An Illustrated Guide to Furniture History provides upper-level students and instructors with an alternative visual analytical approach to learning about furniture history from Antiquity to Postmodernism. Following an immersive teaching model, it presents a Nine-Step Methodology to help students strengthen their visual literacy and quickly acquire subject area knowledge. Moving chronologically through key periods in furniture history and interior design, such as the Renaissance, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Modernism, it traverses Europe to America to present a comprehensive foundational guide to the history of furniture design. Part I addresses furniture within the context of the built environment, with chapters exploring the historical perspective, construction principles, and the categorization of furniture. In Part II, the author visually depicts the structural organization of the methodological process, a three-category framework: History, Aesthetics, and Visual Notes. The chapters in this part prepare the reader for the visual analysis that will occur in the final section of the book. The book is lavishly illustrated in full color with over 300 images to reinforce visual learning and notation. A must-have reference and study guide for students in industrial and product design, interior design, and architecture.

A colorful and detailed guide for anyone who wants to get the most out of the Windy City. This brand-new guide is boldly redesigned where no NFT has gone before, offering quick snapshots of each neighborhood from Gold Coast and Lincoln Park to Wrigleyville and Lakeview in a colorful and stylish layout. Start flipping through and you’ll immediately notice the difference from the classic NFT series. This lovely guide includes everything from restaurants, bars, shopping, and Chicago’s art scene to information on hotels, airports, banks, transportation, and landmarks. Need to find the best deep-dish pizza hideouts around? NFT has you covered. How about a list of the top sports attractions in the famously sports-crazy city? They’ve got that, too. The nearest beach, jazz club, coffee shop, or bookstore—whatever you need—NFT puts it at your fingertips. This book also features: Over 35 city and neighborhood maps Details on parks and places Insider information on museums, nightlife, architecture, and transit in the city Say hello to beautiful city photos and original illustrations that have been handcrafted in the same tradition as the finest Chi-Town craft breweries or the city’s very own Hot Dog University, and get to know a whole new side of Chicago.

The history of American silver offers invaluable insights into the economic and cultural history of the nation itself. Published here for the first time, the Art Institute of Chicago's superb collection embodies innovation and beauty from the colonial era to the present. In the 17th century, silversmiths brought the fashions of their homelands to the colonies, and in the early 18th, new forms arose as technology diversified production. Demand increased in the 19th century as the Industrial Revolution took hold. In the 20th, modernism changed the shape of silver inside and outside the home. This beautifully illustrated volume presents highlights from the collection with stunning photography and entries from leading specialists. In-depth essays relate a fascinating story about eating, drinking, and entertaining that spans the history of the Republic and trace the development of the Art Institute's holdings of American silver over nearly a century.

The second in a series of scholarly catalogs on the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, this volume focuses on the museum's important holdings of French and British paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The catalog contains comprehensive entries on close to one hundred paintings, representing the full range of artistic production (portraiture, landscape, still life, genre, and history painting) in France and Britain during this period. Featured are major works by some of the most significant artists of the time: Jacques Louis David, Jean Honor Fragonard, Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, and Jean Antoine Watteau among the French; Henry Fuseli, Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Benjamin West among the British. Each painting in the catalog is accompanied by complete and up-to-date documentation, including a detailed description of physical condition, a fully documented provenance, and a critical discussion of attribution, date, subject, and function, as well as a summary of earlier scholarship. Many of these works are little published and some are published here for the first time. Forty-one works are reproduced in color, the rest in duotone; there are also 101 comparative illustrations.

Completely revised and updated, AIA Guide to Chicago, Second Edition is the liveliest and most wide-ranging guide ever written about Chicago's architecture. More than a thousand individual buildings are featured, along with more than four hundred photos-many taken expressly for this volume-and thirty-five specially commissioned maps. The book is arranged geographically so that the user, whether Chicago citizen or visitor, can tour each area of the city as conveniently as possible. Building descriptions focus on the illuminating-but easily overlooked-details that give the behind-the-scenes, often unexpected story of why a building took the shape it did. And in the best Chicago tradition, this guide does not shy away from opinions where opinions are called for. Comprehensively researched, meticulously written, and more than thorough.

Muthanna, also known as mirror writing, is a compelling style of Islamic calligraphy composed of a source text and its mirrored image placed symmetrically on a horizontal or vertical axis. This style elaborates on various scripts such as Kufi, naskh, and muqahhaq through compositional arrangements, including doubling, superimposing, and stacking. Muthanna is found in diverse media, ranging from architecture, textiles, and tiles to paper, metalwork, and woodwork. Yet despite its centuries-old history and popularity in countries from Iran to Spain, scholarship on the form has remained limited and flawed. Muthanna/Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy provides a comprehensive study of the text and its forms, beginning with an explanation of the visual principles and techniques used in its creation. Author Esra Akın-Kıvanç explores muthanna's relationship to similar forms of writing in Judaic and Christian contexts, as well as the specifically Islamic contexts within which symmetrically mirrored compositions reached full fruition, were assigned new meanings, and transformed into more complex visual forms. Throughout, Akın-Kıvanç imaginatively plays on the implicit relationship between subject and object in muthanna by examining the point of view of the artist, the viewer, and the work of art. In doing so, this study elaborates on the vital links between outward form and inner meaning in Islamic calligraphy.