Books: A Holiday Hamper Of Glowing Gift Titles

MORE THAN $60

Cranach did it, Van Eyck did it, even Hans Pleydenwurff did it. But nobody drew the birds, bees and flowers better than Albrecht Durer, the German master who died in 1528, leaving a legacy of nature illustrations that have been admired (and copied by forgers) for centuries. Albrecht Durer and the Animal and Plant Studies of the Renaissance by Fritz Koreny (New York Graphic Society; 278 pages; $75), compares such renowned works of botanical and zoological observation as Hare and The Large Piece of Turf with their imitations. The result is a scholarly view of authentication problems in 16th century German art and a wondrous glimpse into the beginnings of scientific representation.

Operaphiles may agree on little else, but on one subject they are unanimous: Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera, conceived in a burst of Second Empire glory and opened in a blaze of Third Republic splendor, is the world’s most opulent opera house. The Paris Opera (Vendome; 187 pages; $75), with text by Martine Kahane, curator of the Opera’s library-museum, and musicologist Thierry Beauvert, succinctly recounts the history of the fabled hall, but the real tour d’horizon is provided by Jacques Moatti’s photographs, which take the reader from the subterranean lake beneath the mammoth building, where the Phantom of the Opera was said to roam, to the gilded statue of Apollo and his lyre, which soars some 230 ft. above the streets of Paris.

Rare is the illustrated book in which pictures and words equally reward attention. The Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge; 240 pages; $75) admirably succeeds on both counts. For openers, it offers for the first time in English an extended essay by Jacob Burckhardt, the 19th century cultural historian best known for his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). Burckhardt’s study of Italian altarpieces, originally published in German a year after his death in 1897, remains magisterially informative. And the accompanying reproductions, including work by Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Titian and Michelangelo, do more than supplement Burckhardt’s text. They provide miraculous glimpses of an age when the artistic impulse and religious devotion were one and the same.

They had faces then, but they also had posters. And Reel Art: Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen by Stephen Rebello and Richard Allen (Abbeville; 342 pages; $75) displays them in both black and white and glorious Technicolor, along with a witty history of this peculiar art form. Charles Laughton’s grasping hand reaches for a half-clad Maureen O’Hara in a teaser for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939); Gary Cooper clutches a gun and Madeleine Carroll clutches him in an ad for The General Died at Dawn (1936); William Powell and Hedy Lamarr gaze out from Crossroads (1942), “where women,” promises the caption, “wait to seal your fate!” Even without popcorn, Reel Art is a real hoot.

Because they could be inexpensively reproduced, Japanese wood-block prints, or ukiyo-e, made art available to the masses. Hiroshige: Birds and Flowers (George Braziller; 192 pages; $75) presents 91 surviving color prints from a 19th century master of the form. Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) was enormously successful with subjects more commonly portrayed in wood blocks: landscapes and scenes of urban night life. The prints of birds and flowers collected here harked back to an older Chinese tradition and became popular as well. The formula — literally an arrangement of birds and plants — only sounds narrow. Hiroshige’s inspired variations are exquisite, serene and pulsing with life.

$40-$60

The season’s most exotic and original fashion book is Issey Miyake (New York Graphic Society; $40). Japanese designer Miyake’s particular genius is with fabric and shape. Here are lilting cascades of pleats, riffs on the jumpsuit that really leap, whirling fantasies on samurai gear. Seen through photographer Irving Penn’s daring aesthetic eye, the clothes have a drama that nearly engulfs the imagination. The affable accompanying essay is a reminder that these duds are wearable too.

Hammered copper, hand-thrown pottery, “honest” furniture even when machine-made — these were the tenets that created the spare yet homey Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement: 1890-1920, handsomely surveyed by Tod M. Volpe and Beth Cathers (Abrams; 206 pages; $49.50). Founded in Britain by John Ruskin and William Morris as an antidote to the shoddy wares of the Industrial Revolution, the movement was brought to the U.S. by Gustav Stickley. Its principles have blurred, but the work produced by its philosopher-practitio ners endures. Example: the incised birds that flit across the flowers on Mary Frances Overbeck’s exquisite ceramic vase.

