New Release: Alchemy: The Art of Philip and Kelvin LaVerne
NEW | Golden Glass: Verre Églomisé brings the reader into the glittering world of Miriam Ellner, the foremost practitioner of verre églomisé, the ancient process of gilding precious metals on the reverse side of glass, etching in a design, and setting it off with color.
While it was first developed in 200 BC, Ellner is one its acknowledged modern masters. These seductive materials coalesce to enliven the surface of glass with luminous reflections creating moving glass paintings. She is one of few experts in this rare art form, making it fresh and relevant in the 21st century. Her work enhances private collections and design projects around the world. Beginning her career as a dancer, Ellner brings energy, dynamism, and sense of motion to her art. This book offers stunning views into both Ellner’s process, her personal work, and the way she has worked on commissions with many leading interior designers and architects to create pieces that transform their rooms and bridge the worlds of art, craft, and design. Golden Glass: Verre Églomisé contains reflections from her collaborators, coupled with hundreds of incredible photographs, as well as Ellner’s own insights into her decades-long practice, journeying into the ethereal world of illumination, reflection, and color.
NEW | The dinnerware of presidents and the teacups of dignitaries. Mottahedeh, founded 100 years ago and based on Mildred and Rafi Mottahedeh’s passion for antiques, is the most distinguished ceramics reproduction company today.
With meticulous craft, attention to detail, and storied partners such as the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Historic Charleston Foundation, Mount Vernon, and Winterthur, Mottahedeh continues to create some of the most highly sought-after pieces on the market. For 30 years, Wendy Kvalheim has led this company into modern times. Splendid Settings: 100 Years of Mottahedeh Design is a testament to both Mottahedeh’s inimitable style and Kvalheim’s unique vision of the future. This is not your grandma’s china. In this lavishly illustrated celebration of the Mottahedeh centenary hundreds of Mottahedeh’s finest pieces are showcased; from classical dinner services in the great historical houses of America, to the placement of Mottahedeh pieces in modern New York lofts and contemporary Palm Beach, Florida dwellings, each page is an unexpected joy.
Wendy Kvalheim has been the president and design director of Mottahedeh & Co., Inc. for the last 30 years, carrying forward the company founded a century ago. An education and psychology major at Mount Holyoke College, she started bronze casting and went on to receive a BFA in sculpture from the Pratt Institute of Art. She enjoys cooking for a crowd and her cookies are legendary. Wendy and her husband, Grant Kvalheim live in Princeton, New Jersey. This is her second book.
256 Pages / 11’’ x 11.875’’
OVER 220 ILLUSTRATIONS
ISBN: 978-1-938461-60-6
NEW | Ahoy Sailor! offers the reader another mesmerizing foray into the mind of ubercollector and archivist of the everyday, Daniel Rozensztroch.
Rozensztroch’s interests have moved fruitfully between the specific (Spoon and Herring) and the general (A Life of Things), but now they journey out to sea, gathering and presenting a singular collection of objects, images, and representations of sailors and seamen. The ocean has inspired an expansive world of vernacular and popular imagery, much of it uncanny and unique, produced by the tension between the laws of nature that rule the oceans and the miniature floating societies left to their mercy. Meticulously drawn together, and with an individuality that has become his trademark, Rozensztroch gives the reader a visual feast that ranges from antique toys and postage stamps to French artist Jean Cocteau’s beguiling sketches found in Jean Genet’s cult-classic Querelle de Brest.
DANIEL ROZENSZTROCH was a longtime consultant to the magazine Marie-Claire Maison and is the former creative director of Merci in Paris, France. He is also the co-author of a number of titles in the Style Series published by Clarkson N. Potter / Random House, as well as a number of books on the subject of everyday things that include Herring: A Love Story, Spoon, and A Life of Things (Pointed Leaf Press).
Hardcover
232 Pages 9” X 12”, 229mm X 305mm
Over 200 Images
ISBN: 978-1-938461-56-9
Hardcover
280 Pages / 11” X 12”
ISBN: 978-1-938461-19-4
NEW | For what is a home really, but our soul’s residence in the outer world? Using design to bring out the innermost parts of ourselves, Lisa Staprans creates layered spaces that envelope, heal, and nurture.
