World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1988, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 388 pages, 25 x 2.5 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$160.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition of the best, largest volume on visionary architect Bruce Goff, published by MIT in 1988! Distilled from years of research and friendship, this is the first comprehensive study to capture the essential Goff — the idiosyncratic and profoundly original designs, the erratic yet exuberant career that produced some of the most challenging and inventive architecture of this century. Bruce Goff spent most of his life (1904-1982) in the American heartland. In the seven decades of his practice he designed nearly 500 projects, of which some 140 were built. Although he loved to flaunt the novel use of found materials (steel pipe, coal, rope, plexiglas aircraft domes, cake pans) and flashy decorative surfaces including white goose feathers and egg crates Goff's central and abiding concern was with the mastery of space.
As David De Long shows in this engaging book, Goff's spatial creativity was unbounded, his diversity seemingly unlimited. De Long discusses the architect's development and early work in Tulsa, the formative influences that shaped his career, his first independent work in Chicago, the periods of working on speculation in Bartlesville and Kansas City, his withdrawal from active practice following charges of homosexuality, and Goffs triumphant resurgence with his design for the Japanese Wing of the Los Angeles County Museum. De Long devotes an entire chapter to Goff's major projects - the Ledbetter, Ford, Bavinger, and Wilson houses, the Hopewell Baptist Church, and Crystal Cathedral, whose complex geometries, spatial richness, and modified prefabricated elements set them radically apart from the conformity of small town America. The story is a fascinating one, incorporating significant design details with local reactions and sometimes devastating professional criticism.
Bruce Goff: Toward Absolute Architecture, contains a complete catalogue raisonné of buildings and projects; it is included in The Architectural History Foundation's American Monograph Series.
1967, English
Softcover, 60 pages, 21.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
University of California / Berkeley
$100.00 - Out of stock
One of the great American exhibition catalogues, "Funk" was published on the occasion of the historical exhibition curated by the first director of the University of Art Museum in Berkeley, California, Peter Selz, April 18 - May 29, 1967. "Funk" captured a new anti-establishment spirit in the Bay Area arts encompassing experimentation in unusual materiality, ceramics and assemblage, “making things with the detritus of society”. Curator Peter Selz writes that the term funk was “borrowed from jazz: since the Twenties, Funk was jargon for the unsophisticated deep-down New Orleans blues played by marching bands, the blues that give you that happy/sad feeling… Funk art is hot rather than cool; it is committed rather than disengaged; it is bizarre rather than formal; it is sensuous; and frequently it is quite ugly and ungainly.”
This wonderful heavy illustrated catalogue features colour and b/w documentation of works of all exhibiting artists, including Arlo Acton, Bob Anderson, Jeremy Anderson, Robert Arneson, Mowry Baden, Jerrold Ballaine, Sue Bitney, Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Roy De Forest, William Geis, David Gilhooly, Mel Henderson, Robert Hudson, Jean Linder, James Melchert, Gary Molitor, William Morehouse, Manuel Neri, Harold Paris, Don Potts, Kenneth Price, Peter Saul, Peter Voulkos, William T. Wiley, and Franklin Williams. Includes text by curator Peter Selz, artists' biographies and statements, and exhibition checklist across various paper stocks.
Fine copy.
2014, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$55.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Since the 1960s, Leatrice and Melvin Eagle have acquired decorative arts of the highest quality, beginning with contemporary ceramics and then expanding to works in other mediums produced from the 1940s to the present. Although primarily American in scope, their collection also encompasses significant pieces by acclaimed international artists. This book presents, for the first time, key highlights from the Eagle collection, which was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2010. At the core of the collection are stunning examples of ceramics by groundbreaking California-based artists, such as Robert Arneson, Ralph Bacerra, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Ron Nagle, Ken Price, Adrian Saxe, and Peter Voulkos. Also included is furniture by Wendell Castle and Sam Maloof; textile and fiber art by Olga de Amaral, John Garrett, John McQueen, and Cynthia Schira; and jewelry and metalwork by William Harper, Albert Paley, Earl Pardon, and Joyce J. Scott. This catalogue features works by about 40 key artists and an illustrated checklist of about 170 objects in the collection.
As New copy.
