Piero Fornasetti


Book Description

Piero Fornasetti was a master of the decorative imagination. His motifs conjure up the illusionism of Arcimboldo, the grand architectural fantasies of Piranesi and Palladio, and something of the wit of Pirandello or even Picasso. Fornasetti's decorations transform furniture, created in collaboration with Gio Ponti, into art objects touched by trompe l'oeil humour. His designs endure in an astonishing variety of forms: chairs, desks, screens, pianos, plates, masks and other objects all present the artist's timeless vocabulary. Fornasetti's endless invention is celebrated here in a book published to coincide with a major retrospective exhibition in Paris. His visual puns and decorative devices are set out in the context of his paintings, little considered until now. Bibliophilia occupies centre stage, with graphic schemes, designs for imaginary libraries and bookcases set in ironic interiors. The book gathers a plentiful array of his famous Themes and Variations, a series of plate designs drawing on over 500 variations on the face of a famous operatic beauty. A full chronology of Fornasetti's life and work accompanies the text.




Fornasetti


Book Description

This elaborate volume, authored by the designer’s son, is a splendid celebration of one of the world’s most inventive design minds. Combining whimsy and elegance, Piero Fornasetti (1913–1988) transformed everyday objects like cups, scarves, and screens into works of art featuring his idiosyncratic leitmotifs, such as the hand, the female face, and luminescent fish. Additionally, he created a wide range of works, including idealized architectural fantasy drawings, book designs, and provocative nudes, as well as the decor for the luxury liner Andrea Doria. Perhaps most famous for dazzling pieces of trompe l’oeil furniture, Fornasetti was rediscovered in the 1980s and has remained much sought-after by collectors worldwide. Featuring 2,800 illustrations, many never before published, the monograph is designed to be an "artist’s book" that reflects as faithfully as possible Fornasetti’s own approach to design. Fornasetti’s work is organized by type and includes paintings, sculptures and etchings, furniture, graphics, textiles, glass, screens, trays, and ceramics, as well as smaller categories. With unique and exhaustive access to the archives, this epic undertaking covers detailed technical, biographical, and bibliographical information, including a list of exhibitions and a register of the complete works. A must-have for collectors and connoisseurs alike.




Piero Fornasetti


Book Description




Piero Fornasetti


Book Description

Piero Fornasetti is often described as a visionary. A Milan artist, Fornasetti was at the same time a painter, sculptor, designer, craftsman, and an engraver of art books. In his lifetime, he created more than 11,000 items, most of which are one-of-a kind. It is actually said that his production of objects and furniture is one of the largest in the 20th century. Perpetuating the workshop tradition today is his son Barnaba, who has revived his most popular pieces and created new ones. In an illustrated Memoire devoted to Piero Fornasetti's work, the book critically discusses his contribution to 20th century art and design.




Trademarks & Symbols of the World


Book Description

Includes 5,800 trademarks, service marks, symbols etc. by 1,300 designers from 38 countries.




Choupette


Book Description

Karl Lagerfeld’s world-famous cat dispenses essential advice on lifestyle, diet, fashion, beauty, and international travel for the uber-fashionable feline. Choupette—the constant feline companion of designer Karl Lagerfeld, creative director at Chanel—is a celebrity pet like no other. She has it all, from her own iPad to private jet service. She eats from Goyard silver seated next to Karl at the table, has been immortalized in Tokidoki figurines with the Kaiser, and has inspired his couture collections. "I never thought that I would fall in love like this with a cat," Mr. Lagerfeld said in a CNN interview. Choupette delivers words of wisdom to her 37,000+ Twitter devotees, but here, for the first time, she shares her complete lifestyle guide. Humorously themed chapters cover diet, beauty, healthcare, fashion tips, secret loves and pet hates for the pampered cat, along with observations and advice from Madame Horn (her vet), and Madame Françoise (her lady’s maid). Photographs taken by Karl himself include his Sacred Cat of Burma on fashion shoots with Laetitia Casta and Linda Evangelista. The book is completed with drawings, poetry, and photographs of literary cat-lovers including Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Saul Steinberg, Dorothy Parker, and Edward Gorey. This season’s most talked-about cat book is the perfect chic gift for cat lovers, the fashion-conscious, and style-aware readers.