By weaving the spiritual and the scientific worlds together, The Soul of Design looks at everything from the use of ritual to the latest science on the connection between the brain, design, and wellness. Equal parts personal history, manifesto, and luxurious illustration, this book places Staprans as the leading spokesperson for the neuroscience of beauty. Set in the hills and redwood forests of Northern California, aided by collaborations with artisans, furniture makers, and architects, and guided by a keen mind and sensitive spirit, The Soul of Design answers the deeper questions about what design is truly capable of.
Lisa Staprans is the design director and CEO of Staprans Design. She has over 25 years of interior design experience, working on high-profile, residential, and commercial projects around the country, and winning numerous awards from the American Institute of Architects. This is her first book.
NEW | On any given day, more people will be “wearing” Stan Herman than any other American fashion designer. As he continues to work and thrive in his 95th year, Herman is the most acclaimed uniform designer of our time.
By Stan Herman
But that is just part of a life well-lived, and well-loved. In Uncross Your Legs: A Life in Fashion, Herman reflects on a remarkable life and career, from his childhood in Brooklyn, NY and Passaic, NJ, to WWII Army service in Europe, and back to NYC as a young freelance designer in the fashion hothouse of the Garment District. Next up, 16 years as head of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, where he was instrumental in bringing New York Fashion Week to Bryant Park – all the while continuing his thriving uniform and leisurewear design business.
It’s also a deeply moving and insightful memoir, following personal triumphs and tragedies, including his nearly 40 year relationship with novelist Gene Horowitz, who suffered a heart attack and passed away in 1992. Together they lived their lives in the shadow of the AIDS crisis that decimated their personal and professional worlds. They also shared a beloved poodle named “Mozart,” who helped fill the void when Herman found himself suddenly alone. With equal aplomb, Herman writes with good humor and compassion, recalling the cruel and casual racism he witnessed in the military, his focus on animal rights in the fashion industry – as well as encountering the indignities of one’s aging anatomy. Learn the story behind the man whose vision, over 60 years, has dramatically helped forge and transform American style.
8” X 10.375”, 200mm X 265mm
HARDCOVER
320 PAGES
OVER 100 IMAGES
ISBN: 978-1-938461-58-3
RIGHTS AVAILABLE
NEW | Michael Coffey: Sculptor and Furniture Maker in Wood unsettles the conventional distinction between craftsman and artist, which is often assumed to be the difference between creating something new, as opposed to reproducing old forms.
By Michael Coffey
Inspired by but not beholden to artist-craftsmen such as George Nakashima, Wendell Castle, and Jack Rogers Hopkins, Michael Coffey’s handmade, one-of-a-kind works seamlessly combine the irregular forms of nature, an aesthetic built on the variable and unexpected, with a deep sense for the haptic and functional qualities of wood. This book includes not only a generous reproduction of Coffey’s body of work, but also an in-depth autobiographical reflection on how his formative experiences, from his rural and bohemian childhood to community organizing, and to the discovery of his passion for woodworking, molded him into the sculptor and artisan he is today.
NEW | Jorie Butler Kent has led an extraordinary life in every sense of the word.
By Jorie Butler Kent
She comes from one of the great American families–the Butlers–who have had a long and celebrated history in business, exploration, and philanthropy, not to mention their central role in the establishment of polo in the United States and founding the Oak Brook Polo Club over 100 years ago. Her memoir, Jorie: The Extraordinary Life of Jorie Butler Kent, Visionary and Philanthropist is the story of family and its traditions, of cinematic adventure, of a deep abiding love for nature. Jorie has succeeded in whatever she set her mind to. To name but a few of her achievements: she was a champion equestrian as well as one of the first women to run a championship polo team, a fixture of society from New York to Palm Beach, and an award-winning pioneer of environmentally conscious tourism and conservation in Kenya. With her business, the world-renowned luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent, built with Geoffrey Kent, and her charity, Friends of Conservation, bringing her to places as diverse as the plains of the Masai-Mara and the uplands of Papua New-Guinea, Jorie has changed the lives of thousands of people. Lavishly illustrated and containing stories that include everything from coaching the future King Charles III in polo to birdwatching in central Africa with George Plimpton, Jorie: The Extraordinary Life of Jorie Butler Kent, Visionary and Philanthropist allows the reader to delve into the story of a truly unparalleled life.