1953, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VII, No. 4, 1953. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne. Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1954, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1954. Works by J. M. W. Turner, Derwent Lees, Eric Thake, Ian Fairweather... Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1954, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VIII, No. 2, 1954. Works by Benedetto Buglione, Simon Marmion, Bartolomeo Bellano, Michael Kmit, Russell Drysdale. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne. Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1954, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VIII., No. 4, 1954. Works by Alessandro Turchi, Bernard Buffet, Nicolas de Staël, Michel Kikoine, classical roman sculpture.... Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1956, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. X, No. 4, 1956. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1958, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - In stock -
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. XII, No. 2, 1958. Works by Eric Gill, David Jones, Domenico Campagnola, plus Silverwear. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
2014, English / Japanese
Hardcover, 166 pages, 23.8 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha / Japan
$100.00 - Out of stock
The finest book on the work of iconic Swedish ceramicist, Lisa Larson.
Published in 2014 in Japan and long out-of-print, this wonderful hardcover book covers all of Larson's history of work in full-colour, dating from the 1950s - 2000. Texts in English and Japanese by Ikko Yokoyama (curator) and Johanna Larson (daughter and graphic designer), with details on all pieces in the book, comments, and illustrated history.
Contents: UNIQUE PIECES 1950's - 60's; UNIQUE PIECES 1970's; UNIQUE PIECES 1980's - 90's; UNIQUE PIECES 2000's - ; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1950's; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1960's; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1970's; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1980's; KERAMIKSTUDION; SKANDIA; LISA'S HISTORY; INTERVIEW; LIST OF WORK; COMMENTS ON WORKS
Lisa Larson, born in 1931, is an internationally renowned ceramicist and designer in Sweden. Famous among others for her sculptures Small Zoo (1955), ABC-girls (1958), Africa (1964) and Children of the World (1974–75). Larson studied at College of Crafts and Design in Gothenburg 1949 - 54, then joined Gustavsberg porcelain under the Artistic Director Stig Lindberg, one of Sweden's most important postwar ceramicist and designers. Larson left Gustavsberg in 1980 to work freelance for a number of Swedish companies including Duka, Kooperativa Förbundet and Åhléns. In 1992, she founded Gustavsberg Ceramic Studio with a few of her old colleagues. In the studio, new design and small scale production still takes place.
As new copy.
2017, French
Softcover, 224 pages, 18.5 x 27.3 cm
Published by
CAC / Brétigny
<o> future <o> / Paris
$90.00 - Out of stock
This wonderful French catalogue offers a unique insight into the life and work of the French artist, sculptor and ceramist Valentine Schlegel. This richly illustrated, hugely popular volume (now sold out in two editions) forms the most comprehensive monograph on Schlegel ever published, featuring a large iconography, archives, and texts (in French) by sculptor and Schlegel specialist Hélène Bertin. Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Cette femme pourrait dormir dans l'eau – Valentine Schlegel par Hélène Bertin” at CAC Brétigny, from September 30 to December 09, 2017.
Valentine Schlegel (born 1925 in Sète, South of France) was trained at the Beaux-Art in Montpellier before settling in Paris, where she dedicated herself to ceramics. Schlegel conceived her works as sculptures inspired by nature. Her ceramics, primitive but sophisticated at the same time, made Valentine Schlegel one of the most important ceramists of 1950s.
Hélène Bertin (born 1989 in Petruis, lives and works in Paris and Cucuron) develops a practice which connects the activities of artist, curator and historian.
Edited by Hélène Bertin and Charles Mazé & Coline Sunier.
Text by Hélène Bertin.
Graphic design: Charles Mazé & Coline Sunier.
1965, English
Hardcover, 366 pages, 30.5 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Harry N. Abrams / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
First 1965 edition of this stunning, over-sized hardcover book dedicated to the Japanese art of flower arrangement. Published by Harry N. Abrams in New York, and printed and bound in Japan, this landmark book began an obsession for Japanese flower arrangement in the West. Wrapped in it's green cloth covers and profusely illustrated throughout with lush laid-in photographic plates, "The Art of Arranging Flowers" showcases some of the finest examples of Ikebana captured in print, created by over 50 of the leading Japanese practitioners. The book's creator, Shōzō Satō, is an internationally renowned Japanese master of Zen arts and visionary theatre director, most known for adapting Western classics to Japanese Kabuki theatre. Satō arrived at the University of Illinois in 1964 as a visiting artist. In 1968, he founded the Japanese Arts and Culture Program, where his influence was far-reaching through his classes in traditional Japanese arts, such as calligraphy, sumi-e, ikebana, zen aesthetics, and tea ceremony.
