The classical elegance of the Regency period in England is considered one of the most sophisticated and refined moments in design history. Throughout the twentieth century, designers took elements of the Regency vocabulary and restyled them to meld with the reigning design aesthetic of the day to extraordinary effect. The book opens with an introduction to the original Regency period, which built its sophisticated aesthetic on the example of the Neoclassical style of Napoleon’s time. It then picks up with the Art Deco designs of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann and S�e et Mare in France. By the 1930s, the Vogue Regency returned home to England where Sibyl Colefax and Syrie Maugham created stylized classical interiors. In America, the Regency revival took hold in Hollywood on the lavish film sets of the 1930s and ‘40s. Designers and architects to the stars such as Billy Haines and T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings made a mark with their work for the Hollywood elite. The book concludes with Regency fashions of the 1930s and ‘40s, when Dorothy Draper and Elsie de Wolfe cut a stylish swath with their Regency-infused designs from coast to coast. Rounding out the vintage interiors are designs by acclaimed contemporary designers. Each chapter is illustrated with a rich selection of images of interiors, film sets, and furniture.
This collection of essays explores the stories that can be told by and about objects and those who choose to collect them. Examining collecting in different historical, social and institutional contexts, the authors consider the meanings and values with which objects are imputed and the processes and implications of collecting.
"Packed with action, INVASION is relentless and leaves you wanting more. Highly recommended." ★★★★★ Steven McLaughlin, Author of Squaddie: A Soldier's Story This story moves at breakneck pace, but be warned—have another book ready., because you'll read this one quickly. ★★★★★ ARRSE - The Army Rumour Service, The UK's largest unofficial military website. ________________ London, the far future—the city is almost unrecognisable, a legacy of the war fought centuries past. Now, two men navigate its dark streets, soldiers on a mission, fighting a battle that began hundreds of years ago… As Downing Street basks beneath a summer sun, the driver of a truck bomb watches and waits as the seconds on his watch tick away. Across the city, three men park their van beneath London’s busiest flight path and unload Stinger missiles, aiming them at the giant airliner passing overhead. In Stockwell, south London, an MI5 officer discovers that his surveillance target—and scores of others—have shaken their tails and disappeared. All at the same time. The fuse has been lit. A maelstrom of violence is about to engulf the capital, a precursor to something far bigger. Something unimaginable and infinitely more terrifying… INVASION.
The first book to consider the subject, Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70 seeks to revise the notion that wholesale couturiers were simply copyists and demonstrate the complexities of their design processes and business strategies. This term has fallen out of usage; however, it was used to describe the pinnacle of the British ready-to-wear fashion industry between the 1930s and 1960s. Companies within this sector have typically been recognised as creators of high-quality copies of French haute couture, using ready-to-wear techniques. Liz Tregenza traces wholesale couture garments from concept to usage, considering design, manufacture, branding, promotion, retail and export. She looks beyond the garments produced and investigates the people behind these firms, consequently demonstrating the significant role that largely Jewish immigrants played in the development and success of this industry. The book also considers the wider social and economic factors that affected manufacturers and consumers; the effect of austerity, rationing and the Utility scheme, and the pressing need for wholesale couturiers to export their products internationally. It demonstrates that 1946 was a critical year for re-building and re-imagining the London fashion industry and that wholesale couturiers were at the centre of these developments. Furthermore, it reveals the impact of changing consumer purchasing power, including the burgeoning youth market, for fashion manufacturers. Offering a new perspective on British fashion history, Wholesale Couture demonstrates that these couturiers were vital in cementing London's status as a ready-to-wear fashion centre.
Following the destruction of Kyoto during the civil wars of the late fifteenth century, large-scale panoramic paintings of the city began to emerge. These enormous and intricately detailed depictions of the ancient imperial capital were unprecedented in the history of Japanese painting and remain unmatched as representations of urban life in any artistic tradition. Capitalscapes, the first book-length study of the Kyoto screens, examines their inception in the sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, focusing on the political motivations that sparked their creation. Close readings of the Kyoto screens reveal that they were initially commissioned by or for members of the Ashikaga shogunate and that urban panoramas reflecting the interests of both prevailing and moribund political elites were created to underscore the legitimacy of the newly ascendant Tokugawa regime. Matthew McKelway’s analysis of the screens exposes their creators’ masterful exploitation of ostensibly accurate depictions to convey politically biased images of Japan’s capital. His overarching methodology combines a historical approach, which considers the paintings in light of contemporary reports (diaries, chronicles, ritual accounts), with a thematic one, isolating individual motifs, deciphering their visual language, and comparing them with depictions in other works. McKelway’s combined approach allows him to argue that the Kyoto screens were conceived and perpetuated as a painting genre that conveyed specific political meanings to viewers even as it provided textured details of city life. Students and scholars of Japanese art will find this lavishly illustrated work especially valuable for its insights into the cityscape painting genre, while those interested in urban and political history will appreciate its bold exploration of Kyoto’s past and the city’s late-medieval martial elite.
