Gleaned from thousands of images, this book offers the best of American print advertising in the age of the "Big Idea." From the height of American consumerism, bold and colourful campaigns paint a fascinating portrait of the 1950s and '60s, as concerns about the Cold War gave way to the carefree booze-and-cigarettes capitalism of the Mad Men era. Digitally remastered for optimum reproduction quality, the ads burst with crisp fonts and colours, as well as a sexy sense of possibility, beguiling their audience to buy everything from guns to Biflex bras and girdles, cars to toothpaste, air travel to home appliances, telephones in all colours and shapes, Knoll modern furniture, HiFs, cigarettes advertised by smoking poodles, Marlboro by babies Marilyn in Playboy, glamous fqshion, cosmetics like Cutex and Neet, Yellow Pages, Martini and alcohol, Hot Oatmeal is Cool, Boy mints Girl and the youth market, Mobil - we want you to live. At turns startling, amusing and inspiring, this panorama of mid-century marketing is at once an evocative period piece and a showcase of design innovation and advertising wit. 15.6 x 21.7 cm, 512 pages. Text in English, French and German. New from Taschen.

In Volume 5 we explore newsstand magazines gathered from around the world. See the effects of the Sexual Revolution in Germany, England, France, North and South America, Japan, Hong Kong, and Italy. Pubic hair appeared on the American newsstand in 1970 compliments of Penthouse magazine. England, always lagging, finally got the knickers off, but kept its censorship laws. Japan, long suppressed, found release in bondage magazines like New Roman Porno and SM Select. Within a year it was everywhere, and in 1975 Midwest redneck Larry Flynt parted the hair and made the pink beyond the centrepiece of Hustler. Read profiles of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Screw's Al Goldstein, and of lesser known, but no less fascinating characters like Peter Wolff, hippie genius of the True Sex genre, and gun-toting Myron Fass, last of the pulp-pushers. See the evolutionary end-stage of sex humour magazines, the overflowing abundance of big breast titles, the emergence of swinging as lifestyle and publishing niche, the curious phenomenon of reader-written erotica, more funny, amazing and confounding ads from the magazines' back pages and cap it all with the 70s' top five covergirls (and one coverboy). 460 full colour pages of over 600 colour covers and magazine interiors and 18 chapters of information-rich text in English, French and German.

Sexy, sensual and otherworldly, Fantasy art is that colourful blend of myth, muscle and sexy maidens. It took off in 1923 with the launch of Weird Tales magazine, was reinvigorated in the 1960s with The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers, and the late ?60s emergence of fantasy psychedelia, went big in the ?70s with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the brilliant French magazine Métal Hurlant, and the first Star Wars film. Frank Frazetta?s oil paintings, when they infrequently come to market, have sold for more than $ 5 million in recent years. Fans line up at Comic-Cons to meet Boris Vallejo, Rodney Matthews, Greg Hildebrandt, Michael Whelan, and Philippe Druillet, and memorialize dead icons HR Giger, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, and Frazetta. Vallejo describes his fantasy life; Julie Bell The Visionary; space architect Druillet; the biomechanic Giger; the Brothers Hildebrandt, masters of light; Mcebius the psychedelic surrealist; Rowena Morrill the pioneer; Sanjulian the classicist; and Michael Whelan the realist. This heavyweight colour book features original paintings, contextualized by preparatory sketches, sculptures, calendars, magazines, and paperback books, insightful bios give an accurate and eye-opening look into the life and motivation and inspiration of each artist in this fanciful and dynamic genre. 15.6 x 21.7 cm, 512 pages. You can smell the colour!

