Rizzoli (RCS MediaGroup)

Like the other Sasek classics, these are facsimile editions of his original books. The brilliant, vibrant illustrations have been meticulously preserved, remaining true to his vision more than forty years later and, where applicable, facts have been updated for the twenty-first century, appearing on a This is... Today page at the back of each book. The stylish, charming illustrations, coupled with Sasek's witty, playful narrative, make these books a perfect souvenir that will delight both children and their parents, many of whom will remember them from their own childhood. In This is Australia, first published in 1970, Sasek swings down under, winging his readers into Sydney, with its famous bridge and space-age Opera House; bustling, modern Melbourne; colonial Adelaide; semitropical Brisbane; the garden city of Canberra; mineral-rich Perth; and Alice Springs, Australia's most famous outback town.

Flowers for the Home presents over 100 simple and stylish floral arrangements for both everyday and special occasions that have been shaped by Handy's worldwide travels. Showcased are floral designs inspired by cultures and traditions from such far-flung places as China, the tropical rain forest, the English countryside, and the American South. Handy discusses the basic design principles we can learn from in each locale, from color palettes to indigenous materials, and provides step-by-step instructions and tips for assembling many of these joyful displays. The book's stunning photography will encourage the creation of delightful bouquets for family and friends.

A sequel to the highly successful One Hundred and One Beautiful Small Towns in Italy, this book expands the series to include the most enchanting hamlets of France. Gorgeously illustrated as well as informative, One Hundred and One Beautiful Small Towns of France is a journey through the French countryside, a place where the pace slows, locals engage strangers in conversation, and every town has a unique story to tell. Travel between the hilltop towns of the Central Massif and the Pyrenees to rockbound coastal fishing villages in Normandy and Brittany. Breathtaking full-color photographs create the perfect atmosphere as you discover these unexplored places, and descriptive sidebars offer invaluable information on local curiosities to indulge, unique artisanal products to buy, and age-old culinary specialties to sample. A detailed appendix is the perfect source on where to shop, sightsee, and dine—avec plaisir! Whether you are an armchair traveler or a Francophile planning another trip, this volume is the guide to the hidden treasures of France that proves once and for all that the heart of this popular travel destination lies in the countryside far from the grandeur and pomp of Paris.

The name Valentino has been synonymous with high fashion for almost fifty years. Based in Rome, Valentino is only one of two couture houses recognized by the French government outside of Paris. His exquisite designs are coveted and worn by young Hollywood and high society the world over. On the occasion of his last couture collection, presented in Paris in the spring of 2008, this landmark book celebrates forty-five years of Valentino’s remarkable career. Published in association with a prestigious exhibition at the Museé des Arts Decoratifs’s famed costume department in Paris, this volume focuses on Valentino’s haute couture creations, highlighting the most important and iconic creations of his half-century in fashion through recurring themes in Valentino’s work—variations on the ideas of volume, line, and texture as well as motifs such as geometry, pleats, and flowers—through new photography, sketches, fabric samples, and commentary on the dresses by Valentino himself. In addition, unprecedented photography by François Halard of Valentino’s last fittings and backstage of his runway show reveals Valentino’s private world for the first time. «Valentino On Valentino», a chapter of first-person accounts of the designs of these iconic dresses, along with Valentino’s commentary on his fashion, will make this publication unique in the study of Valentino as a cultural and artistic icon.

With an engaging text by renowned Michelangelo scholar William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting, Architecture brings together in one exquisite volume the powerful sculptures, the awe-inspiring paintings, and the classical architectural works of one of the greatest artists of all time. Including everything from his sculptures Pietàs and David to his beautiful paintings of the Sistine Chapel and the Doni Tondo, the book provides an opportunity to view Michelangelo’s work as never before, and to more fully understand the artist who, through his work, spoke of his life and times. The frescoes are specially printed on onion skin paper to recreate the actual appearance of light reflecting off of the plaster walls. The stunning black-and-white photography of the sculptures is printed in four colors to bring out the rich details of the marble.

