Coffee Table Book of: Horses (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Horses is a large-format coffee table book about horses, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. Most are set out in open country, and a few stand alone on a plain ground.

It opens with the breeds of Britain and Ireland: two bay Clydesdales standing well apart on a riverbank, a chestnut Suffolk Punch in a stubble field, a shaggy black Shetland above the sea cliffs, New Forest ponies grazing among flowering gorse, and a lean dark bay Thoroughbred on a plain dark ground.

Then the breeds of continental Europe: a grey Andalusian on a dry golden hillside, white Lipizzaner mares with dark foals at their sides, a black Friesian with a long, flowing mane, and a pale dun Fjord horse on a fjord shore.

Then those of the Americas: a sorrel Quarter Horse with powerful hindquarters, a spotted Appaloosa above rolling green hills, a herd of dun, bay and roan Criollos under towering summer clouds, and a cream-coloured American Cream Draft with a white mane and tail.

Then the wild and free-roaming: a band of mustangs crossing sagebrush desert, a black mustang stallion alone on a ridge of red rock under a stormy sky, dun Przewalski’s horses with short, upright manes grazing the steppe, white Camargue horses standing in the shallow water of a salt marsh, and brumbies among twisted snow gums.

Then colour and pattern: a herd of many colours grazing together, a dapple grey at the edge of a birch wood, a golden palomino, a piebald cob and a blue roan.

Then the foals: a chestnut foal on long, unsteady legs beside its mother, three foals asleep flat out in the sun, and two colts rearing up at each other in play. Then life in the herd: two horses grazing flank to flank, a bay dozing on its feet, and a herd at full gallop across a green valley.

Short notes run through the book. They are about horses rather than about the pictures: how much a hand measures, what turns a palomino gold, how cold it gets where Yakutian horses live outdoors all year, and how long a mare carries her foal.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.