Marlinespikes and Monkey's Fists: Traditional Arts and Knot-Tying Skills of Maritime Workersexplores the knot-tying traditions and artistry of maritime workers in the Great Lakes region. It contains a glossary of knot-tying terms, biographical sketches of fifteen knot-tyers, an 18-page essay describing various knot-tying customs such as decorating the workplace and personalizing tools, and experiences of the knot-tyers themselves: their careers, how they learn and pass on knot-tying techniques, and how they view the purpose and importance of the tradition.

"Exhibition curated by Kristie Couser and Dr. Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art, VMFA."

The only book to relate the entire dazzling story of Tiffany jewels, this resplendent volume is packed with stunning photographs of exquisite jewelry & newly discovered designs.

Broadly divided into 19th and 20th Centuries and then arranged thematically, this beautifully designed and lavishly produced book celebrates the greatest jewels encountered by the authors.

This catalogue covers around 200 pieces of jewellery dating from the 1850s to the 1980s, products of the American company Tiffany & Co. The essays chart the early years of the store, its transformation into a world leader and its re-establishment as a worldwide brand after 1945.

Horses, lavish parties, elegant estates, murders, and rivalries -- an inside look at the people, places, and mystique that surround Middleburg, Virginia

“I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise is like an exquisite string of pearls: the perfect balance of elegance, style, design, and beauty. This book is inspiring, spirited, and totally absorbing.” —Diane von Furstenberg The story of Bunny Mellon, the great landscape and interior designer, becomes a revelatory exploration of extreme wealth in the American century. Bunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare, once-in-a-generation sense of style and grace. Her most celebrated work—the White House Rose Garden, designed during the presidency of John F. Kennedy—demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect. Later, her understated landscape design for the Kennedy grave site at Arlington National Cemetery changed the face of American public memorials. Mellon was a famously private person, and many of her greatest achievements remained concealed from public view. Her rarely seen gardens and domestic interiors at eight different properties on three continents became legends and models. At Oak Spring Farm in Virginia, the bibliographic riches of her Garden Library were twinned with the expansive flowering gardens lying below the Edward Larrabee Barnes–designed building. At her home on Nantucket, she pruned back the landscape to reveal the elemental forms of nature. Mellon also ranked as one of the great art collectors of her era, encouraging her husband Paul to use his family’s vast wealth to acquire hundreds of nineteenth-century French paintings, many of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art. Her own tastes ranged from Mark Rothko to Richard Diebenkorn—in quantity. In I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Mac Griswold—who knew Mellon personally—delves into her subject’s closely guarded personal archives to construct an unrivaled portrait of a woman as complex and multifaceted as the gardens and homes on which she left her mark. Mellon tested the anodyne 1950s model of woman-as-wife-as-mother by getting a divorce, admitting candidly to her first husband that she wanted a richer one. She imperiously traded old friends for new and ultimately used her reputation, her connections, and above all her money to help fund John Edwards’s short-lived presidential campaign. She led an American version of a royal court that, over the years, included Jackie Kennedy, Hubert de Givenchy, and I. M. Pei. How Mellon’s character, style, and taste developed together to produce her greatest accomplishments—private and public—is the real subject of this biography.