"I have tried to make this the most carefully detailed and profusely illustrated guide of its kind, enabling the reader to create many beautiful arrangements while learning all the necessary techniques of the art. Finally, there is a section devoted to advanced techniques and designs, both classic and modern, and to the setting of mood."
Very Good handsome first edition copy, protected under publishers original plastic dust jacket. A very large book! One leaf loose in the back index section, but present.
1974, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 163 pages, 26.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
Office du Livre / Fribourg
$120.00 - Out of stock
First English hardcover edition of this gorgeous French interior design volume, published by the great Studio Vista and Office du Livre in 1974.
Celebrated French interior decorator and designer Alain Demachy has edited together a stunning collection of examples of interior spaces by himself and fellow designers Gae Aulenti, David Hicks, Michel Boyer, Jacques Grange, and many more, all beautifully photographed and presented in colour and black and white alongside texts by Demachy. Features works by Charles Eames, Roger Tallon, Lucio Fontana, Gae Aulenti, Erté, Claude and Francoise-Xavier Lalanne, Andy Warhol, Mies Van der Rohe, Joe Colombo, Tom Wesselman, Cesar, Gerorge Nelson, Afra & Tobia Scarpa, and many more. Printed in Switzerland.
"Alain Demachy studied at the Ecole spéciale d'architecture. He edited the Decoration section in Marie-Claire from 1954. He numbers amongst his most famous clients the Barons Edmond, Alain and David de Rothschild, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Prince Albert of Liege, President Houphouet-Boigny, Brigitte Bardot and Johnny Halliday. As well as private houses and apartments, he designs many offices, department stores, restaurants and drug stores all over the world."
Good copy, preserved in original dust jacket (with tanning to spine), now under plastic wrap. Ex-libris markings, otherwise would be a Very Good copy.
2021, English
Hardcover (cloth w. with puffy image plate), 120 pages, 28 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Literal Matter / New York
$85.00 - Out of stock
“To think about Pesce’s work is to reevaluate the structures of ordinary objects.”
At 81, the Italian designer and architect Gaetano Pesce is one of the world’s greatest living artistic innovators. Best known for his radical embrace of seemingly ordinary, unexpected materials, he has constructed pink buildings from foam, sofas that resemble jester hats, large-scale portraits from hand-poured resin and vases that bend and wobble.
This new book on Pesce comprises both his most iconic and many never-before-seen works (some made in the last year), all captured by nearly two dozen photographers around the world. It includes an essay and interview with Pesce by the critic Sophie Haigney, new portraits by Duane Michals, and four commissioned photographic series that take his work into the world.
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
(in order of appearance)
Duane Michals, Chris Rhodes, Jeroen Bocken, Thomas Brown, Benjamin Prabowo Sexton, Parker Woods, Stephen Lewis, Anna Pogossova, Sarah Pannell, Charlie Engman, Esther Theaker, Jerome Ming, Douglas Lance Gibson, Corey Olsen, Heather Sten, Lorna Bauer, Sergiy Barchuk, Pat Martin, Benjamin Pexton, Tina Tyrell, Steve Harries, Leonardo Scotti.
1981, Italian
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Memphis Milano / Milan
$650.00 - Out of stock
The first sales catalog from the Memphis design collective. Heavily illustrated in black and white with descriptions of the products in italian. Features many landmark pieces from the Memphis group, including Masanori Umeda's Tawaraya (Boxing Ring), Ettore Sottsass' Carlton sideboard, Michele De Lucchi's Oceanic lamp, amongst many others. A stunning collection from the first year of the group s formation. In very good or better condition, the staple binding is in tact and strong, thick newsprint pages crisp and only very mild toning to the covers. Blind stamped "From the Library of Jim Walrod" to the upper right corner of the first page. Memphis s.r.l., 1981. Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition.