Hot off the press and weighing in at a spectacular 2.35kg with glossy purple, pink, fluorescent pink and orange and yellow and lime page edges and on glossy white paper, extraordinary statistics are brought to life on nature and environment, science and technology, economy and development, society and people and culture and media. This superb and selective history of graphic information begins with medieval maps of the world and Portolan charts to navigate the oceans, mapping the body and knowledge, the Universe and planets, dinosaur timeline, currents of air showing the global wind system as it was perceived in the mid 19th century, tsunamis, where fish are caught, a world of sensations and a fantastic voyage of the incredible shrinking robots, racial inequality and the Corona virus, waste in space, imports and exports and a woman's place in the economy, Africa missing infrastructures, disputed areas of the world. In the centre pages is a spectacular triple gatefold showing on one side gun nations and states, on the other gay acceptance where countries like Spain and Germany have become more accepting of homosexuality. Foods, unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, a guide to coffee and a cocktail chart of film and literature, the periodic table of heavy metals, comic characters and the football clubs of Europe in a spectacular double page map, this is a very special coffee table book featuring 280 colourful graphics, seven fold-out spreads and all focussing on the 21st century but including some historical masterpieces. 456pp, 21.59 x 33.02cm. Text in three languages, new full price from Taschen.
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Famous First Edition: First printing of 7,500 numbered copies, our review copy is an early number 2313. This magnificent set presents a valuable piece of botanical literature. In line with Dr Besler's original intentions, this facsimile unfurls the garden to a wider audience and captures it for posterity. The large beautifully decorated Latin text has unusual typesetting of the period and a clear layout. Antique-look paper stock has been use, and colour plates gleam at the highest quality. The entire plant from flower tip of a crocus to bulb and roots are depicted by an artist in page after pages of thousands of examples. When Prince-Bishop Johann Konrad von Gemmingen (1593/95-1612) undertook a radical renovation of the Willibaldsburg Castle, overlooking the Altmühl River in Eichstätt, Bavaria, he also created a surrounding palatial pleasure garden of magnificence and grandeur. To preserve the garden for future generations and provide an 'evergreen' record of its contents, compiling plants from all four seasons and presenting them in that order, he commissioned the garden's director, Nuremberg apothecary Basilius Besler (1561-1629), and a team of engravers to immortalise its treasures in print. The resulting Hortus Eystettensis, published in Nuremberg in 1613 and containing 367 hand-coloured plates and detailed descriptions, was a work of meticulous execution and spectacular diversity, and remarkably expensive for its time. As the garden contained a variety of plants imported from exotic locales, the three volumes exhibited a remarkable range, covering a total of 90 families and 340 genera. The book is seen as a milestone in the art of botanical illustration and described by Carl Linnaeus as an "incomparable work". Besler's catalogue long outlived the gardens, which were destroyed in 1634 by invading Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War. However, a lengthy redevelopment project at the historic site has culminated in the opening of the modern Bastion Garden in 1998, containing many of the plants shown in the Hortus Eystettensis. Offering high-quality reproductions of these arresting illustrations, based on the copy of the Hortus Eystettensis at the University Library of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, this facsimile edition is accompanied by detailed plate descriptions of each plant's botanical, pharmaceutical, and symbolic significance and an appendix of further essays which place the garden and the book in their historical contexts. Famous First Edition: First printing of 7,500 numbered copies. Hardbacks in golden cloth binding, UK delivery only, three volumes in matching golden slipcase with colour front cover illus of glorious tulips, satin pagemarkers. 24.3 x 30.4cm, 6.54 kg, 1096 pages, text in English, French and German. Brand new from Taschen.

In the beginning was the word, and in the Middle Ages were kings, princes, and high-ranking religious members whose wealth and influence produced illustrated bibles of extraordinary craftsmanship. This edition brings together 50 of the finest medieval bible manuscripts from the Austrian National Library. With examples from every epoch of the Middle Ages, the collection explores visualizations of the bible in various theological and historical contexts. In impeccable reproduction quality, these stunning images may be appreciated as much as art historical treasures as they are important religious artifacts and masterpieces of illumination. Texts by a team of 15 scientific authors describe each manuscript in detail, exploring both the evolution of the Bible and the medieval understanding of history. A glossary of important terms is also included so that those not versed in bible history can enjoy the texts as well. Colour, 15.6 x 21.7cm, 460 pages. New from Taschen.