More than any other country in the world, it is Italy that we turn to for gastronomic inspiration. 101 Beautiful Towns of Italy: Food and Wine takes readers along on a one-of-a-kind tour through the tantalizing tastes of Italy's varied landscape to explore hilltop and seaside towns, where the flavors of Italy scent the air, a good meal is considered the highest form of art, and a fine bottle of wine is never hard to come by. In Alba, savor the refined taste of the white truffle accompanied by a hearty glass of Barolo. Head to Parma for a sampling of prosciutto di Parma, and don't forget to pick up a wheel of parmigiano-reggiano. Travel to the hills of Tuscany, where a glass of red Vino Nobile di Montepulciano accompanies your meal of filetto d'anatra con tartufo (truffled duck breast) and to Campania, home of Naples, the Amalfi coastline, and, of course, pizza, in its many forms, but almost always topped with mozzarella di bufala. Descriptive sidebars key readers in to the best restaurants in town, where to buy the ingredients to prepare the dishes featured (and where to shop for the wine to accompany them) as well as tips on what to see during a visit. A sprinkling of recipes rounds out this information-packed resource. Included is an appendix with in-depth listings to help travelers plan their culinary journeys: what wine cellars to visit, where to dine, and how to navigate a busy market.Whether you're an armchair traveler or an Italophile planning another trip, this volume provides an excellent guide.

Graduating from Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the 1980s, Martin Margiela (and his contemporaries in the Antwerp Six) transformed global fashion with his aggressive restatement of traditional fashion design and a polemical approach to luxury trends. Working first with the house of Gaultier, Margiela absorbed the radical design of Japanese deconstruction, making it wholly his own with the founding of his own label in 1988. Margiela propounds a singular, enigmatic look, moving beyond the recognizable tropes of deconstruction — a monochromatic palette, outsized garments, non-traditional fabrics, exposed seams, or roughly appliqued details — to develop a fully considered worldview, one with elegance, mystery, and menace in equal measure. This book provides an inside look at the design process from a craftsman who creates pieces prized for their originality, delicacy, and daring. In the spirit of Margiela's garments, the book is a work of art in itself, designed exclusively by Margiela and complete with silver inks, ribbon markers, a variety of lush paper types, twelve booklets, and an embroidered white-linen cover. This book provides a window onto the intimate, handmade world of a unique designer.

Zaha Hadid is the most visionary of the best-known contemporary architects. This is the most complete survey of her work, and it encompasses both built and unbuilt designs, including her most recent commissions: the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum in Lithuania and the Aquatics Centre for the 2012 London Olympics. Among her most renowned works are the Vitra Fire Station in Germany and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

The recipient of the 1998 Turner Prize, Chris Ofili is one of the most important artists working today. Ofili began to garner attention in the mid-1990s with his intricately constructed works that combine beadlike dots of paint, collaged images from the popular media, and natural, if unusual, materials such as elephant dung. Ofili created a unique iconography that married African artistic and ritual practices with Western art-historical traditions and contemporary hip-hop culture. Throughout his career, Ofili has explored themes of race, birth, death, seduction, and salvation on both a religious and a personal level. His most recent body of work employs Trinidadian myth and folk traditions to reinterpret age-old Christian beliefs. This extraordinary book is the first to examine the full scope of Ofili's artistic development over the last two decades. Extending beyond his painterly practice, the book surveys Ofili's work in watercolor, graphite drawing, and sculpture. Literary and historical parallels from contributors David Adjaye, Thelma Golden, and Okwui Enwezor explore the ways through which the artist has grasped his times with a palpable sense of history and intellectual curiosity.

The paintings of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) have come to be regarded as representative of the birth of a pictorial style whose originality and form would eventually lead to a profound new painting aesthetic that brought together human, personal, and natural elements. Largely influenced by Camille Pissarro, this unique and independent painter sought to examine his love of nature which he shared with his impressionist colleagues, with his desire to explore his surroundings through form, passionate use of color, and a measured brushstroke. Reproduced in this illustrated volume is a large selection of Cezanne's groundbreaking masterpieces, as well as depictions of subjects he was most fond of painting.

A leading member of the impressionist movement, Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) exhibited regularly at the annual Salons, where he strove to enliven an establishment that had become stodgy with academic and history painting. Renoir's paintings of Parisians engaging in leisurely pasttimes, enjoying their dejeuner under a pergola or beside the Seine at an open-air cafe, sailing, swimming, picnicking, and dancing at one of the many halls in towns outside of the city, are imbued with a sense of conviviality and joie de vivre that was wholly new to the Salons. Renoir was enchanted by his subjects: whether friends, lovers, patrons, collectors, or family members, his portraits are characterized by gesture, expression, and a soft palette full of light, conveying a sense of pleasure in observation and always the charm of the individual portrayed. Brought together here are some of this prodigious artist's most significant canvases, including the luminous Le Moulin de la Galette, Luncheon of the Boating Party, and La Grenouillere.