Very rare, first sales catalogue from Memphis Milano, printed in 1981, the first year of their formation. Beautifully preserved copy of this heavily illustrated trade catalogue designed by Sottsass Associati presenting groundbreaking furniture pieces, lamps, ceramics, glassware, metalware, and textiles produced for the debut collection from this remarkable cast of international designers : Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi Aldo Cibic, Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Michael Graves, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Terry Jones, Shiro Kuramata, Javier Mariscal, Alessandro Mendini, Paola Navone, Luigi Serafini, Peter Shire, Ettore Sottsass, George James Sowden, Studio Alchymia, Bruno Gregori, Matteo Thun, Masanori Umeda, Marco Zanini.
A wonderful collector's item.
Very Good copy, some light rust to staples and tanning to edges.
2016, Spanish
Softcover, 180 pages, 19.5 mm x 27.5 cm
Published by
Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite / Berlin
$30.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Con contribuciones de Moosje M. Goosen, Anne Huffschmid, Pablo Katchadjian, Federico Navarrete Linares, Sandra Rozental, Carlos Sandoval, Adam T. Sellen, Anna M. Szaflarski y Laura Valencia Lozada.
Ixiptla III explora el legado arqueológico y de qué manera este se expresa, se contamina o se disuelve en el presente. Moosje M. Goosen cuenta la historia de un arqueólogo alemán en Acámbaro y su colección de dinosaurios de barro falsos; Anne Huffschmid otorga un panorama de la historia de la antropología forense y su importancia en el presente en México en relación al estudio de las numerosas fosas comunes y el caso de los 43 estudiantes desaparecidos de Ayotzinapa; Pablo Katchadjian nos pregunta ¿Qué hacer?; Paula López Caballero cuenta la historia de Luz Jiménez y su rol como traductora, modelo e interprete, para entender distintas nociones de indigeneidad; Federico Navarrete Linares comienza un diálogo entre el concepto de Bajtin del cronotropo histórico y la relación entre el tiempo y el espacio en el cronotropo mesoamericano; Sandra Rozental compara las diferencias de uso, categorización y exhibición de Spolia en forma de tepalcates en Coatlinchan y el Museo Etnográfico en Berlín; Carlos Sandoval crea un Anti Lego con una colección de fragmentos de piezas arqueológicas; Adam T. Sellen hace la anatomía de una falsificación; Anna M. Szaflarski dibuja nudos con distintos significados componiendo un cuerpo imposible; y Laura Valencia Lozada presenta el inicio de un diálogo epistolar con los familiares de los desaparecidos en México.
Volumen III de Ixiptla se publica en el marco de la exposición ¿Quién medirá el espacio, quién me dirá el momento? Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, México.
¿Quién medirá el espacio, quién me dirá el momento? se sitúa en la delgada línea que divide nuestra relación con los objetos, con las historias que elaboramos en torno a ellos. El punto de partida fue un repertorio de objetos, algunos de ellos arqueológicos, otros mecánicos, lúdicos o sintéticos; que fueron seleccionados en el presente, junto con Innovando la tradición y el taller de cerámica Coatlicue en Atzompa, Oaxaca. La selección fue el sustento para imaginar una serie de historias, que ahora se alzan cual columnas en el espacio expositivo.
El concepto nahua de ixiptla se ha traducido como imagen, delegado, sustituto o representante. Ixiptla podía ser una estatua, una visión o la víctima que se convierte en el dios destinado al sacrificio. Los varios ixiptlas del mismo dios podían ocurrir de manera simultánea. Ixiptla deriva de la partícula xip: piel, cobertura, cáscara; es el contenedor, la presencia reconocible, la actualización de una fuerza imbuida en un objeto: un ser ahí, removiendo la distinción entre esencia y materia, original y copia.
Ixiptla is biannual journal on trajectories of Anthropology
Vol. I (English) was published on the occasion of Expedite Expression, 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2014.
Vol. II (English and German) was published on the occasion of Parergon, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin.
Vol. III (Spanish) was published on the occasion of Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca.
