Author(s): Bernd H. Dams

Architecture/Interiors

Trained as both architects and historians, Andrew Zega and Bernd H. Dams are skilled artists known for their expert restitutions of historic buildings, rendered in a realistic watercolor technique that has become their trademark. Originally published as a limited-edition collector's item that sold for $1,100, this affordable reprinted edition presents fifty charming images, the results of more than a decade of study of historic European and American architecture and garden ornament. Thirty-six of the works presented here delve into the past, reconstructing exceptional historical structures from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century with a predominately French style. The remaining are the authors' original designs, beautifully detailed works inspired by these exotic and whimsical structures. Hubert de Givenchy, in his preface to Chinoiseries, describes these images as "precious documents [that] retrace an epoque when taste, extravagance, and a sense of fantasy were an essential part of the way in which parks and gardens were embellished, by perfectly inscribing them in nature, then furnishing them with dreams."