Trained as both architects and historians, Andrew Zega and Bernd H. Dams are skilled artists known for their expert restitutions of historic buildings, rendered in a realistic watercolor technique that has become their trademark. Originally published as a limited-edition collector’s item that sold for $1,100, this affordable reprinted edition presents fifty charming images, the results of more than a decade of study of historic European and American architecture and garden ornament. Thirty-six of the works presented here delve into the past, reconstructing exceptional historical structures from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century with a predominately French style. The remaining are the authors’ original designs, beautifully detailed works inspired by these exotic and whimsical structures. Hubert de Givenchy, in his preface to Chinoiseries, describes these images as "precious documents [that] retrace an époque when taste, extravagance, and a sense of fantasy were an essential part of the way in which parks and gardens were embellished, by perfectly inscribing them in nature, then furnishing them with dreams."

Chinoiseries

Arts & Photography

Dams, Bernd H.

Zega, Andrew

Architecture

Rizzoli

A lavish and unprecedented exploration of Central Park's extraordinary and beautifully designed spaces, buildings, sculpture, and follies, in historic photographs and exquisitely detailed watercolors by the authors. Frederick Law Olmsted's Central Park is famed for its naturalistic design and the beauty and diversity of its landscape features. The rich body of sculpture and architecture in this National Historic Landmark is a cherished element of the city's cultural heritage and includes pavilions, memorials, and monuments, sculptures, bridges, and arches, gates and rustic shelters, gardens, lakes, and meers, and even a 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk. Most remain as originally designed, but some have been altered, a few demolished, and fewer still never realized. Here, after years of meticulous research, shown in contemporary and archival photographs as well as maps of the park, the most beautiful and beloved structures from the park's 160-year history have been chosen by the authors and depicted as originally designed in ravishing watercolors of exquisite detail. As Hubert de Givenchy noted in his preface to the authors' previous book, Chinoiseries, and which is equally applicable here with regard to the authors' watercolors, "These precious documents retrace an époque when taste, extravagance, and sense of fantasy were an essential part of the way in which parks and gardens were embellished, by perfectly inscribing them in nature, then furnishing them with dreams."

Central Park NYC: An Architectural View

Astonishing buildings created for casual amusements, the splendid pavilions and garden follies of prerevolutionary France are the glorious productions of an age now past—but they continue to speak to us through the dazzling artistry of Dams and Zega.\nSpanning 150 years and the reigns of four kings, the pleasure pavilions, garden follies, and châteaux of Ancien Régime France are fascinating for the stories that surround their creation as well as a visual feast and a delight. Typically the realm of scholars, the subject is given extraordinary life at the hands of the authors, through whose historically accurate, meticulously rendered watercolors the reader comes to see the sometimes grand, sometimes playful, always beautiful buildings, sculpture, and ornament as they were meant to be seen.\nDams and Zega have devoted much of a lifetime to rediscovering and illuminating these great treasures of world heritage, and this volume is the fruit of more than thirty years of passionate investigation. Intensive original research and devoted exploration informs the work, capturing the genius of these buildings through the medium of watercolor, which the author-artists harness to render building materials and surfaces with sensitivity and great range.\nFrom the mannerist and early baroque guard pavilions at Blérancourt to the Château de Rosay, a fantasy realized in the form of an Anglo-Chinese folly park, this volume is a revelation, sure to captivate architects, historians, landscape designers, and garden lovers.

Visions of Arcadia: Pavilions and Follies of the Ancien Régime

History & Criticism

The charming garden follies of pre-Revolutionary France, spanning 150 years and the reigns of four monarchs, are today known almost exclusively to scholars. Imaginative creations of France's greatest architects and eloquent symbols of their era, they were built for the pleasure of the Bourbon kings and their courts. Many of these buildings have been destroyed or severely altered and the only records that survive are the drawings, engravings, architectural plans, and, more rarely, paintings of the period. Bernd H. Dams and Andrew Zega have made a major contribution to our knowledge of these structures in a magnificent collection of contemporary watercolor renderings based on rigorous scholarship and architectural precision depicting the most significant examples of garden architecture built in France from the 1630s to the Revolution. Their lively and informative text, which combines architectural history with fascinating insights and amusing anecdotes, brings these remarkable buildings and the vanished world that created them vividly to life. Each folly is the subject of a chapter in which the authors' watercolors are supplemented by portraits of architects and patrons, paintings, drawings, plans, elevations, and interior views. Examined chronologically, they provide a delightful perspective on the history of French garden design from the Italianate influences of the late Renaissance to the exoticism of the decades preceding the Revolution. Moving through political, social, and garden history, readers will discover the unique world of charm and pleasure that was cultivated in France for nearly two centuries. This exquisitely designed book, which includes a visitor's guide to the follies that may still be seen today, is certain to enchant architects, historians, landscape designers, and garden lovers.

Pleasure Pavilions and Follies: In the Gardens of the Ancien Regime

Flammarion

Garden Vases

History

Alain De Gourcuff

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Books by Zega, Andrew