2018, English / Italian
Softcover, 120 pages, 23 x 30 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$59.00 - Out of stock
“With a simple gestures, Marisa draws a space, marks a place, alludes to its transparency, discovers the direction, and etches her passage into the very short breath of a vacuum that she fills with incommensurable meaning. A shoe, a net whose mesh captures the time and the moment, the material present in the fragment of impulses of the living, in the pattern of a notion of lightness and strenght.”—Ester Coen
Published on the occasion of Marisa Merz’s exhibition at MASI (Lugano, Switzerland), Marisa Merz: Geometrie sconnesse palpiti geometrici takes its name from a phrase by the artist written on a wall in her studio, and is the result of the precious collaboration between Collezione Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati (Lugano) and Fondazione Merz (Turin). Embracing all the expressive modalities explored by the artist—from drawings to unfired clay sculptures, from copper and nylon weavings to objects transmuted into wax— and with texts by Ester Coen, Douglas Fogle, and Beatrice Merz, the book follows and highlights the pivotal theme that recurs in the artist’s work: her exploration of the face and the figure in general. Traces of a complex, philosophical thought, they’re the products of an almost obsessively cadenced superimposition of visual marks and materials.
1978, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 25.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Everson Museum of Art / Syracuse
$45.00 - In stock -
Very scarce catalogue published to accompany an exhibition curated by Margie Hughto at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, September 29 - December 3, 1979; Arts and Crafts Center of Pittsburgh, February 24 - March 18, 1979. Centring around The California Clay Movement (or American Clay Revolution), a school of ceramic art that emerged in California in the 1950s that was part of the larger transition in crafts from "designer-craftsman" to "artist-craftsman", the exhibition features the influential work of Peter Voulkos and Stephen de Staebler, two of the movement's driving forces, and their students and associated Funk (non-functional Bay Arena ceramic art movement) artists including Marilyn Levine, Robert Arneson, Karen Breschi, David Gilhooly, David Middlebrook, Kenneth Price, and Richard Shaw. Text by Judy S. Schwartz. Acknowledgments & Foreword by Margie Hughto, Adjunct Curator of Ceramics. Each artist with a one page write-up profile with images, notes and biographies.
Very Good with some light creasing.
2021, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 20 x 15 cm
Edition of 225,
Published by
Tutto / Naarm—Melbourne
$40.00 - In stock -
Figur And Related Drawings surveys the 2021 exhibition at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles by Zachary Leener (b. 1981). The publication includes an essay by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer and candid photos of the Figur objects and previously unseen adjunct drawings by Leener.
Edition of 225
2020, English
Softcover, 172 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Cosa Mentale / Marseille
$53.00 - Out of stock
Jorge Luis Borges, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Yasushiro Ozu, Mark Rothko, Jorge Oteiza - a writer, an architect, a filmmaker, a painter, a sculptor. Five personalities of the 20th century separated by their mediums, their subjects of investigation and their disciplines. They are brought together in this book by the need to save art from its current alteration, and to bring it back to a more contemplative and introspective dimension.
It is a form of spiritual revolt that architect Carlos Martí Arís (Barcelona, 1948 - 2020) highlights through this transversal analysis of different artistic expressions that mix and meet to enrich his reflection. The key words of this consideration, which has the appearance of a manifesto, are: silence, contemplation, renunciation, transparency, anonymity and atemporality. Twenty years later, the lesson of Carlos Martí Arí is contemporary and of fundamental importance for our discipline today
Edited by Claudia Mion and Fabio Licitra
Cosa Mentale is a collective and independent publishing project which promotes new reflections within the field of architecture.
2020, English
Hardcover, 504 pages, 21.6 x 26.7 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
Bard Graduate Center Gallery / New York
$130.00 - Out of stock
A smartly designed and beautifully illustrated look at the life and work of an elusive and influential designer and architect
Eileen Gray (1878–1976) was a versatile designer and architect who navigated numerous literary and artistic circles over the course of her life. This handsome volume chronicles Gray’s career as a designer, architect, painter, and photographer. The book’s essays, featuring copious new research, offer in-depth analysis of more than 50 individual designs and architectural projects, accompanied by both period and new photographs.
