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Arts and Crafts Gardens

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

By Wendy Hitchmough. V & A Publications, $24.95
“The house as a work of art, perfectly harmonious in its relationship with nature, was designed to have an improving effect upon the spirit as well as the lifestyle of the client,” writes art historian Wendy Hitchmough in this well-illus-trated and informative book tracing the Arts & Crafts movement from its main inspiration—the garden. Design reform at the turn of the twentieth century mirrored political and social changes of the day. In reaction to the Industrial Revolution, for example, pioneers of the Arts and Craft movement such as John Ruskin, William Morris and C. F. A. Voysey pushed for the need to get back to nature. As she guides us through the “almost wild plantings” that resulted from the movement’s desire to smudge the lines between outdoors and in, Hitch mough, curator of the Charleston, the famous Bloomsbury artists’ Sussex home, also provides an illumin-ating history of architecture, furniture and textiles. Color plates, historic black-and-white photographs and drawings of gardens in Britain, Europe and the US show readers the profound influence of Arts and Crafts on the gardens of our time. (via Elements of Living)

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The New Modern House

Updated Apr 12, 2006

1st to recommend

Description

what becomes a contemporary house most? According to Will Jones, the author of this mind-opening volume, the most successful homes are built as the result of synergy, not only between designer and client but also in relation to conditions, materials, the environment, budget and aesthetics. Forty different houses, varying as widely in design as in location—the Growing House in Ethiopia and the Vertical House in Los Angeles, for example—are presented here in color photos, plans and drawings that invite readers to consider design possibilities despite, or because of, the challenges they might face. The arid strip of land on which sits the Casa Equis in Peru inspired an artificial beach bordered by a swimming pool. Steve’s Retreat, a charming cabin built on top of a four-story warehouse smack in the middle of London, is a budget-minded solution to city living. Whether you’re in the market for a “new modern” house or just mad for architecture, Jones’ book will get your wheels turning. (via Elements of Living)

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Felder's Comprehensive

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

By L. Nick Felder. Princeton Architectural Press, $125

Let’s say you get a client who wants his house completely decorated in woven wire, or is set on having a golf course installed in the backyard. Would you know where to go to make it happen? How about Woven Wire Products Association, or the American Society of Golf Course Architects? You’ll find those design resources and a heap of others in the 820 pages of Felder’s Comprehensive, compiled by author L. Nick Felder, a design and architecture marketer. The book’s vast listings include detailed contact information for associations and for the manufacturers themselves as well as for design-related museums, trade shows and events, design media, competitions and awards. This is a compendium that leads design pros to the resources they spend half their lives looking for. And in anticipation of your dependency, the publishers include a card for advance orders of the 2007 edition. (via Elements of Living)

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At Home in Hudson Valley

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

By Allison Serrell. Photographs by Meredith Heuer. Chronicle Books, $40

“The landscape that defined America” is the 315 miles that bestride the Hudson River, an area of rare visual and agricultural abundance, latticed with fieldstone walls. Dairy farmers, Ichabod Crane, cap-tains of industry and Dylan disciples all have called the Hudson River counties home, and any of them might be content in one of the remarkable dwellings scouted by Allison Serrell for her new book. Most were photographed, wisely, in peak fall or dead of winter, accentuating rhythms in the dense woods. What these houses most share, besides a preference for stone and wood, are delightful peculiarities that invite further investigation—a cypress shed that incorporates a 1940s silver Spartan trailer, a 20-foot slash of red door on a fog-painted wall. None of the houses is a perfect restoration; some of them are unashamedly “glamorized” (New York City design professionals have very entertaining notions of the perfect cabin in the woods). There are archetypes: batty Victorians (ten bedrooms and a blackened tin ballroom), disappearing acts (hooded Zen palaces, ivy-claimed cottages), deconsecrated churches and other conversions, even an eye-popping prefab. Each building expresses the creative souls who dwell within, the best that can be said of an interior design. (via Elements of Living)

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Architectural Surfaces: Details for Artists, Architects, And Designers