Jeffrey Bilhuber returns with a second book after Design Basics, his successful debut volume. In a lavish new format, the media-savvy designer for tastemakers and celebrities presents his most recent projects from coast to coast. Bilhuber views luxury as essential to every life well-lived, a way of appreciating and sharing our joy in existence, not the exclusive purview of the few. The designer encourages the reader to seek, aspire, and revel in luxury at home, however simple or adorned: from the embrace of the perfectly tufted reading chair to an heirloom vase cradling freshly cut garden roses to a dazzling chandelier that makes light dance. In seven chapters filled with charming anecdotes and lovely observations, the designer—whom Hamish Bowles has likened to a twenty-first century Billy Baldwin—explores the idea of luxury as life’s abundance reflected in a home’s varied elements: Discovery, Passion, History, Ornament, Grace, Comfort, and Delight. Each project discussed evokes the many qualities of a distinctively American luxury practically expressed and fully enjoyed at home: beauty, family, refinement, and hospitality. Within these, the reader gleans insight from Bilhuber’s inimitable style and learns that luxury is about cultivating a state of mind as much as it is about the objects with which we surround ourselves.

The French have a legendary sense of style that is synonymous with a joyous, sophisticated way of life, joie de vivre. Elegant and witty, French chic — a clever mix of classic and contemporary — sums up de Dampierre’s design sensibility. Using Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses as a model, she provides advice on how to achieve this distinctive look. The fascinating French decorative history of such architectural elements as windows, fireplaces, and doors, along with basic design principles, is given to provide the origins of the essence of chic. Stunning photography of her home — from the striking entrance hallway with its leopard-pattern carpeted staircase to the sensual master bedroom enlivened with charming toile wallpaper and the resplendent gardens dotted with topiaries — captures the designer’s personal invocations of the best of French chic and empowers the reader to duplicate the experience at home. French Chic is the perfect guide for creating vibrant living spaces with flair.

Country living evokes bucolic landscapes and picturesque villages—rolling Connecticut countryside, verdant farmland, the sun-drenched hills of Malibu—and the architecture that echoes these idyllic settings. These houses, ranging from family estates to weekend retreats, are the personal homes of decorators and tastemakers, including Jonathan Adler, Martyn Lawrence-Bullard, and Steven Gambrel. The properties exemplify varied design perspectives and provide fresh ideas about how country living is ideal for creative expression. This inspiring medley ranges from Tony Duquette’s exotic pavilion-style California home to a charming New York Victorian, a modernist Palm Springs desert getaway by Neutra, a nineteenth-century Gothic cottage on Shelter Island, and an eighteenth-century Connecticut house. Along with design ideas for interiors, the book also covers the garden and pool areas. Since outdoor entertaining is an integral part of country living, a section devoted to tabletop display is included. These beautifully photographed inspirations encourage the reader to explore the design opportunities in the country guided by the best interior designers.

Frank Lloyd Wright presents a stunning overview of the work of this towering American genius, encompassing the entirety of Wright’s long and extraordinarily prolific career. From his earliest work, such as the Home and Studio in Oak Park, IL, of 1889, to the wonderfully evocative textile block houses of Los Angeles of the mid-1920s, to such seminal masterpieces as Fallingwater, of 1935, in the Pennsylvania wilderness, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, of 1956, in New York, the book offers an extraordinarily abundant trove of architectural riches. Featuring more than a hundred discrete works, from the well known to the obscure, expertly discussed in the text of highly respected Wright scholar Kathryn Smith, Frank Lloyd Wright weaves a gorgeous tapestry that will engage the mind and delight the eye.

The glamour and excitement of the world of haute jewelry is beautifully explored in the inaugural edition of Jewelry International.

The fifth entry in the Morphosis series presents the recent work of Pritzker Prize-winning Thom Maynes multifaceted firm, featuring a large body of built work published here for the first time.

With “McMansions” increasingly giving way to “tiny” houses, the desire to downsize and be more ecologically and economically prudent is a concept many are beginning to embrace. Focusing on dwelling spaces all under 1,000 square feet, TINY HOUSES (Rizzoli, April 2009) by Mimi Zeiger aims to challenge readers to take a look at their own homes and consider how much space they actively use. Ranging from tree houses to floating houses, TINY HOUSES features an international collection of over thirty modular and prefab homes, each one embodying “microgreen living”, defined as the creation of tiny homes where people challenge themselves to live “greener” lives. By using a thoughtful application of green living principles, renewable resources for construction, and clever ingenuity, these homes exemplify sustainable living at its best.

