Crafts

Funk You Too! arrives at a moment when clay has unprecedented currency in the art world as a sculptural medium. It is the first book to connect the history of Funk Art to contemporary ceramic practice through an exploration of the enduring role of humor in clay image-making. The founding generation of Funk artists used forms of subversion to deflate the power of the aesthetic hierarchy that dismissed ceramics as hobby art. Today, in the hands of a younger, more diverse cohort, the ...

Cooler and harder than glass, but softer than a diamond: rock crystal has always been regarded as an unusual material. Countless legends have grown up around its origins and its remarkable strengths. At the latest since Antiquity, rock crystal has played an important part as a remedy, for fortune-telling, in the Church and at courtly banquets. Breathtaking artworks have been assembled in this publication.

Kanishka Raja’s ravishingly patterned work, as the artist put it, “explores the intersection of representation, craft, technology, and the gaps that occur in the transmission of information.” Conceptually heady and aesthetically alluring, Raja’s I and I series combines painting with woven, scanned, printed, embroidered and reproduced counterparts.

Glass is a magical material through which light can shine. Throughout its millennial history, its colourful splendour and malleability have always exerted a particular fascination and a creative attraction. The book offers a profound and lavishly documented panorama of artistic glass design in Europe and the United States since the 1870s.

The Gerd and Helga Plewig Collection of Bark Paintings from Northern Australia with works mainly from the 1950s to 1970s is currently considered the best collection of its kind outside of Australia. It includes works from the Kimberley, Wadeye, the Tiwi Islands, Arnhem Land and Groote Eylandt by artists like Yirawala, Mawalan Marika and Mungurrawuy Yunupingu.

"Here, Now: Indigenous Arts of North America at the Denver Art Museum" features 200 of the museum’s most notable Indigenous artworks. It reinterprets the collection and reveals new insights into the historic and contemporary work of Indigenous artists. Contributions by Indigenous authors reflect on the collection and current issues.

Founded in 1948, Hirmer Publishers soon established a name for art books produced to the highest standards. Over the past decade they have become equally well-known in English-speaking countries, with a reputation as one of the most prestigious publishers in this field. This survey of English titles from 2010 to 2020 encompasses a wealth of subjects across the centuries, from antiquity to the modern age.  

This first full biography confirms Florine Stettheimer as one of the 20th century’s most significant, progressive artists whose work remains highly relevant today. Stettheimer was a feminist and a multi-media artist who painted several sexually explicit, political works examining identity issues documenting New York City’s growth as the center of cultural life, finance, and entertainment between the World Wars..

Lying between deserts, mountain chains and seas, Iran developed a fascinating cultural landscape. 360 objects from the time of the first advanced civilisations during the 3rd millennium BC until the end of the Safavid Empire in the early 18th century illustrate the outstanding significance of Iran as the initiator and centre of intercultural exchange.

"Global Luxury in Renaissance Venice" offers an unprecedented exploration of maiolica in the Serenissima set in a vibrant context of hybridity and exchange. Versatile and receptive to all forms of decoration, the medium of maiolica offers a unique point of entry into Venice’s material world as it was shaped by Mediterranean trade and local luxury production.