Is there someone in the family interested in the 46 synonyms for the Gewurztraminer grape? Or maybe you have a friend who just has to locate the six wine-growing districts of China? If so, consider as a suitable gift Sotheby’s World Wine Encyclopedia by Tom Stevenson (New York Graphic Society; 480 pages; $40). Lavishly illustrated and superbly mapped, it compares favorably with older standards by Hugh Johnson and Alexis Lichine. Stevenson, a British expert, provides meticulously detailed information on both the basics (how to read wine labels) and the arcane (how wine is fermented). Idiosyncrasy blends with thoroughness here to make a perfect oenophile’s companion.

Man Ray (1890-1976) is probably best remembered for the photographs he took of his friends, including Joyce, Hemingway and Picasso. Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray (Abbeville; 348 pages; $55) reproduces these pictures, of course, but much else as well. Ray flourished in Paris during the 1920s and ’30s as a painter and a maker of often whimsical objects, such as a flatiron with a row of tacks attached. Photography was almost an afterthought, a means of recording his sometimes perishable constructions. But Ray’s camera also captured an era — when art belonged to Dada — that this book scrupulously assembles and preserves.

LESS THAN $40

“In the springtime one could travel for hundreds of miles on a bed of flowers. Sometimes they came up to my stirrups.” Thus a Texas Ranger in 1875 described riding through West Texas. To preserve this natural bounty, in 1982 Lady Bird Johnson gave 60 Texas acres and $125,000 to found the National Wildflower Research Center. Now, with horticulturist Carlton B. Lees, the former First Lady has produced Wildflowers Across America (Abbeville; 309 ! pages; $39.95) and will donate her royalties to help support the center. The botanical handbook is illuminated with photographs of extraordinary clarity and includes instructions on how to make your own meadow, something not yet in the Neiman-Marcus catalog.

Get into plastics, was the advice given to ambitious young men after World War II. The New Yorker editor Robert A. Gottlieb and Manhattan art dealer Frank Maresca eventually did. A Certain Style: The Art of the Plastic Handbag, 1949-59 (Knopf; 117 pages; $35) is a campy offering of selected photographs of the authors’ unusual collections of period pocketbooks. Articles that once seemed the height of kitschy fashion in New York City and Miami Beach now glow, isolated by smart lighting and technically perfect camera work, like the artifacts of a vanished civilization.

In 1924 the British people presented Queen Mary, grandmother of Queen Elizabeth, with a dolls’ house as a gesture of gratitude and loyalty after World War I. In Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House (Abbeville; 191 pages; $35), Mary Stewart-Wilson opens to our view the tiniest stately home in England. The empire’s finest artists, craftsmen and manufacturers contributed to the miniature royal household: Doulton sent a gilded china service for 18 (including 22 serving and covered vegetable dishes); Waygood Otis built two working elevators; and Cartier made seven clocks and two barometers. A.E. Housman, who allowed some of his poems to be copied small for the 200-book library, commented: “I selected the twelve shortest and simplest and least likely to fatigue the attention of dolls or the illustrious House of Hanover.”

There were long, hard years in the 1930s and ’40s when they were treated like animals. But once the right roles came along, the applause never stopped. Today Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester and Tweety, and their colleagues remain Saturday-morning superstars. They are also the focus of That’s All Folks! by Steve Schneider (Henry Holt; 253 pages; $39.95). This comic valentine offers impeccable research, interviews with the animated geniuses who breathed life and laughter into their Looney Tunes, and hundreds of rare illustrations. Given the price of a single frame of original Warner Bros. art ($400 for Bugs and carrot), this is the season’s biggest bargain.