Phaidon Press
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Phaidon Press is one of the leading publishers of books on the visual arts, including art, architecture, photography, and design worldwide. Competitors include other major art publishers such as Taschen, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Thames & Hudson, and Rizzoli.
Phaidon was founded in Vienna in 1923 by Dr. Bela Horowiz and Ludwig Goldscheider, with the objective of delivering high-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.
The occupation of the Nazis in Vienna forced the company to move to England. After the war, Phaidon launched a program of both popular and scholarly art book publishing. This included the critical catalogue of drawings in the royal collection at Windsor Castle and the "pocket" series of art history texts (now known as the Arts and Letters series).
In 1950, Phaidon published The Story of Art -- a one volume survey of the history of art by renowned scholar Ernst Gombrich. Since then it has become one of the best-selling art books in history, selling a total of more than 6 million copies in 16 English-language editions and in translation in more than 30 other languages.
The company changed ownership several times in the 70s and 80s, until being acquired by the present owner, Richard Schlagman, in 1990.
Noteworthy recent titles have included:
- Century
- The Art Book
- The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture
- 10x10 and the follow-up 10x10_2 (architecture)
- Area (graphic design)
- The Silver Spoon, Phaidon's first cookbook
- Wallpaper* City Guides, created by Wallpaper* magazine. Twenty guides were released in 2006 and another 40 are being published in 2007
- Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive
Phaidon is also well-known for The Contemporary Artists Series, which since 1995 has published monographs on important and emerging contemporary artists.
Today, Phaidon's headquarters are in London, with offices in New York, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo. The company publishes in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.