Lefty Award Nominee for Best Humorous Novel! “The setting is old London Town, but the story is Wendall Thomas’s trademark three-ring circus, with the redoubtable Cyd Redondo as ringmaster, high-wire walker, and—of course—animal wrangler. What a joy it is to follow the increasingly bonkers plot knowing that every last madcap thread is guaranteed to come together in the end. Fogged Off is what the world needs right now.” —Catriona McPherson, multi-award winning author of The Last Ditch Motel mysteries When travel agent Cyd Redondo’s client and Jack the Ripper expert Shep Helnikov is found dead in London, she navigates the cutthroat worlds of research librarians, unemployed actors, rodent smugglers and more to find his killer and bring his body back home . . . When one of her clients is found dead in London, Cyd Redondo is on the hook for thirty thousand dollars to return his body home. So when his university offers to cover the costs if she’ll go in person to collect him—and his Ripper research—she jumps at the chance. But no sooner does Cyd arrive in London than Shep’s death by natural causes starts to look most unnatural. Cyd’s only hope for recovering the body and vamoosing back to Brooklyn is to find the killer herself—but she’s thwarted at every turn by Scotland Yard, Shep’s former girlfriends, a sinister mortuary service, an old nemesis, and her taxidermist uncle. And when Shep’s apartment is ransacked and a second Ripper expert is found murdered, Cyd knows she’ll have to solve the crimes fast, before someone books her on a one-way trip to the morgue . . . “Cyd’s Balenciaga bag deserves to become as legendary as Sherlock Holmes’s deerstalker and magnifying glass.” —James W. Ziskin, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity Award-winning author of the Ellie Stone Mysteries Praise for the Cyd Redondo Mysteries: Lost Luggage 2018 Macavity Award nominee for Best First Novel 2018 Lefty Award nominee for Best Debut Mystery “Thomas makes a rollicking debut with this comic mystery featuring an unconventional protagonist who proves to have the skills of MacGyver. With its sexy overtones, this fun, character-driven novel will appeal to Janet Evanovich fans.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Ms. Thomas has an absolutely lunatic talent for plot and one of the funniest first-person voices I’ve read in years . . . what kept coming to my mind as I read this were comedy films from the 30s—for me, the golden age of American film humor.” —Timothy Hallinan, Lefty winner and Edgar and Macavity Award-nominated author of the Junior Bender and Poke Rafferty novels “Laugh-out-loud funny and enchantingly ridiculous . . . highly entertaining . . .” —Jessica Howard, Shelf Awareness Drowned Under 2020 Anthony Award nominee for Best Paperback Original 2020 Lefty Nominee for Best Humorous Mystery “Fans of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum will cotton to Cyd.” —Publishers Weekly “The passenger list in Wendall Thomas’s Drowned Under is a cavalcade of randy former nuns, gigolos, stowaways, near-extinct marsupials . . . and one brilliantly sexy disaster of a globetrotting travel agent named Cyd Redondo . . . This is a remarkable novel in what is shaping up to be an exciting and hilarious series. You’ll love Cyd, perhaps the funniest heroine out there. Highest recommendation.” —James W. Ziskin, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity Award-winning author of the Ellie Stone Mysteries “With her clever mind, tart comebacks, and Balenciaga tote bag, Cyd is a fearsome force. What a heroine for the modern age. Do not miss this!” —Daryl Wood Gerber, Agatha Award-winning national bestselling author of the Cookbook Nook and French Bistro Mysteries “Drowned Under is laugh-out-loud funny. With its finely tuned timing and zany, emotional protagonist, this novel puts Thomas in a class with Carl Hiassen and Janet Evanovitch.” —Nancy Tingley, Lefty-nominated author of the Jenna Murphy Mysteries
The book that helped spark the retro craze for fifties architecture and introduced the term googie to the world is back! First published by Chronicle in 1986, this key survey of mid-century coffee shop and commercial architecture is still the standard work on the subject Googie Redux is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the classic and perennial top-selling book that rekindled the craze for 1950s coffee shop and commercial architecture. Long derided by critics as popular folly, the style - so named after John Lautner's eccentric Los Angeles coffee shop - was emblematic of Southern California's car-oriented architecture. By the time of the first edition's debut, these buildings were being demolished by the score. Alan Hess' 1985 Chronicle book did much not only to educate, legitimize, and popularize the style that characterized this endangered architecture, but it helped spark a resurgence of interest into midcentury modern design. Completely revised and significantly expanded in both text and images (some of them recently unearthed for this edition), this redesigned package features is still an entertaining and informative look at the rise, fall, and resurgence of the commercial architecture that changed the American landscape. Includes a greatly expanded guided tour of the iconic buildings in Southern California.