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

By Judy A. Juracek. W. W. Norton & Company, $89.95
If you are a texture person, someone who loves the look, touch and feel of objects, then brace yourself for this 352-page book composed solely (introductory text excepted) of 1,400 color images of architectural surfaces around the world. The latest addition to Judy Juracek’s Surfaces series, the tome appears to encompass every material a surface can be made of, every other material that can be applied on top of it and every architectural style. Even though you can’t actually touch the materials that make up the pictured walls, facades, windows, doorways, roofs, ceilings and ornamentation, their sheer variety and number will satisfy even the most texture-crazed designer or architect. (via Elements of Living)

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The Green House : New Directions in Sustainable Architecture

Updated Apr 12, 2006

1st to recommend

Description

By Alanna Stang and Christopher Hawthorne. Princeton Architectural Press, $45

A lime-green prototype for a temporary ecological dwelling perches on top of a warehouse in Rotterdam. In Manhattan, a six-story glass town house is heated and cooled by a geother-mal pump that runs 1,100 feet below the city, the length of the Empire State Building. And in Helsinki, a housing development is underway that will produce 100 percent of its own energy while collected rainwater hydrates its communal gardens. Covering six different climate zones around the globe, The Green House explores a broad range of homes, all aesthetically interesting, technologically advanced and environmentally sound. If you already know the basic elements and history of sustainability, then skip the introduction and move along to the houses. Designed by renowned contemporary architects including Steven Holl, Shigeru Ban, Brian MacKay-Lyons and Rick Joy, they will provide inspiration as well as ideas. If you are a novice on the subject, prepare for a pretty thrilling education. (via Elements of Living)

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The Abrams Guide to Period Styles for Interiors

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

By Judith Gura. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., $40

The Abrams Guide to Period Styles for Interiors is an essential tool for anyone interested in the history of design and its relevance to current trends. Comprehensive, concise and cliché-free, it surveys the most influential looks in American decorating, with illustrations, drawings, photographs, fabric swatches and color palettes. The clarity with which the five-year evolution of designs presented earns The Abrams Guide to Period Styles for Interiors a place on the shelf in any designer’s reference library as well as a prominent spot on the desk/night table of any reader seeking inspiration for personal projects. (via Elements of Living)

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Michael Graves: Images of a Grand Tour

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

Princeton Architectural Press, $29.95

The coveted prix de rome scholarship, awarded yearly by the American Academy in Rome, took a young Michael Graves to Italy in 1960. Over 250 sketches and photographs from his two years of architectural studies in the Eternal City, and his subsequent travels through Europe, are the subject of a new book called Michael Graves: Images of a Grand Tour. Brian M. Ambroziak notes in the introduction that throughout his long career, Graves has honored architectural precedent not merely by “treating or employing history, but rather by participating in its continuities.” Thus sketches and photographs—a view of the Forum framed by a narrow doorway, the oculus of the Pantheon, Stonehenge—not only record the vernacular architectural language of an ancient time and place but suggest how, in his work, Graves has extended the architectural dialogue. Images of a Grand Tour stands on its own as an inspirational collection of beautiful and visually compelling renderings. (via Elements of Living)

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Sourcebook of Modern Furniture

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

By Jerryll Habegger and Joseph H. Osman
W. W. Norton $89.95

Like the two previous editions, the latest Sourcebook of Modern Furniture by Jerryll Habegger and Joseph H. Osman is filled with all facets of technologically innovative furniture from Gebrüder Thonet to Zaha Hadid. But this third edition offers the splendid and lively allure of color images. As the saying goes, third time’s a charm. Each of the 2,000 images is categorized by furniture type, year (in chronological order), model name or number, designer(s), manufacturer, materials and dimensions. With little text and relatively no historical information, this book is a great quick source for design professionals, furniture buyers and consumers looking for their favorite innovative and modern pieces to complete their home or office décor. (via Elements of Living)

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British Built: UK Architecture

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Description

the international design industry is hot for the UK’s smart modernism, and Lucy Bullivant’s book introduces the most talented newcomers in the ever-expanding architecture movement. In British Built: UK Architecture’s Rising Generation, Bullivant examines the work and ideas of 14 socially and environmentally concerned young architects, including Alison Brooks (founding partner of Ron Arad Associates), Kathryn Findlay, Klein Dytham (KDa) and Sergison Bates, whose residential, commercial and cultural projects are changing the face of Britain. Although British Built has a seductive cover, don’t be fooled. This isn’t a coffee table book but an important resource for designers, architects and cultural cognoscenti who want to get their creative and intellectual juices flowing. (via Elements of Living)

