art decorative

Hardcover. NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still sealed in publisher's shrinkwrap. 550 pages. Seventeenth-century Delft has traditionally been viewed as a quaint town whose artists painted scenes of domestic life. This important book revises that image, showing that the small but vibrant Dutch city produced fine examples of all the major arts--including luxury goods and sophisticated paintings for the court at The Hague and for patrician collectors in Delft itself. The book traces the history and culture of Delft from the 1200s through the lifetime of the city's most renowned painter, Johannes Vermeer. The authors discuss at length some ninety major paintings (seventeen by Vermeer), forty drawings, and a choice selection of decorative arts, all of which are reproduced in full color. Among the paintings are state portraits, history pictures, still lifes, views of palaces and church interiors, illusionistic murals, and refined genre pictures by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. The rich works on paper encompass exquisite drawings by Delft artists and sketches of the town by visiting artists. Included in the decorative arts are tapestries, bronze statuary, silver, Delftware, and glass. The volume concludes with an essay that takes the reader on a walk through seventeenth-century Delft. It is accompanied by maps of the city's neighborhoods that indicate major monuments and the homes of patrons, art dealers, and painters.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, cream cloth, gilt letters on spine & on front cover, color pictorial dust jacket, 533 pages, many BW & 55 color plates. "Surveys the most distinctive styles used in America from the seventeenth century, when their presence can first be documented, to World War I, when the taste makers began to associate the plain white wall with all that was 'Modern." Sort closed tear to dust jacket, unclipped, clean.

Softcover. San Francisco, Pomegranate Books, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 112 pages, color photos. "Art cars" are vehicles transformed by their creative owners into elaborately decorated statements of individual mobility. Blank, an independent filmmaker and art car aficionado, spent two years traveling the highways and byways of America in search of people who shared his unusual passion for artistically personalized transportation. The result was an independent documentary film (also entitled Wild Wheels ) and this book: a zany testament to the far reaches of the creative spirit enlivened by more than 100 color photographs and descriptions of 42 attention-grabbing autos with humorous names like the Beaded Bug, the Hippomobile, and the Grass Car. The book also contains brief stories about the artists who created them, providing insight into the ideas and emotions that sparked this novel pop art form.

Hardcover. Great Britain, The Observer, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Hardcover. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. Decorative endpapers. In excellent shape. Binding tight, clean inside and out.