A glorious celebration of America’s most storied handpainted wallpaper company, family owned for 125 years, featuring dozens of rooms by today’s top interior designers. The story of Gracie wallpaper, founded in 1898 and still family owned by the sixth generation, is one of the great untold stories of American interior design. Best known for their exquisitely detailed designs, Gracie papers have been installed at the White House and many of America’s most notable homes. They are a go-to resource for interior designers including Mark Sikes, Summer Thornton, Ellie Cullman, Brooke Giannetti, Suzanne Kasler, Michael S. Smith, Alexa Hampton, Alex Papachristidis, and Amanda Lindroth, and Gracie can be found in the homes of celebrities including Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Cameron Diaz. This volume, featuring hundreds of color photographs of contemporary rooms by leading interior designers, shows the range not only of the papers themselves—from beautiful florals and birds to panoramic landscapes of American folk scenes and French pastoral hillsides to hunting and maritime scenes—but also the imaginative ways they can be used to create truly transporting spaces. Designs in every imaginable color, from metallics to lush greens and cobalt blues to dramatic reds and blacks, show that with Gracie, any room in the home can become a true, custom work of art. Exquisite production detail on this volume, including 4-color printed page edges and a cover design custom-painted by Gracie exclusively for the book, will make this a must-have gift item that every interior design fan will want to display.
Vyāsa is the primary creative poet of the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata and 'Vyāsa Redux' examines the many paradoxical dimensions of his narrative virtuosity in the poem where the poet is both the creator of the work and a character within it. The book also studies elements in the poem which have been received by the late Bronze Age poets who composed the figure of Vyāsa, elements that reflect kinship, polity and modes of mnemonic inspiration. Three paired concepts function within the poem’s narrative process: first, the central approach of the book is founded upon the distinction between plot and story, that is, the causal relation of events as opposed to the temporal relation of events. Second, much of the argument then engages with how this distinction relates to the difference between the preliterate and literate phases of our present text. Third, the nature of how inspiration functions and how edition operates becomes another vital component in our analytic process explaining how Vyāsa becomes a dramatic, causal and at times prophetic character in the poem’s narration as well as its originator.
Another delicious Georgian gem from Lucinda Brant: High drama, deep emotion, and witty prose, all deftly sprinkled with historical detail to keep you mesmerized from beginning to end. Immerse yourself in the romance and opulence of her eighteenth century aristocratic world. When the Earl of Salt Hendon marries squire's daughter Jane Despard, Society is aghast. But Jane and Salt share a secret past of heartache and mistrust. They are forced into a marriage neither wants; the Earl to honor a dying man's wish, Jane to save her stepbrother from financial ruin. Beautiful inside and out, the patient and ever optimistic Jane believes love conquers all; the Earl will take some convincing. Enter Diana St. John, who has been living in a fool's paradise believing she would be the next Countess of Salt Hendon. She will go to extreme lengths, even murder, to hold Salt's attention. Can the newlyweds overcome past prejudices and sinister opposition to fall in love all over again? As the plot develops and darkens you realize the imagery is spectacular. If you've never met true evil just wait 'till you meet Diana St. John; definitely made me a fan. --SWurman: 5 STAR TOP PICK Night Owl Reviews. A love story that fans of historical romance will relish. The rakish and raucous character of the period is contrasted superbly with the sophistication of the age. --Fiona Ingram: 5 STARS Readers' Favorite. Brant's talent is undeniable and dare I admit... I enjoyed Salt Bride more than many of Georgette Heyer's own beloved works and that is high praise indeed. --Courtney Webb: Stiletto Storytime. 2015 B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree, 2011 Australian Romance Readers Awards Finalist. Full-length novel (117,000 words, about 460 standard pages). Parental Guidance Recommended (mild sensuality). Classic romance with a modern voice, similar to Regency noir.
