Description
Octopus Books, Published 1972. Hardcover, 158 pp.; 20 x 14 cm; First Edition (first English-language edition, translated from the Italian); 97 full-color plates; chronological table, bibliography, index of illustrations.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Cream paper-covered boards with gilt lettering on spine, light bumping to corners and edges, mild shelf and edge wear; faint line down front board with a hint of soiling, a few small spots to rear board and spine. Binding tight. Mild toning to endpapers with a couple of tiny foxing spots; faint pencil price notation at top corner of rear jacket flap; otherwise pages clean and unmarked. Illustrated dust jacket (Rajput miniature of a woman at her toilet on front panel, Mughal court scene on rear, Sigiriya fresco on flap) shows a few small nicks, light creasing along edges, mild shelf wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Compact pocket survey from the Octopus all-color art history series, issued in the first year of Paul Hamlyn's Octopus Books (founded 1971) and translated from volume 8 of Fratelli Fabbri's Storia universale dell'arte (Milan, 1966), edited by the Florentine art historian Francesco Abbate. The 97 plates, each with a descriptive caption, run from Indus Valley pottery and seals through Mauryan, Sunga, Satavahana, Gandhara, Gupta, Chalukya and Pallava sculpture, the cave-temples of Karle, Bhaja and Elephanta, the temples of Sanchi, Bodh-Gaya and Khajuraho, the Qutb Minar and the Taj Mahal, and Mughal and Rajput miniatures, then continue to Sigiriya and Polonnaruva in Ceylon, Afghan, Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhist art, Siamese and Laotian Buddhas, Khmer reliefs from Angkor, Cham sculpture and Balinese carving. Objects drawn from the National Museums in New Delhi and Karachi, the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, the Museum of Indian Art, Calcutta, the British Museum, the Musee Guimet and the Freer Gallery. Rear flap lists the companion volumes (African, American, Chinese, Christian, Egyptian, Japanese, Precolumbian and Roman Art, Classical Greece, Art Nouveau, Impressionism). Contents: India; Ceylon; Afghanistan; Nepal and Tibet; Siam and Burma; Cambodia and Vietnam; Indonesia; Chronological Table; Bibliography; Index of Illustrations.