Stephen Farthing is a painter and the Rootstein Hopkins Research Professor in Drawing at the University of the Arts, London. In 1990, he was elected Master of the Ruskin School of Drawing at the University of Oxford, and a Professional Fellow at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. In 1998, he was elected member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. He originally studied at St. Martin's School of Art, London, gaining an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art, London. He has been teaching fine arts since 1977 and his paintings are exhibited in galleries throughout the world. Mark Irving has been an art and architecture writer for numerous newspapers, including The Times, the Financial Times, the Independent on Sunday, the Guardian, and Scotsman as well as magazines such as Domus, Blueprint, Prospect, Time, L'Espresso, New Statesman, and Knack Weekend. He wrote and presented FIVE's critically acclaimed three-part television series 'The Story of Art Deco', broadcast in 2003. Mark has contributed essays to numerous books and catalogues, and conceived and produced the "Flip" book for the Serpentine Gallery's Talks Marathon in 2006.