Phaidon Press
Phaidon Press is an international publisher of books on the
visual arts with offices in New York, London, Paris and
Berlin, and distributors worldwide. It has had a long and
fascinating history, as recorded by art historian Nigel
Spivey for Phaidon's 75th anniversary in 1998. Read a brief
history here, Nigel's 75 page version with illustrations
under Full History, or download the full history as a PDF
file.
"By means of beauty, beautiful things become beautiful."
Socrates, Plato, PHAEDO Phaidon has a long and distinguished history as an art book
publisher. The company was founded in Vienna in 1923 by Dr.
Bela Horowiz and Ludwig Goldscheider and named
after "Phaedo", Socrates' pupil who spoke on the
immortality of the soul. Their key objective was to deliver
quality books at affordable prices. They were able to
achieve this as pioneers of the international co-edition
and with large print-runs. Their first titles were not art
books, but books on literature, philosophy and history.
Phaidon's large format art books first emerged in 1936 with
high-quality plates on Van Gogh, Botticelli, and the French
Impressionists.
These were some of the first large, sumptuously illustrated
artist monographs reasonably priced for the general public. The occupation of the Nazis in Vienna forced the company to
move to England. After the war, Phaidon launched an
innovative program of both popular and scholarly art book
publishing. This included the monumental critical catalogue
of drawings in the royal collection at Windsor Castle and
the elegant "pocket" series of art history texts (now known
as the Arts and Letters series). In 1950, Phaidon published
its landmark book the Story of Art ---a one volume survey
of the history of art by renowned scholar Ernst Gombrich. The company went through a rough period in the 70s and 80s
changing ownership several times, until 1990 when Richard
Schlagman acquired Phaidon Press with the objective of re-
establishing it as the leading publisher of books on the
visual arts. Based in London, Phaidon launched an energetic
program of new books and re-launched its best classic
titles. The Press turned back to its original mission---to
publish fine art books with high production and design
standards, scholarly excellence, and value for money. The
result has been breathtaking, unusually readable, desirable
books on the whole spectrum of visual arts. In 1994, The Art Book was published with over 500 images
for each of the most important artists from ancient to
modern day in an unconventional A-Z format. It has been and
still is a huge international success. In 1995, Phaidon
published the 16th edition of The Story of Art which has
sold over six
million copies to date and been translated into more than
30 languages. The Story of Art is still unrivalled as the
best introduction to the history of art and the most
popular book on art ever published. Today Phaidon books are recognized worldwide for the
highest quality of content, design, and production. They
cover everything from art, architecture, photography,
design, performing arts, decorative arts, contemporary
culture, fashion, and film. Phaidon books continue to be so
innovative and beautiful that as Nigel Spivy points out in
his fuller account of Phaidon's history, "a readership is
rightly disposed to buy a Phaidon book for no other reason
than that Phaidon has produced it".
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Series
Books:The Silver Spoon, October 2005
Hardcover
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