Born in Ireland and educated in London, Gray proceeded to Paris where she opened a textile studio, studied the Japanese craft of lacquer that would become a primary technique in her design work, and owned and directed the influential gallery and store known as “Jean Désert.” Gray struggled for acceptance as a largely self-taught woman in male-dominated professions. Although she is now best known for her furniture, lighting, and carpets, she dedicated herself to many architectural and interior projects that were both personal and socially driven, including the Villa E 1027, the iconic modern house designed with Jean Badovici, as well as economical and demountable projects, such as the Camping Tent.
Cloé Pitiot is curator of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and contemporary design at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Nina Stritzler-Levine is director of the gallery and curatorial affairs at the Bard Graduate Center, New York.
1991, English
Softcover (string-bound w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shepparton Art Gallery / Victoria
$55.00 - Out of stock
Limited edition and now very scarce catalogue published to accompany the exhibition "Brown : 1970's Ceramics from the Shepparton Art Gallery Collection" curated by Joseph Pascoe and Katrina Fraser for the Shepparton Art Gallery, Victoria, in 1991. Published in an edition of 500 copies, bound with string and printed on multiple raw paper stocks in earthy brown monochrome. Features the work of Doug Alexander, Les Blakebrough, David Bradshaw, Joan Campbell, Aleks Danko, Phyl Dunn, Margaret Dodd, Ivan Englund, Noel Flood, Marea Gazzard, John Gilbert, Victor Greenaway, Joan Grounds, Sylvia Halpern, Harold Hughan, Lorraine Jenyns, John Johnson, Col Levy, Judy Lorraine, Janet Mansfield, Harry Memmott, Anne Mercer, Milton Moon, Tim Moorhead, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Reg Preston, Peter Rushforth, Bernard Sahm, Shigeo Shiga, Mitsuo Shoji, Derek Smith, Ian Sprague, Hiroe Swen, Stefan Szonyi, Peter Travis, Alan Watt. Each illustrated artist page includes the exhibited work(s), along with details and biography on the artist-craftsperson. Texts by Joseph Pascoe, Janet Mansfield and Katrina Fraser, full catalogue of works and footnotes. A unique, handsome and valuable resource from one of the most important collections of modern Australian ceramics.
Very Good copy.
1969, Japanese / English
Softcover, 96 pages, 32.5 × 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Interior Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$70.00 - Out of stock
Japan's finest magazine for interior design, architecture and home furnishings, edited by Moriyama Kazuhiko. JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN presented "a monthly comprehensive view of traditional, contemporary, and contemplated environmental designs and pure art forms both Japanese and foreign, through pictures and critical reviews. English captions and summaries of major articles are provided each issue." The in-depth analysis in which JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN committed to covering new international furniture, textile, product, environmental, and interior design developments and major events from the period (1950s-1980s), places it soundly alongside its Italian comrade Domus. Lavishly illustrated throughout with beautiful photography in colour and b/w, with comprehensive plans, drawings and elevations bringing many innovative and long lost architectural and industrial designs into sharp focus. A wealth of archival reference material in each issue for any enthusiast of modern and space age design.
no. 120 March 1969
CONTENTS :
FEATURE OF THE MONTH : New Designs in Flexible Furniture
2020, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 23 x 28 cm
Published by
University of California Press / Berkley
$115.00 - In stock -
One of the most original artists working today, San Francisco–based Ron Nagle (born 1939)—the enfant terrible of abstract expressionist ceramics—has made stunning, colorful, entirely unique small clay sculptures since the 1950s.
In his sculpture, Nagle mixes allusions to modernism, middlebrow culture and the special pop sensibility of Northern California, making ceramic vessels no bigger than a few inches that draw on everything from Japanese tea ceremonies to Krazy Kat. Made with an overarching sense of playfulness and linguistic humor, a bodily and architectural sensibility, and Nagle’s keen attention to color, these finely tuned, pitch-perfect sculptures condense sensory pleasure into perfect packages of experience and feeling. Their miniature scale makes these odd, elegant, sensual and sometimes abject little abstract sculptures endlessly charming models for the imagination.
Lushly illustrated, Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter is the most comprehensive and scholarly publication on the artist to date, with essays by curator Apsara DiQuinzio and Berlin-based art critic and theorist Jan Verwoert. A lively conversation about Nagle’s studio practice and unique process with curator and director Dan Byers of Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts rounds out this unmissable book.