The Art Of The Party

Shows how to use lighting, color, texture, progression, and scale to develop creative designs for a wide variety of parties.

Renowned event planner David Stark reveals whimsical, artistic, unexpected designs often created from sustainable, industrial, or low-cost materials to inspire readers—whether planning a wedding, dinner party, or holiday gathering—looking for ideas for their own events. Twenty-five of David Stark's events are featured—both private celebrations and charitable galas— and showcase how he developed the inspiration for the overarching theme, color palette, and the thoughtful, coordinated details he's known for, and which truly make an event memorable. From the New York Metropolitan Opera opening gala to Target’s large-scale charitable events and pop-up shops, David Stark’s inimitable influence is sweeping the design world—and thanks to his books, becoming more accessible for his legions of fans. No matter the event, The Art of the Party is sure to inspire creativity and become an essential resource for years to come.

He’s fond of anyone who throws a party; he’s always at a party in his dreams, for party-crashing’s blazoned on his heart . . . a prisoner to the path of fi ne cuisine. With this statement, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, a Muslim preacher and scholar, introduces The Art of Party-Crashing, a book that represents a sharp departure from the religious scholarship for which he is known. Compiled in the eleventh century, this collection of irreverent and playful anecdotes celebrates eating, drinking, and general merriment. Ribald jokes, flirtations, and wry observations of misbehaving Muslims acquaint readers with everyday life in medieval Iraq in a way that is both entertaining and edifying. Selove’s translation, accompanied by her whimsical drawings, introduces the delights and surprises of medieval Arabic humor to a new audience.

A hip, elegant, and completely irresistible guide to throwing (or attending) that most American of institutions--the cocktail party. With informative lists and sidebars, quotations from celebrated wits, and more than 135 whimsical yet instructive illustrations, The Art of the Cocktail Party will turn any host or hostess into the talk of the town. Illustrated.

He’s fond of anyone who throws a party; he’s always at a party in his dreams, for party-crashing’s blazoned on his heart . . . a prisoner to the path of fi ne cuisine. With this statement, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, a Muslim preacher and scholar, introduces The Art of Party-Crashing, a book that represents a sharp departure from the religious scholarship for which he is known. Compiled in the eleventh century, this collection of irreverent and playful anecdotes celebrates eating, drinking, and general merriment. Ribald jokes, flirtations, and wry observations of misbehaving Muslims acquaint readers with everyday life in medieval Iraq in a way that is both entertaining and edifying. Selove’s translation, accompanied by her whimsical drawings, introduces the delights and surprises of medieval Arabic humor to a new audience.

'Kay can cook - but she can shake a damn fine cocktail too.' - Heston Blumenthal Kay Plunkett-Hogge demonstrates that entertaining need not be stressful with more than 90 deliciously simple recipes for cocktails and finger food that can easily be scaled up and made in advance. Kay draws on her own party-planning experience to help you be the perfect host, with handy tips on everything from guest list to painless clean-up. Features favourite recipes from three of Kay's previous books, including the award-winning Make Mine A Martini, as well as new creations such as Mini Cornbreads with Bacon, Chilli and Cheese, Smoked Mackerel Paté and Scandinavian Glögg.

Transnational Belonging and Female Agency in the Arts interrogates the politics of space expressed via womxn's artistic practices, which prioritise solidarity and collaboration across borders, imagining attentive geographies of difference. It considers belonging as a manifestation of processes of becoming that traverse borders and generate new spaces and forms of difference. In doing so, the book aims to catalyse mutual social relations founded upon responsibility and response-ability to each other. The transnational framework activates concerns around belonging at a time of intensified divisions, partitioning global narratives, unequal trajectories and increasing violence against bodies of the most vulnerable, largely founded on Eurocentric paradigms of political, economic and cultural superiority. The contributors engage in a conversation signalling transversal thinking and artmaking in order to articulate and activate 'in-between' spaces. This is to welcome co-affective models of belonging that question versatile embodiments of subjectivity as both agentic and as interrelational. Organised around the triangulation of modes of belonging: spatial, affective and collective, overarched by a transnational lens that acknowledges non-hierarchical, local and socially relevant genealogies against universalising politics of globalisation, these essays consider afresh ways in which female agency disrupts borders and activates concerns around different forms of belonging, citizenship and transnationalisms. Cover Image credit: Keren Anavy, Garden of Living Images (2018), general installation view (detail). Courtesy of the artist and Wave Hill. Photographer: Stefan Hagen