The Getty Museum building recreates an ancient Roman villa on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, where guests can feel that they are visiting the Villa dei Papiri before it was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The climate of southern California has made it possible to plant the gardens with dozens of herbs, flowers, and fruit trees known to the Greeks and Romans. In classical times they were practical as well as beautiful, providing color, perfume, home medicines, and flavorings for food and drink. Martha Breen Bredemeyer, a San Francisco Bay area artist, was inspired to paint two dozen of the garden's herbs. Her watercolor gouaches combine vibrant color with the fragile delicacy of these short-lived plants while her pen-and-ink drawings share their wiry grace. Jeanne D'Andrea discusses twenty-one of the herbs in detail after presenting their place in myth, medicine, and home in the introduction.

The original Getty Museum, housed in a replica of a Roman Villa on a site overlooking the Pacific Ocean, is one of Los Angeles's most treasured landmarks. Closed for almost ten years while renovations were made to the building and the site itself was transformed into a center for the study of antiquities and conservation, the Getty Villa is now set to open late in 2005. The Getty Villa is a lively history of the Getty Museum, its renowned antiquities collections, and its growth from a small museum in a ranch house in Malibu to its first home in a building designed to replicate what we know of the Villa dei Papiri, an ancient Roman villa partially uncovered in Herculaneum. Most engagingly, this book records the ten-year adventure in reconfiguring a beautiful, but topographically challenging, site into one that could continue to accommodate the splendid Museum building and also provide for an outdoor theater, laboratories for conservation work and research, offices for staff and visiting scholars, and an education program for adults and children. This is a story of architectural imagination, geographical challenges, and legal hurdles, all of which have resulted in a truly unique and beautiful site. The story is an enlightening and rewarding one for anyone interested in architecture and in the difficulties posed by building on a grand scale in the twenty-first century. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the book includes 250 reproductions of works of art, photographs of both the old and the new Getty Museum, site plans, and architectural elevations.

First published in 2012, this catalogue presents fifty-six Etruscan, Greek, and Italic carved ambers from the Getty Museum's collection—the second largest body of this material in the United States and one of the most important in the world. The ambers date from about 650 to 300 BC. The catalogue offers full description of the pieces, including typology, style, chronology, condition, and iconography. Each piece is illustrated. The catalogue is preceded by a general introduction to ancient amber (which was also published in 2012 as a stand-alone print volume titled Amber and the Ancient World). Through exquisite visual examples and vivid classical texts, this book examines the myths and legends woven around amber—its employment in magic and medicine, its transport and carving, and its incorporation into jewelry, amulets, and other objects of prestige. This publication highlights a group of remarkable amber carvings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. This catalogue was first published in 2012 at museumcatalogues.getty.edu/amber/. The present online edition of this open-access publication was migrated in 2019 to www.getty.edu/publications/ambers/; it features zoomable, high-resolution photography; free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book; and JPG downloads of the catalogue images.

Publisher description

Llewellyn's Herbal Almanac offers a wide variety of practical ideas on how to benefit from nature's most versatile plants. With hands-on projects, fresh ideas, and tips and techniques, this guide is designed for herb enthusiasts of all skill levels. It also features innovative herbal ideas that span gardening, cooking, crafts, health, beauty, history, and lore. This year's edition also includes profiles for ginger, rhubarb, chamomile, sunflower, and comfrey and articles on: Aromatics for Nervous, Respiratory, and Digestive Systems • Edible Wild Herbs and Grasses • Swedish Princess Cake with Matcha • Chewable Herbal Pills • Late-Season Herb Gardening • Italian Citrus Fruits • Soup Garden • Tinctures • Crafting with Recycled Materials • Herbal Bath Recipes • The Gardens of Pompeii • Gourmet Herbal Sandwiches • Conservation Plants • Homemade Herbal Scrubs • And Much More