Gardens for a Beautiful America 1895-1935: Photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston
From the Publisher. Presents for the first time 250 colored photographs of urban and suburban gardens taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston—photographer of presidents, celebrity authors, tastemakers, and estates of the County House Era.
From Newport to the Hamptons, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, from New York to Richmond, in France, Italy and England, visit the city and country gardens of the wealthy and fashionable—Cornelius and Alice Vanderbilt II, J.P. and Frances Morgan, Henry and Arabella Huntington, George and Helen Crocker, author Edith Wharton, Parliament member Lady Nancy Astor, and Chicago-born Baroness von Ketteler—who lived with style and chic from coast to coast and abroad. Working with legions of skilled gardeners, America’s leading architects and landscape designers transformed thousands of farmland acres into estates as beautiful and lavish as those at princely villas and châteaux. Here are the parterres of The Breakers, a children’s boxwood playground at Mille Fiori, a violet and azur canal at Thornedale, a classical temple at Weld, a lyrical fountain at Burrwood, Persian terraces at El Feuridis and butterfly lakes at Middleton Place, all in gardens that glowed with emerald lawn carpets, cascades of French roses and exotics from China and South America.
In illuminating detail, author Sam Watters tells the stories behind these floral retreats, flawlessly preserved in photographs by celebrity photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. Eminent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. considered her alluring images “the finest” of American gardens.
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman
Love Letter to a Garden
By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025
From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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