Remarkable Rugs is the book for every tapestry and embroidery lover, featuring as it does the bright and colourful, original and detailed designs that artist Phoebe Hart stitched on canvas, using a mixture of wools to produce rugs and hangings that today are collectors' items. The word 'inspirational' is often too freely used, but Phoebe Hart's canvas work is just that, each design a master class in composition and crammed full of intricate, detailed borders, lush flowers and fruit, and light-hearted, colour-bright butterflies, birds and fish - rich sources of inspiration for every needlecraft enthusiast. Phoebe Hart (1917-2010) was American by birth, but went to school in England, after which she studied stage design at the Slade under Vladimir Polunin, who had designed sets for Diaghilev, and for whom she painted backdrops for the Ballet Russe. After the war she went to Jamaica where she married, and where, hugely influenced by the vibrancy of Caribbean life, she began to design and make rugs depicting various aspects of the tropical world. Commissions soon poured in for commemorative pieces - a home, a favourite animal, an anniversary, a life - her admirers were legion. A show in London in 1997 cemented her reputation, and this book will bring her artistic genius and flair for design to a whole new generation of needlewomen.

Imagine a world without Principia Mathematica, Rights of Man, the Bible, Shakespeare, or the Mahabharata. Remarkable Books features 75 of the world's most momentous titles - from The Art of War to Anne Frank's Diary - and reveals their far-ranging impact. Books are the medium through which scientists, storytellers, and philosophers introduce their ideas. Discover seminal religious and political titles, cornerstones of science such as On the Origin of Species, and ancient texts such as the I Ching, which is still used today to answer fundamental questions about human existence. Get up close to see fascinating details, such as Vesalius' exquisite anatomical illustrations in Epitome, Leonardo da Vinci's annotated notebooks, or the hand-decorated pages in the Gutenberg Bible. Discover why Euclid's Elements of Geometry was the most influential maths title ever published, and marvel at rare treasures such as the Aubin Codex, which tells the history of the Aztecs and the early Spanish colonial period in Mexico. Remarkable Books gathers stories, diaries, scientific treatises, plays, dictionaries, and religious texts into a stunning celebration of the power of books.

"A bibliography of wool and the woolen manufacture": v. 21, 1891, p. 118-134.