Hardcover
336 Pages / 9.5” x 12.125”
ISBN: 978-1-938461-55-2
NEW | The People’s Park, a sequel and expansion of Janet Ruttenberg’s previous monograph, Gatherings (2013), captures the artist’s monumental engagement with Central Park, bringing together years of graphic and conceptual development, combining a wide array of mediums, processes, and practices.
By Janet Ruttenberg
It is a testament to her indefatigable commitment to not only a place, but to the people that enjoy it. Revolutionizing the grand, if neglected, landscape painting tradition, she mixes paint, print, sound, video, and photography, forming what is truly a unique and unparalleled body of work. While her pratice has clear antecedents in the post-Impressionist tradition of Georges Seurat and Édouard Manet, she supersedes these influences by developing a beautiful and increasingly complex world of both images and the process of image-making itself. In addition to showing over 75 exquisite works, cataloging her unique process, this monograph contains three illuminating scholarly essays, contextualizing and analyzing Ruttenberg’s œuvre, as well as 15 scannable QR codes that allow the viewer to take in the full audiovisual experience of her works.
JANET K. RUTTENBERG, is a visual artist working in New York City. She has broken her intensely guarded privacy only rarely, with a solo exhibition, Picturing Central Park (2013) at the Museum of the City of New York, and its accompanying monograph, Gatherings (2013), as well as Janet Ruttenberg: Beholder (2019) at ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey. This is her second monograph.
NEW | Illustrator James McMullan, renowned for his posters for Lincoln Center, editorial work for New York Magazine and Rolling Stone, and six acclaimed children’s books co-authored with his wife, Kate McMullan, is now publishing his most intimate and daring monograph to date.
By JAMES MCMULLAN
Emerging from decades of teaching drawing at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and sittings in his studio, Hello World: The Body Speaks in the Drawings of Men showcases McMullan’s unparalleled ability to depict the beauty of the male physical form, through keen lines and vibrant, yet inquisitive brushstrokes. Using gouache and a bristle brush, McMullan explores not just the drama and rhythm of bodies in motion, but the excitement and fraught psychological complexity between subject and portraitist.
For the last five decades, James McMullan has been regarded as one of America’s preeminent illustrators. He has created more than 80 posters for Lincoln Center, his drawings of Brooklyn’s nightlife inspired the creation of Saturday Night Fever, and has taught drawing for over 20 years at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In the pages of Vanity Fair, he was described by Mark Rozzo as being “to modern- day New York what Toulouse-Lautrec was to 19th-century Paris.” He lives and works in New York City.
Hardcover
96 Pages / 10” x 13.375”
ISBN: 978-1-938461-49-1
This intimate portrait of two young seamen giving each other tattoos is just one of the many stunning images from Daniel Rozensztroch’s inimitable new book Ahoy Sailor!
NEW | The works of Philip and Kelvin LaVerne are already prized among collectors of American 20th-century furniture and art. However, Alchemy: The Art of Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, written by gallerist Evan Lobel, reveals for the first time the astonishing breadth and depth of their artistic practice, which ranges from avant-garde furniture to sculpture and painting.
By Evan Lobel
As a father and son artist team, the LaVernes’ collaboration resulted in hundreds of unique and complex works, incorporating historical references to past civilizations and art historical motifs, with modernist design principles. Alchemy: The Art of Philip and Kelvin LaVerne is a comprehensive testament to the importance of these artistdesigners who brought history, craftsmanship, and innovation into conversation with functional design and art. In writing the book with Kelvin LaVerne, Lobel provides unparalleled insight into the methods and history of the duo and introduces a bounty of beautiful and never-before-seen images and commentary. This is, and will continue to be, the authoritative account of Philip and Kelvin LaVerne’s esteemed place in the history of 20th-century art and design.
10” X 12”, 254mm X 305mm
HARDCOVER
272 PAGES
OVER 200 IMAGES
ISBN: 978-1-938461-62-0
RIGHTS AVAILABLE