French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) devoted himself exclusively to capturing the diversity of flowering plants in watercolour paintings which were then published as copper engravings, with careful botanical descriptions. The darling of wealthy Parisian patrons including Napoleon's wife Josephine, he was dubbed "the Raphael of flowers," and is regarded to this day as a master of botanical illustration. His illustrations of the Botanical Alphabets of D. N. Guillamain were a landmark in flower painting and he was an innovator in the techniques of printing including 'stipple-engraving'. This glorious and completely faithful reproduction includes Roses from 1817-1824 following The Lilies 1802-1816 and Selection of the Most Beautiful Flowers, each exquisite botanical illustration afforded one full page in colour. Quality heavyweight paper, stitched binding, one for all lovers of nature and art. With text in English, French and German. Beautiful colour artworks, new from Taschen, superheavyweight luxury hardback. This collection brings Taschen?s best-selling XL-sized edition to a smaller, more convenient format, still gathering some of the finest colour engravings from Redouté's illustrations of Roses, Lilies, and Choix des plus belles fleurs et quelques branches des plus beaux fruits (Selection of the Most Beautiful Blooms and Branches with the Finest Fruits). Offering a vibrant overview of Redouté's mixture of accuracy and beauty, it is also a privileged glimpse into the magnificent gardens and greenhouses of a bygone Paris. Text in English, Italian and Spanish. 16 x 22cm, rich with colour, 512 pages. New from Taschen.

Original illustrations from Audubon's masterwork Birds of America. Favourites include the Blue Jay, Golden Eagle, colourful flycatchers, warblers, waterbirds, the Barred Owl, Passenger Pigeon, Belted Kingfisher, Red-shouldered Hawk, Carolina Wren, Baltimore Oriole, American Flamingo, Yellow-billed Magpie, all with vibrant plumage and ideal subjects for colouring in. John James Audubon (1785-1851) was born in Haiti and raised in France, emigrating to North America when he was 18 to avoid conscription into the Napoleonic Wars. His true passion was ornithology and he spent many years identifying and recording bird species. Peter Gray, a long established illustrator of books, provides the outline on each right hand page, some portrait some landscape orientation, and we can follow the colours of Audubon's originals in situ on branches and sometimes with berries and flowers on the opposite page. 96 pages, 22.5 x 28cm, softback.

A National Gallery publication which looks at the revolutionary achievement of the youthful Titian which was made possible by his interaction with four great artists at the start of his career. Schooled by Bellini, associated with Giorgione, competed with Sebastiano del Piombo, he came into early contact with the work of Dürer. Here Antonio Mazzotta provides a fresh view of this brief and extraordinary episode in the history of art, focussing on Titian's great 'Flight into Egypt' and related paintings in the National Gallery. Titian is acknowledged as the greatest of the 16th century Venetian painters, best known for his portraits, mythological pictures and religious subjects, yet by studying the work of Dürer's paintings of plants, animals and landscape, Titian caused a sensation in Venice in the first decade of the 16th century. This is a beautiful and now rare 88 page large square softback art exhibition catalogue from 2012 which we have been lucky enough to discover in the USA and import. Rich with colour throughout with images of the Madonna and child on a donkey, foxes, wolves, a pastoral concert, archangel plus examples from Dürer et al.

Most of us who venture abroad have been intrigued by the design of other nations' toilets. Award-winning science writer Chelsea Wald has made a global study of what people do with their waste matter, and the result is alternately surprising, amusing, informative and terrifying. Before flush toilets, humans were often loath to waste urine, using it for a range of purposes including fertiliser, as a setting agent for plant dyes, and for the tanning industry. The Roman emperors Nero and Vespasian levied taxes on public urinals, and Madonna swears by it as a cure for athlete's foot. 100 trillion gallons of wastewater are produced daily worldwide, and in some countries it is diverted as irrigation, with purple being the colour for wastewater pipes to avoid mistakes resulting from colour blindness. Urine and faeces are also a major resource for medical research. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 addressed a crisis of deaths from opioid addition by lowering a biobot into selected manholes to analyse the waste not only for opioids but also the overdose-reversal drug, identifying which areas should be targeted for opioid reduction and where the reversal programmes were active. The modern toilet was pioneered in Britain in the late 16th century, when toilet bowls with standing water were invented to reduce the stink. In 1775 a valve was introduced to release the water and waste, and by the late-19th century the toilet had become the single-piece ceramic self-cleaning mechanism that we would recognise today. Different designs of toilet are described, including the inventions of the legendary Thomas Crapper. As toilets gained in popularity, sewage became an increasing problem, resulting in the famous "great stink" of 1858 which prompting the creation of London's sewer system, the model for European and American developments. Worldwide, though, less than half the world's population even now have what experts call "safely managed sanitation". Read about a compost toilet in Haiti, a plant in the Netherlands that salvages toilet paper from sewage and a toilet seat that analyses signs of illness in your poop. Finally the author discusses "lavatory humour" and the psychology of talking about defecation. 282pp, illustrations.

Sub-titled 'Why Our Lives Depend on Dark Skies', we embark on an illuminating journey to unveil the wonders of our night skies and the havoc wreaked by light pollution. Today light is all around us, all of the time, and the Milky Way is now completely lost to over one third of the global population. There is no other habitat we have degraded more than our darkness. Darkness is now beyond the reach of everyone except those with the privilege of travelling to Dark Sky places and starry night skies, such as countries found deep in the Northern Hemisphere. Step back in time and discover the electrifying story behind the invention of Edison's light bulb to the modern-day reign of bright lights that bewilder our planet's wildlife. The author uses her personal experience and career to show why nighttime is something for us to protect and not be fearful of. We travel to the realm of dreams of ancient myths inspired by the constellations, understand why scenes captured by some of the greatest artists can no longer be witnessed in the same way today, and learn how the animals we share our world with are unable to hide under the cover of darkness. The ancient oak is no longer able to support the nesting birds and insects and no squirrels hunt for acorns. Even the tree itself is suffocating from the light that clings to its canopy. Interspersed with inspiring stories from cultures all over the world, the book is both a celebration of the star-speckled blanket above us all, and a call to reclaim the night, one light switch at a time. 298pp.