America's Next Top Model is a runaway runway series and must-see television for millions of teens and tweens. Young women of various backgrounds, shapes, and sizes are mentored by today's top fashion stylists and industry experts. With chapters that focus on beauty, health, and education, and filled with tips on hair, makeup, nutrition, and fashion dos and dont's, this is the first and only book that empowers girls to be themselves while pursuing their dreams. Girls will learn the fits that work for their body type, how to take calculated risks with their style, and how to take advantage of their natural qualities. By instructing readers on how to highlight and enhance their own individual features, America's Next Top Model: Fierce Guide to Life also serves as a resource on how to use those assets to become a successful model, including the right way to find an agent, how to put together a winning portfolio, and designers and photographers everyone should know. America's Next Top Model is seen, in its original and localized versions, in more than 120 countries. Published to coincide with Cycle 12 of the show, this is the perfect book for anyone who dreams of being a supermodel.

This ambitious book examines in great depth the English country house, including Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Georgian, Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian houses. The book covers all aspects of country living and includes famous estates by Vanbrugh, Lutyens, and Adam, as well as smaller, classically English houses and cottages, each a jewel of its period. More than four hundred color and black-and-white photographs from the incomparable archive of Country Life magazine showcase the architectural glory of the English country house. Exterior, interior, detail, and landscape photographs capture the splendor of the homes and their exquisite decoration. Interspersed throughout this handsome book are booklets printed on rich, uncoated paper, with essays from England's foremost architectural historians. In these essays, the reader discovers the history of the social use of the country house, its interiors, its gardens and ancillary buildings, its collections, and the influence of English country house styles in the U.S.

Frank Lloyd Wright's wife, Olgivanna, is famously quoted as saying that My husband seemed to thrive on hardships. From the years 1920 to 1932 Wright's fortunes were at a low ebb; he was plagued by financial, personal, and professional setbacks, but saw the time as one of challenges instead of one of defeat. Unable to find patrons, his imagination led to visionary, often splendid, architectural conceptions that laid the groundwork for the revolutionary architecture he would build in the decades to follow. During this period he designed almost fifty projects, of which only a few were realized, but those few are seen today as among his most important creations. They include the majestic Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, four exquisite textured concrete block houses in Los Angeles, renovations and additions to his beloved home, Taliesin, in Wisconsin, the Octillo Desert Camp in Chandler, Arizona, and his work as design consultant for the lavish Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Cottages in the desert in Phoenix. Rare and unseen photos as well as little-known drawings from this period are on lavish display in this important work on the master architect.

Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward features a lifetime of achievement by this titan of American architecture through newly commissioned contemporary photography, archival photography, and wonderfully detailed drawings of more than 200 projects, including such masterworks as the S. C. Johnson & Sons Administration Building in Wisconsin, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Taliesin West, Wright's desert home in Arizona, as well as less-known projects designed for Baghdad, Iraq, and beyond. The book is richly accompanied by authoritative text from some of the most important Frank Lloyd Wright scholars and writers at work today, and presents a timely reevaluation of the work and life of Frank Lloyd Wright within the context of social spaces, in the spirit of the exhibition.

The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles is a celebration of the design history and craftsmanship behind this simple but efficient two-wheeled vehicle. Featuring fifty classic models built by hand, this book unveils the bicycle's technical evolution within a historical context. Beautifully detailed are early-twentieth-century models with multi-gear systems, mid-century machines where war and postwar economy challenged craft and utility, as well as modern and contemporary bicycles. Featured artisans and brands include La Gauloise, Reyhand, Schulz, Barra, Alex Singer, and Rene Herse. With brilliant full-color images of each model and chronological text detailing the craftsmanship that went into producing these elegant machines, this book will appeal to bicycle enthusiasts and to anyone interested in design.

Who has not dreamed of an idyllic house in the country? Rustic architecture is the expression of an aesthetic concerned primarily with the informal beauty of the natural world. Often set upon craggy peaks, on cliffs overlooking wild seas, beside calm riverbanks, or in the depths of old forests, houses in the Rustic Style engage the eye and rouse the poetic soul by means of picturesque siting, evocative landscaping, asymmetrical architectural compositions, and often wonderful vernacular detail that reveals evidence of handmade work, including uneven floor boards, sloping ceilings, rough-hewn and textured surfaces of plaster, stone, rubble, and wood. In Rustic, Bret Morgan illuminates this much-loved style, giving us the definitive volume on the subject. Comprehensive in scope, Rustic features historically important houses from across America, some small-scale, some larger, from the sublime Ames Gates Lodge of 1881 in North Easton, Massachusetts, designed by H. H. Richardson, to the Arcadian masterpiece Ridge House of 2001, in Spokane, Washington, by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. A beautifully photographed and astutely written volume, Rustic is destined to become a much-cherished companion for those whose love of the woodlands is matched only by a love of home.