So Close to You


Book Description

Rachel Carter launches a mind-blowing time-travel trilogy with her YA novel So Close to You. Lydia Bentley doesn’t believe the rumors about the Montauk Project, that there’s some sort of government conspiracy involving people vanishing and tortured children. But her grandfather is sure that the Project is behind his father’s disappearance more than sixty years earlier. While helping her grandfather search Camp Hero, a seemingly abandoned military base on Long Island, for information about the disappearance, Lydia is transported back to 1944—just a few days before her great-grandfather’s disappearance. Lydia begins to unravel the dark secrets of the Montauk Project and her own family history, despite warnings from Wes, a mysterious boy she is powerfully attracted to but not sure she should trust.




The Creative Home


Book Description

Let Geraldine James show you how to reinvent your home with new and exciting ways to make it uniquely yours Let Geraldine James show you how to reinvent your home with new and exciting ways to make it uniquely yours. Whether you live in a bustling home where a family of different ages with varying tastes and interests needs to be accommodated, in a compact city pied à terre, or in a country or seaside retreat, you will find inspiration here for your ideal living space. The Creative Home brings together the best of Geraldine James’s Creative series of books and shows how to apply these ideas in your own home. There are four chapters on different areas of the house—Cook and Eat features kitchens and dining areas, Relax and Socialize covers living rooms, Work and Create includes home offices and studios, and Sleep and Bathe, of course, shows bedrooms and bathrooms. A final chapter, Store and Display, shows how your home can be used to show off your treasures and store your collections. Each chapter features rooms of different styles—from sleek and minimal, to Aladdin's caves belonging to collectors of anything and everything, thrifty chic-style rooms furnished with second-hand buys, and renovated homes with no expense spared—as well as displays featuring designer items alongside inherited family heirlooms. However, the one thing every room has in common, whatever its style or purpose, is that it has been furnished and decorated with great attention to detail.




Why We Build


Book Description

In an era of brash, expensive, provocative new buildings, a prominent critic argues that emotions—such as hope, power, sex, and our changing relationship to the idea of home—are the most powerful force behind architecture, yesterday and (especially) today. We are living in the most dramatic period in architectural history in more than half a century: a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole cities are being invented overnight in exotic locales or here in the United States. Now, in a bold and wide-ranging new work, Rowan Moore—former director of the Architecture Foundation, now the architecture critic for The Observer—explores the reasons behind these changes in our built environment, and how they in turn are changing the way we live in the world. Taking as his starting point dramatic examples such as the High Line in New York City and the outrageous island experiment of Dubai, Moore then reaches far and wide: back in time to explore the Covent Garden brothels of eighteenth-century London and the fetishistic minimalism of Adolf Loos; across the world to assess a software magnate’s grandiose mansion in Atlanta and Daniel Libeskind’s failed design for the World Trade Center site; and finally to the deeply naturalistic work of Lina Bo Bardi, whom he celebrates as the most underrated architect of the modern era.




Paolo Venini and His Furnace


Book Description

"A protagonist of Murano glass in the 20th century, Paolo Venini (1985-1959) with his passionate activity spanning almost forty years, made a decisive contribution to the vitality of the art of glass, achieving extraordinary results soon recognized also internally. A native of Milan and a former partner in the Cappellin Venini firm, in 1925 he founded the V.S.M. Venini & C. glassworks with Napoleone Martinuzzi and Francesco Zecchin as partners, from whom he separated in 1932. Becoming president of the company, he worked untiringly as the undisputed director and manager of the Venini firm up to his death, which occurred in 1959. In defining the catalogue of the glassworks, he also contributed as the inventor of new series of glass pieces in themed-1930s, but in particular during the 1950s. This volume, the fruit of in-depth research based mainly on the unpublished material coming from the Venini Historical Archive, illustrates principally this aspect of his activity through a succession of some three hundred models. For the greater part of these Paolo Venini had recourse to the traditional Murano techniques, of which he gave a refined and innovative interpretation, resulting in the Zanfirico reticello, Mosaico zanfirico and Mosaico multicolore series and the highly coloured a murine glass pieces. The influence of Nordic design was also significant, being reinterpreted through Murano eyes. The volume also documents the contribution of the artists who worked with him intermittently between the 1930s and the 1950s, called upon by Venini himself or arriving independently because of their interest in glass and/or the quality of the work at the furnace. Two hundred and fifty glass pieces tell the story of the collaboration of the Swedish ceramic artists Tyra Lundgren, of Gio Ponti, Piero Fornasetti, the painters Eugene Berman and Riccardo Licata, but also the Americans Ken Scott and Charles Lin Tissot. To them must be added the architects, Massimo Vignelli and Tobia Scarpa, and the Norwegian designer, Grete Korsmo." -- Book jacket.




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