Author: Stacy Perman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439190100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 525
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Book Description
Two wealthy and powerful men engage in a decades-long contest to create and possess the most remarkable watch in history. James Ward Packard of Warren, Ohio, was an entrepreneur and a talented engineer of infinite curiosity, a self-made man who earned millions from his inventions, including the design and manufacture of America’s first luxury car—the elegant and storied Packard. Henry Graves, Jr., was the very essence of blue-blooded refinement in the early 1900s: son of a Wall Street financier, a central figure in New York high society, and a connoisseur of beautiful things—especially fine watches. Then, as now, expensive watches were the ultimate sign of luxury and wealth, but in the early twentieth century the limitless ambition, wealth, and creativity of these two men pushed the boundaries of mathematics, astronomy, craftsmanship, technology, and physics to create ever more ingenious timepieces. In any watch, features beyond the display of hours, minutes, and seconds are known as “complications.” Packard and Graves spurred acclaimed Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe to create the Mona Lisa of timepieces—a fabled watch that incorporated twenty-four complications and took nearly eight years to design and build. For the period, it was the most complicated watch ever created. For years it disappeared, but then it surfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in 1999, touching off a heated bidding war, shattering all known records when it fetched $11 million from an anonymous bidder. New York Times bestselling author Stacy Perman takes us from the clubby world of New York high society into the ateliers of the greatest Swiss watchmakers, and into the high-octane, often secretive subculture of modern-day watch collecting. With meticulous research, vivid historical details, and a wealth of dynamic personalities, A Grand Complication is the fascinating story of the thrilling duel between two of the most intriguing men of the early twentieth century. Above all, it is a sweeping chronicle of innovation, the desire for beauty, and the lengths people will go to possess it.
Author: Allen Kurzweil
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 009943685X
Category : Librarians
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Critically acclaimed for his international bestseller, "A Case of Curiosities," Kurzweil presents "The Grand Complication"--a modern-day tale of literary intrigue, deviant passions, and delicious secrets.
Author: Allen Kurzweil
Publisher: Hyperion
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Critically acclaimed for his international bestseller, "A Case of Curiosities," Kurzweil presents "The Grand Complication"--a modern-day tale of literary intrigue, deviant passions, and delicious secrets.
Author: Grit Laskin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781927958841
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Grand Complications is the story behind the story of fifty of these original designs from 2003 to the present. It is a look inside guitarmaker William "Grit" Laskin's creative process: how he teases out a client's interests and intentions, how he develops and refines his ideas, and how he brings them to life in his mind and on paper. From "Short Stories" that fill only the headstock of a guitar to full narratives that run the length of the neck, each inspired design is the product of research, deep thinking, and a little alchemy. Featured here are projects ranging from an homage to John Lennon to a paean to humpback whales to a tribute to the fall of the Berlin Wall."--
Author: Peter Roessingh
Publisher: Distanz
ISBN: 9783954763290
Category : Ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Collaborative Plants and Other Complications. Andrea Bakketun (b. 1983 in Trondheim, Norway, lives and works in Oslo) and biologist Peter Roessingh invited people from the artist's creative circle for the transdisciplinary project Grand Complications. For one year, the participants transformed the site of an old school building in Rommen, a suburb of Oslo, and the surrounding forest into a research laboratory with the aim of artistically penetrating all facets of the existing ecosystem. The resulting video works, performances, and site-specific installations are part of a canon of artistic research that expands scientific methods with the help of artistic means, recalling Paul Klee's appeal that the goal of art is not to reproduce the visible, rather to make the invisible visible. Understood as a collective whole, Grand Complications observes and translates the activities of all those participating at the Rommen site - from the plant to the artist. The publication documents the one-year work of Andrea Bakketun and her research participants. Accompanying texts, transcriptions, and poems were contributed by Hannah Mjølsnes, Peter Roessingh, Andreas Schlaegel, and Sara Sølberg.
Author: Allen Kurzweil
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547350864
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
This tale of an ambitious inventor in France as the Revolution looms is “brilliantly playful . . . full of lore and lewdness” (Chicago Tribune). “A portrait of a young mechanical genius in 18th-century France, delivered along with a gallimaufry of odd and intriguing facts and a rich, lusty picture of society in that time and place.” —Publishers Weekly In France, on the eve of the Revolution, a young man named Claude Page sets out to become the most ingenious and daring inventor of his time. Over the course of a career filled with violence and passion, Claude learns the arts of enameling and watchmaking from an irascible, defrocked abbé, then apprentices himself to a pornographic bookseller and applies his erotic erudition to the seduction of the wife of an impotent wigmaker. But it is Claude’s greatest device—a talking mechanical head—that both crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre. “Like a joint effort by Henry Fielding and John Barth” (Chicago Tribune), this “captivating novel” (San Francisco Chronicle) marked the debut of one of the finest literary artists of our time. “A Case of Curiosities . . . really is brilliant. Also witty, learned, ingenious, sly, and bawdy.” —Entertainment Weekly “What John Fowles did for the 19th century with The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Umberto Eco did for the 14th with The Name of the Rose . . . Kurzweil now does for the late 18th century.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Allen Kurzweil
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062033964
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Leon's back. Having survived the sweatshop methods of Miss Hagmeyer, his needle-wielding fourth grade teacher at the Classical School, Leon braces himself for fifth grade. He arrives armed with a backpack full of pens and pencils, binders and notebooks . . . plus a rag doll that's the spitting image of Henry Lumpkin, the bully who has Leon in his sights. If the doll works the way it's supposed to, Leon (and his buddies P.W. and Lily-Matisse) won't have to worry about Lumpkin the Pumpkin! Better still, Leon has a fabulous new teacher, Mr. Sparks, who conducts science experiments using that most miraculous of research materials -- the potato chip. And a good thing, too. Mr. Sparks's lab work will come in handy when Leon is forced to take on Alphonse "The Chippopotamus" Cipollini at the annual Chipapalooza! Chip-Off. Once you've sunk your teeth into Leon and the Champion Chip, the hilarious sequel to Leon and the Spitting Image, you'll never eat potato chips the same way again!
Author:
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
ISBN: 0847832287
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Now in its tenth edition, Watches International has been setting the standard for up-to-date reference guides devoted to luxury timepieces. At more than 700 pages, this volume showcases the latest watches from around the world from every major watchmaker.
Author: Stacy Perman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439190089
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
"The race between two ambitious, complicated men in the early 1900s to create the most extravagant, complicated timepiece ever"--
Author: Nicholas Foulkes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781848094451
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
