House Numbers
Pictures of a Forgotten History
Distributed for Reaktion Books
Translated by Anthony Mathews
128 pages
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128 color plates
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5 x 7 3/4
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© 2015
Review Quotes
Blue Wold Reviews
"The further you look into the humble house number the more fascinating information is revealed right up to the modern usage of addresses by such as Google and other marketing groups ... A wonderful insight into our numbering of houses is presented in the pictures of ornate and beautiful plates and tiles at the rear of the book, with designs used for hundreds of years to denote the various styles of the numbering. ... Each plate is spectacular in its own right as it gives some small insight into the person, the country, the culture, the wealth of the residents and the particular time in history when the number was created."
Financial Times
"Perhaps the most interesting thing about a system that attempted to standardise and fix house numbers is the sheer variety of their expression; from Venice’s distinctive black charcoal numbers on whitewashed squares to the blue-and-white enamelled plaques to be found throughout the cities of the old Habsburg empire ... Some of these myriad modes of expression are expressed in the excellent new book House Numbers."
Methodist Recorder
"The word 'enthralling' isn’t one to use lightly when embarking on a book review and it has probably rarely been used in connection with the prosaic matter of the numbering of houses. However, Anton Tantner’s book, House Numbers: Pictures of a Forgotten History fully earns the adjective ... Rather more than half the book consists of photographs of house numbers ranging from Nought (in London) to 5,876 (in Venice); there are 14 pages of notes and suggestions for further reading on what few could have realised is such an historically rich subject."
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