, culture, and art to explore the forces that led to the Golden Age in Holland and Flanders and how this period influenced later generations of artists.
Accompanied by luminous color illustrations, Wolf’s accessible text considers the complex political, religious, social, and economic situation that led to newfound prosperity and, thus, to an enormous artistic output that we continue to marvel at and enjoy today. Lees meer
The Hidden Language of Symbols
The Hidden Language of Symbols covers a wide-ranging selection of visual culture and art under one unified theme: symbols. Often not immediately apparent, our day-to-day lives abound with symbols of various kinds, from national emblems to emojis, allegories to logos, all of which have a fascinating story.
Organized across four all-encompassing themes—power, faith, hope, and uncertainty—this stimulating illustrated account of forty-eight key symbols from global art history is aimed at museum-goers, armchair art sleuths, or anyone who wants to understand the history of their visual environment from an unusual and creative angle. Drawing on artistic examples from the imaginary, natural, physical, and religious worlds, from dragons to eagles, butterflies to labyrinths, and rainbows to wheels, author and art historian Matthew Wilson discusses the lives of these different types of symbols. Analyzing their development, why they evolved, and the various ways they have been interpreted, Wilson also explains in what way symbols are markers of identity, that is, how they gain the power to unite and divide societies. Looking at how they have shaped the world beyond the museum, Wilson reveals their impact on the appearance of our cities, the language of advertising, and even the design of corporate logos.
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The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred CATPC
The Japanese Tattoo
The Japanese Tattoo
Japanese tattoos are among the world’s most powerful forms of body art — visually bold, spiritually resonant, and deeply rooted in cultural tradition.
In this richly illustrated and deeply informed study, author and journalist Manami Okazaki offers rare access to the country’s tattoo masters, exploring their philosophies, apprenticeships, and creative processes.
Through interviews, new photography, and archival images, Okazaki traces the evolution of Japanese tattooing — from Edo-period society to contemporary underworld communities — while capturing its enduring connection to working class pride, specific festivals and even downtown Tokyo’s fire brigades.
- An essential book that is a superb visual reference and also provides cultural insight.
- Features high-quality images ideal for tattoo artists and collectors to study and emulate.
- Tattoo designs often center on mythological, religious, or folkloric figures.
- Dramatic backgrounds like waves that reflect balance, symbolism, and emotional depth.
- Many artists find the psychological and spiritual dimensions as vital as technique itself.
Okazaki offers an unprecedented portrait of a private, resilient art form — perfect for anyone captivated by the aesthetic and symbolism of Japanese ink. Lees meer
