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About books
Recent noteworthy publications that are a pleasure to read and a delight to behold French Art Deco by Jared Goss (Metropolitan Museum of Art, distr. Yale University Press). 280 pp., color and b/w illus. As an artistic term, art deco is one of the most misunderstood. “Art Deco is commonly referred to as a ‘style,’ a designation that suggests specific shared characteristics,” …
Farther afield: London’s leather alchemist: Gavin Rookledge, Rooks Books
Rooks Books produces books (and other leather-wrapped objects) that have a tactile, physical presence while exuding a sense of otherworldly mystery. One might expect to find such volumes in the hands of Gandalf or on the walls of the library at Hogwarts. Each uniquely created binding, made from a vast variety of leathers and other natural skins, seems to say, …
Current and coming: Books at the Morgan
Whatever my other sins might be, envy is not usually among them. And yet, I recently felt that unwelcome emotion as I leafed through a coffee table book devoted to, of all things, the private library of Carl Gustav Jung. To turn from those rows of solemn volumes to the calamitous misalliance of dust jackets and trade paperbacks that make …
Land of the Upper Hudson
By LOUIS C. JONES; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July 1951. For miles through the silent mountains the trickle flows-a vagrant brook playing at the feet of mountains-from the beginnings to the sea, guarded and shadowed by mountains. Cabins and shabby forms lie beside it-housing men to whom guns and a rod are dearer by far than the ho and the plow. There …
Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue (1931-2013)
© Lucy Dickens / National Portrait Gallery, London The noted authority on eighteenth-century French furniture and Sèvres porcelain, Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Surveyor Emeritus of the Queen’s Works of Art died on January 4, 2013. The pinnacle of Sir Geoffrey’s research and study was the three-volume catalogue, French Porcelain in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, published in 2009. …
Collector Profile: Will Shortz
Photography by John Hall | from The Magazine ANTIQUES, JUly/August 2012 | So much came to an end in 1929. The stock market crashed; the jazz age faded; Leon Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union. Far less momentous, except to hard-core puzzle aficionados, was the one-line obituary that appeared in late December, in a New York Times book review: …
Grant Wood
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2010 | In the following passage from Grant Wood: A Life (Knopf, 2010), R. Tripp Evans’s new biography of the man behind American Gothic (1930), the author examines a critical work from the artist’s mid-career: 1934’s Dinner for Threshers. Fig. 1. Dinner for Threshers by Grant Wood (1891–1942), 1934. Signed and dated “Grant Wood, 1934” …
Guest Blog: Lucy Spriggs from Ivanhoe Books
Art historian and writer Lucy Spriggs is the owner of Ivanhoe Books—a Los Angeles-based bookshop specializing in new, rare, and out-of-print books about art and design. She also maintains Ivanhoe’s blog, where she presents selections from her amazing inventory of vintage titles and new arrivals. We asked Spriggs to share her unique eye for art and interiors books in a …
Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz and the timeless allure of wallpaper
The new book by art historian and vintage wallpaper expert Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz, Wallpaper: A History of Style and Trends (Flammarion, 2009), offers a visually stunning and comprehensive survey of decorative wall coverings. Chronicling wallpaper’s evolution—from guild organization in the 16th century through its refinement in 18th-century France; the technical advancement of the panoramique; trade and interpretation in the United States; …