The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country's then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travellers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaido journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838. Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaido, we find the artists' distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figures, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it's the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki. Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of colour, but also a charming tapestry of 19th century Japan, long before the spectre of industrialization. This volume is sourced from one of the finest surviving first editions and revives the series in our compact anniversary edition. Text in English, French and German. Colour, 15.6 x 21.7cm, 512 pages. New from Taschen.

Publishers Taschen have chosen to combine reproductions of Redouté's masterpieces of botanical painting with a text by two devoted experts. French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté is often viewed as one of the last and the best of these painters and engravers. Commissioned by among others, Napoleon's Josephine, Redouté studied with the finest flower painters in France and Amsterdam. His illustrations of the botanical alphabets of D. M. Guillamain were a landmark in flower painting for their accuracy and beauty. He was also an innovator in the techniques of printing, introducing "stipple-engraving" to France. The revered tradition of botanical illustration dates back to the Renaissance. It emerged from the desire to catalogue nature in its unpredictable splendour, and the process demanded the most precise and talented of artists. Working from live plants rather than from the herbarium specimens gave Redoute's watercolours unusual subtlety and freshness. His impressive collection comprises over 2,000 paintings of plants rendered with great accuracy and strict adherence to nature. In this exquisite edition of Les Roses, Redouté turns his attention to the most romantic, desirable, and evocative flower. Originally published in three volumes between 1817 and 1824, it remains his most famous and celebrated work. 14 x 19.5 cm, 192 pages. Colour, new from Taschen.

Selected by the artist himself to celebrate Taschen's 40th anniversary compact and well priced editions, here are his Tokyo street scenes, faces and foods, colourful, sensual flowers, female genitalia and the Japanese art of kinbaku or bondage. A young geisha sucks on a phallic shaped slice of watermelon on the front cover. Semi naked girls lie seemingly tossed aside in the street. Two naked women hang suspended from the ceiling, tied in ropes. Sexual desire oozes from the street scenes, many in black and white of ordinary people and their desires, including mixed orgies and a golden shower in a crazy party scene, beautiful women close up seemingly in the throes of orgasm, lovers outside, full frontal nudity from young models, to shabby tabbies and street cats, older Japanese gentlemen, one in bondage, a nipple in a suction tube, a bound woman in a bath, marks on naked flesh. Araki seems to come close to his female subjects through his photography and has attained cult status in his native Japan. New from Taschen on 512 page thick quality pages with wraparound sleeve to protect page edges. 15.6 x 21.7cm. Adults only.

Captures the great era of men's magazines. It includes fetish master Irving Klaw, Elmar Batters own leg fetish, the speciality magazines of England, and concludes with Sweden and Denmark's emergence as the new powers in European sex publishing. Everyone was publishing lovely bare breasted ladies with silky stockings in every position imaginable. Titles such as Highball, Sizzle, Lace Undies, Nymph, French Lace, Black Silk Stockings, Solo, Touch, High Heels and many more hit the newsstands. Back in New York, Irving Klaw introduced fetish digests in the same specialty bookstores, leading to a '60s fetish boom, with Lenny Burtman's High Heels, Satana, Striparama, and Leg Show. The photos had a rawness showing the older models with that look of experience, openness and control. Many could be the woman next door caught just as the reader dreamt. See pre-Playboy burlesque titles, featuring big hair, heavy make-up, cigarettes, and cocktails, but in west coast mid-century settings with better photography, paper, and printing. Contains over 400 colour pages of magazine covers and interiors with well-researched text profiling important publishers and artists, individual magazines, and specialty magazine categories. 458 pages, 11" x 8" x 2", this thick volume has a tactile blue snakeskin jacket, hundreds of glam models in erotic colour photos. Text in English, German and French.