A selection of Phaidon books just perfect for Mother's Day

A simple way to give the greatest gift on Mother’s Day

From flowers to fine art, cookery to jewelry, we have the perfect choices, and you can even get them wrapped and delivered before the big day

After a year of social distancing, Mother’s Day is a great excuse to reattach those maternal bonds. You can send flowers, of course, or maybe perfume, but perhaps this year you might want to give her something a little more beautiful and longer lasting? There’s a Phaidon book to suit any mom, and there’s still time to get it gift wrapped and delivered before Sunday 9 May.

If you do want to express your maternal appreciation with blooms, you should order Flower. Subtitled Exploring the World in Bloom, this book features the widest variety of floral tributes from artists, photographers, scientists and illustrators, all of whom have fallen under the spell and become enamored of the aesthetic power of the petal.

If your mother prefers diamonds and pearls to peonies, consider Coveted. This is the first comprehensive book to examine jewelry as an art form. Beautiful and engrossing, the survey features more than 70 of the most prominent designers working across the globe today. Coveted reproduces hundreds of crisp images of exceptional pieces, in a series of thoughtful, smartly conceived, thematic chapters, which delve deeply into the cultural, economic and historical forces at work within this highly refined applied art.

 

The Fashion Book
The Fashion Book

 

Tap into a love of style with The Fashion Book. Spanning almost 200 years, the entire industry is represented in this beautiful A-Z, from designers to photographers, stylists, and retailers, as well as editors and creative directors.

For an equally fulsome take, offered from just one, impeccable point of view, get Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue. This book showcases some of the most memorable photographs published in British and American Vogue from 1972 to 2002, in stories created by the legendary fashion editor.

The very history of artmaking itself can be traced through Art =. Rather than organizing art according to traditional categories, Art = groups works by thematic keywords. Separate essays offer a deeper exploration of some of the works featured, while a timeline orients the works chronologically. This multifaceted organization creates exciting and unexpected juxtapositions unlikely to be found in traditional surveys of art history.

If you mom prefers to redress the gender imbalance in the art world, then you should really go for Great Women Artists. This is the most extensive fully illustrated book of women artists ever published. It reflects an era where art made by women is more prominent than ever, where galleries, museums and the art market are waking up to previously overlooked female artists, past and present.

 

Life Meets Art
Life Meets Art

 

To get behind the art and understand the artists themselves a little better, maybe go for Life meets Art. The living spaces of hundreds of the most talented people in the spheres of art, design, fashion, literature, music, and film, feature in this publication. Fittingly subtitled Inside the Homes of the World's Most Creative People, Life Meets Art runs from the Renaissance right up until the present day, delivering exquisite images and sharp textual insight into the homes of the creatives we love so much.

Does your mother prefer the Great Outdoors? Then go for The Garden. Written by the internationally acclaimed scholar, garden expert and historian Toby Musgrove (who also authored Phaidon’s best-selling title, The Gardener’s Garden), this book takes in an incredibly wide-range of man-made landscapes, from the arboretums of England to the islands of Norway; the Art Nouveau glass houses of Vienna, through to the community green spaces in New York.

 

The Arabesque Table
The Arabesque Table

If her tastes are more culinary, consider The Arabesque Table. This beautiful, easy-to-follow cookbook opens up the world of Arabic cooking today, presenting a mosaic of 130 delicious, accessible home recipes – from simple salads to tasty mains and fragrant desserts.

And, for a surefire kitchen classic, order The Silver Spoon Classic for your mother. This is a luxurious collection of the best recipes from the world's leading Italian cookbook - with all new photography and design. You can find out more about them all in our store, and you’ve still got time to order them now, and get them gift wrapped, all in time for Mother's Day May 9.