No serious art-historical library should be without it.  [The publisher] is to be congratulated for taking on this epic venture. THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE.

The complete edition of The Creation of Gothic Architecture will cover the crucial hundred and thirty years between 1120 and 1250, when Romanesque changed to Gothic. There are 1,420 churches in the Paris Basin containing work from this period, and most of it has never before been recorded and published; the photographs in this major project will illustrate over half of those churches where such work survives, demonstrating their significant contribution to the creation of the new style.

This extensive corpus, which will be widely welcomed by historians, art historians and architects, has a four-fold purpose:

	To provide a photographic description of all the more significant churches built during this 130-year period.
	To analyse the stylistic changes to the foliate capitals and the evolution of vault erection techniques.
	To establish a solid and inclusive foundation for dating the construction phases of the churches.
	To use this chronology to identify the time and place for each of the creative ideas, invention and innovations that produced the Gothic style, and to follow their evolution, identifying the major creators.

The first two volumes - The Evolution of Foliate Capitals, 1170-1250: i, ii – were published in October 2002. Together they total over 1,600 pages and an astonishing 9,000 photographs:

The capitals of this period are more natural in style than those that went before, and follow Viollet-le-Duc's observation that the mode of carving gradually evolved from spring to summer. This is confirmed in those buildings for which we have documentary dates, which allows them to be used to establish a chronology for other works from this period.

9,000 b/w illus.; 1,632pp, 29.7 x 21.0cm, 0959600582, October 2002