ART, ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, FASHION, CRAFTS & PHOTOGRAPHY
We've gathered some of the best books - new and old - from Art, Architecture, Craft, Photography, Fashion & Design.
A Bookseller Recommends...
Vermeer
Andrew Graham Dixon
"My standout book from this year was Andrew Graham Dixon’s magisterial biography of the Dutch Golden Age painter Vermeer. Blending meticulous historical research with a deep passion and appreciation for his subject, Andrew brings Vermeer out of the shadows, and offers a modern and radical re-evaluation of this most enigmatic and elusive of painters." ~ Rachel, Edinburgh
A Bookseller Recommends...
Mothering
Caroline Walker
"My favourite book this year is the catalogue from the latest exhibition of the fabulous Scottish artist Caroline Walker.
This is a wonderful celebration of the act of mothering, and all the different forms the experience can take. No mundane aspect of caring is too insignificant to be recognised in gloriously large canvases that delve into the complex experiences of being a woman in contemporary society." ~ Alessia, Edinburgh
A Bookseller Recommends...
Art Work
Sally Mann
The much-anticipated new book by artist and New York Times bestselling author Sally Mann about the challenges and transcendent pleasures of the creative process
Art Work offers a spellbinding mix of wild and illuminating stories, practical (and some impractical) advice, and life lessons for artists and writers—or anyone interested in the creative path. Written in the same frank, fearless, and occasionally outrageous tone of her bestselling memoir, Hold Still, this new book reaffirms Mann as a unique and resonant voice for our times and is destined to become a classic.
A Bookseller Recommends...
Piece by Piece
Lauren MacDonald
A hands-on craft book from designer, maker and founder of textile studio Working Cloth, Lauren MacDonald.
Her approachable warmth and humour makes this an indispensable guide to modern patchwork and quilting. A manual to be treasured and leafed through for years to come, Piece by Piece encourages you to repurpose and reuse – a practice quilters have been following for centuries that now feels both timeless and timely.
A Bookseller Recommends...
Lessons for Young Artists
David Gentleman
We are all artists as children, painting and drawing each day. Most of us stop when we get older – but David Gentleman kept going.
For over ninety years he has been drawing, painting, engraving and printing, rising to become one of Britain’s best-known and most loved artists. Here he shares what he has learned over the course of a lifetime of making and thinking about art.
A Bookseller Recommends...
Brutal Scotland
Simon Phipps
A major new photographic survey of Scotland’s post-war architecture by acclaimed photographer of Modernist buildings, Simon Phipps
Their popularity may have declined by the turn of the century, but recent decades have seen a new recognition of the talent and epochal spirit that created lecture halls and banks with equal emphasis on form, utility and function.
A Bookseller Recommends...
Common Treasures II
Conversations between architecture collective Assemble & arts organisation Common Ground
Its premise is the idea that approaches to housing that are grounded in greater levels of community ownership, management and maintenance have the potential to empower communities.
Housing built by, for and with the people who live in it makes characterful neighbourhoods that last well. The contributors to this anthology share their work to overcome the many obstacles to this way of working, and offer a vision which is grounded, imaginative and hopeful.