Photography by Marc Appleton
Lotusland is a magical and rare place located in Santa Barbara, CA. This sprawling botanical garden was founded by former opera singer, and many times divorced socialite, Madame Ganna Walksa. Deciding six husbands was enough, she turned her attention full time to creating her amazing gardens. …
Edward Brooke-Hitching
Brooke-Hitching has created another marvelous collection of oddities. His book The Madman’s Library focused on the most bizarre and unique books in the world. The Madman’s Gallery expands the scope, looking at some of the strangest artwork and art movements in history. Learn about the “Ghost Heads” of …
A
Guide to the World’s 500 Most Colorful Places
Taylor Fuller
If a colorful punch in the eye is a top priority when you travel, this collection of rainbow-hued locations is for you! They run the gamut of natural locations, including multi-colored lakes, rivers and mountains, to towns with colorful …
Inside the Homes of the World’s Most Creative People
Sam Lubell
This solid collection is a slow read to carefully work your way through. The content itself is not dense – one to three pictures of a home interior along with a page description. But nearly every room and its …
Few things are as intriguing as finding a photo with no caption. Filmmaker Lee Shulman bought a box of old slides and became fascinated into these glimpses of the past. His collection soon grew to include thousands of these images. There’s a short introduction to the book …
Lois Sherr Dubin
Photos by Kiyoshi Togashi and Michael Waddell
When you think “southwest” or “Navajo” jewelry, you probably think big honking belt buckles, silver conchos (flatted “platters” of silver), and chunky turquoise rings at tourist shops. This style of jewelry is mostly knock-offs of the fantastic artistry created by …
Iconic Moments from the Past In Color
Wolfang Wild & Jordan Lloyd
This wide-ranging collection of colorized photos gives a rare glimpse into the past. Photography has been around for a surprisingly long time. The first self-portrait was taken in 1839, almost 30 years before the American Civil War. There …
Victoria Finlay
I first heard of Finlay’s brilliant book on an equally brilliant BBC 4 Radio Show called ‘The Museum of Curiosity,’ described as a “Panel show in which three distinguished guests donate fascinating exhibits to a vast imaginary museum.” This dry description totally fails to encompass the …
This weighty tome, coming in at nearly 700 pages, is not nearly so daunting as it appears. Ninety percent of the book is large, gorgeous pictures with short descriptions of the (arguably) most notable pieces of furniture in the last 150 years. The book runs the gamut from: the mundane …
Tomoko Nakamichi
Unless you are a professional tailor or fashion designer, there’s small chance you will actually make any of the clothing directly as is in these books. As the author says in the introduction, the point of these often wildly bizarre experiments with fabric is not to create everyday …
John Hill
Despite being an architecture fan, I was delighted to find in this book a number of buildings and architects that I wasn’t familiar with. There were certainly some of the biggest and most familiar names – Frank Lloyd Wright, Atoni Gaudi and Oscar Niemeyer and their well known …
Everyone from professional fine artists to the occasional weekend crafter knows how incredibly expensive supplies can be. It’s not just the materials you need to create the piece itself, but also all the supporting supplies, be it it rulers, mats, easels, scissors etc. If you are just starting a new …
Van Dyke, Kristina
The art of Africa is often an area of extreme ignorance, even to those of us with art degrees. Africa is vast continent with dozens of countries and kingdoms, further divided into thousands of smaller tribal groups, each with their own languages and beliefs. And yet the …
As with every new hobby, I needed All The Books from the library. A few of my particular favorites included:
Paper Cut by Owen Gildersleeve
This collection of works by paper artists includes short interviews on the artist’s design background, how they got started in paper art, and a few …
Thomas Thwaites
Could you build a toaster? “Sure,” you say. “I’d just get a kit on amazon.” No, from scratch? “Well yes, I could get all the parts online, probably Ebay, and cobble one together.” No, from real scratch. Mining the ore and refining it. Forming each delicate piece. Creating …
Michael Galinsky
Had I been shown this photo collection at the time of its taking I would have scoffed, even though I’d barely have been in my teens. Compositionally, these are some pretty lousy photos – blurry, too dark and often oddly cropped. But the content is pure 80s …
