|
Thames & Hudson (also Thames and Hudson and sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, design, and visual culture.〔(Thames and Hudson ), Google Books.〕 With its headquarters in London, England it has a sister company in New York and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong. In Paris it has a further subsidiary company, Interart, which is engaged in the distribution of English-language books and a sister company, Éditions Thames & Hudson. It has been an independent, family-owned company since its founding in 1949. Thames & Hudson's ''World of Art'' series is especially well-known. In particular, ''A Concise History of Painting: From Giotto to Cézanne'' by Michael Levey (former director of the National Gallery in London), originally published in 1962 (ISBN 0-500-20024-6), is a classic and authoritative introduction to the history of European art from the beginnings of perspective in Italy to the foundations of modern art at the start of the 20th century. Thames & Hudson employs some 200 people worldwide, mostly in the London headquarters, with an annual publishing programme that releases approximately 180 books a year on art, photography, architecture, graphics, three-dimensional design (industrial, furniture, product), gardens, fashion and textiles, archaeology, history, travel, lifestyle and interiors, and popular culture. == History == Thames & Hudson was established by Walter Neurath who was born in Vienna in 1903. He left that city, where he ran an art gallery and published illustrated books with an emphasis on education, arriving in London in 1938. He initially worked as production director of Adprint, a business established by fellow Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. Neurath and Foges went on to pioneer the concept of what is today known as book packaging, in which book ideas are conceived, commissioned, produced, and sold to publishers in different markets in their own languages and under their own imprints (co-editions) in order to create large print-runs and lower unit production costs. Neurath’s concept was the first sign of many innovations that through Thames & Hudson he would later introduce to the world of publishing. Wishing to take co-edition book packaging further and recognizing the need to amortize the high production costs of illustrated books, Neurath established his own publishing house, incorporating offices in London (at 244 High Holborn) and New York in the autumn of 1949. Thus arose the company name, Thames & Hudson, the rivers represented by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, one west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New. Eva Neurath, who had arrived in London in 1939 from Berlin (she was at that time married to Wilhelm Feuchtwang) and worked alongside Neurath at Adprint, co-founded the company as partner. Among the ten titles that were published in Thames & Hudson’s first publication season in 1950, ''English Cathedrals'', with photographs by Swiss Martin Hürlimann (who went on to create over twenty titles for the company), was the first and most successful. A testament to the company’s strong belief from the very start in the longevity of books, it remained in print until 1971. Also appearing in the first year of publication was Albert Einstein’s ''Out of my later years'', an early indication of the publication programme’s breadth. With the gradual and successful expansion of the list, which grew from ten titles in 1950 to 144 in print in 1955, the company outgrew its High Holborn offices and moved in 1956 to a Georgian townhouse at 30 Bloomsbury Street, just off Bedford Square, then the epicentre of London publishing activity. The company remained at that address, eventually expanding to five houses, until 1999. In 1958, Thames & Hudson launched what is one of its best-known series, the ''World of Art'', which for the subsequent decades provided the backbone of its highly varied list. Characterized by their pocketable size and black spines – "little black artbooks" – the series expanded in just seven years to include 49 titles. More than fifty years later, over 300 titles have appeared in the series, and many remain in print today. Other major series that imparted depth and prestige to the list were ''Ancient People and Places'', edited by Glyn Daniel, who from the 1950s helped to pioneer a wider interest in archaeology, on television and in book form. More than 100 titles were published in the series over a 34-year period. The large-format ''Great Civilizations'' series, published from 1961, featured contributions by such esteemed academics as Alan Bullock, Asa Briggs, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A.J.P. Taylor, and John Julius Norwich. On Thames & Hudson’s tenth anniversary, the UK publishing industry magazine, ''The Bookseller'', described the company as "neither wedded to eclecticism nor dedicated to mass appeal, (has ) produced some of the most ambitious picture books ever published... and have sold them in a number which ten years ago would have been considered improbable and at prices which have won the surprised gratitude of thousands of readers." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thames & Hudson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|