A marvellous collection of sketches, drawings, and observations documenting a fifty-year love affair with Italy by Laurie OlinPresenting everything from soup to nuts, literally – art, architecture, gardens, fountains, villas, cafés, Gods, piazzas and foodOne of America’s foremost landscape architects shares his sketch books from decades of travel and life through regions and time, private and public – Rome and Venice, Tuscany and Sicily, villages, and countryside ― in an affectionate and deft pot-pourri of delightHandsomely designed by Pablo Mandel, like their previous collaboration on the France Sketchbooks, this book is a treat whether staying at home or taking it along on your travels Artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in drawings and sketchbooks for centuries. Over the past 50 years, Laurie Olin, one of America’s most distinguished landscape architects, has recorded aspects of life and the environment in Italy: its cities and countryside, streets and cafes, ancient ruins, art, architecture, people, villas, and gardens ― civic and domestic, humble to grand, things of interested to his designer’s eye― taking the time to see carefully.

Rome in its seasons, agriculture in Umbria and Tuscany, trees, food, and fountains, all are noted over the years in watercolour or pen and ink. Originally made in the personal pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this selection from many sketchbooks and drawings is accompanied with introductory notes and remarks for different regions including Rome, Turin, Venice, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Campania, and Sicily.

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