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1000 Lights, Vol. 1 (1870-1959); Vol. 2 (1960-Present)

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Charlotte and Peter Fiell, Taschen, $39.99 per volume

More than 1000 pages devoted to lighting? It takes two volumes to tell the story well, and these companions to the classic title 1000 Chairs are just as chunky, coming in at over 500 pages each to capture an awesome selection are history's more interesting electric lights, including Edison's first light bulb and Tiffany fixtures with his beautiful leaded glass shades as well as completely outrageous designs from the late 1960s onward. (via Elements of Living)

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Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Andrew Blauvelt, Walker Art Center, $29.95
"What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils...," reads the fine print on the cloth cover of this companion to the exhibition that first appeared at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. But needn't have seen the show to appreciate the concept: With a little exercise, our eyes (and brains) can redefine familiar objects, forcing us to see and think about them in new ways. More than 30 projects by artists, architects and designers from around the world are pictured and discussed. Whether built in production or left in the form of visionary proposals or concepts, they afford an opportunity to question what we typically take for granted in the creation of the material world. Paper Loghouse, for example, devised as temporary housing for earthquake victums in Japan, employs paper tubes for walls and sandbag-filled plastic beer crates for the foundations. You won't learn curtains in these pages, but you will indeed find something strangely familiar in every entry. (via Elements of Living)

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A Passion for Antiques

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Barbara Milo Ohrbach, Clarkson Potter/Publishers, $30
Ohrbach, who wrote Antiques at Home 15 years ago, is back with an antique lover's Baedeker, filled to bursting with not only striking photographs but also information and resources that anyone smitten with the past will appreciate--and use. Pages devoted to the history, care and cleaning of ceramics, silver, glass and textiles include a reference library of sources for further reading, replacement and matching services, and restorers and suppliers. Also included is insider info on antiques shows, flea markets, museums and historic houses from Helsinki and Hong Kong to Venice and Vienna and major cities in between. (via Elements of Living)

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Pierre Paulin

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Elisabeth Vedrenne, Assouline, $18.95
This petite 80-page primer on the chairs of the legendary French designer is the perfect refernce for those of us who can't make it to the end of anyone's entire monograph. Paulin designed lamps, writing desks and cabinets, too, but it is his colored-jersey-covered mushroom-, tongue-, ribbon-, tulip- and even snake-shaped chairs that have become cult symbols of the 60s and 70s. More than 25 of the most sought-after designs are pictured in easy-to-identify--if inventive--photos. (Globe Chairs, for example, are strewn in a field like bales of hay.) One in a series of Assouline books that includes fashion, arat, architecture and design heavyweights, the pocket Pierre Paulin and other titles on designers including Jean Michel Frank, Eileen Gray, Charles and Ray Eames, and Bauhaus are cool-looking crib notes for anyone interested in boning up on the classics. (via Elements of Living)

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New French Country : A Style and Source Book

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Linda Dannenberg, Clarkson Potter/Publishers, $40
If Provence is your passion, you probaby already own the seminal Pierre Deux's French Country, Dannenberg's prequel to this lavishly illustrated guide to le style provencal. More than 20 years have passed, and in the interim, the decorataive style and vivid color palette of Provence have grown much more varied and sophisticated. A peek into 13 private homes, including a pied-a-terre in Avignon and a Gallic ranch in cowboy country, follows a primer on the colors fabrics, furniture, pottery, architectural details and regional crafts of twenty-first century Provence. And if you plan to go, there's an indispensable pocket guide to sources for practically everything: beaded curtains, candles, traditional house paints, decorators, hotels, historic chateaux, house rentals and more. (via Elements of Living)

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Living Homes: Sustainable Architecture and Design

Updated Apr 11, 2006

1st to recommend

Description

By Suzi Moore Mcregor and Nora Burba Trulsson, Chronicle Books, $45
Think fast: What does sustainable architecture look like? If you see only yurts and geodesic domes, do run out and buy this handsomely illustrated, highly informative and historically intriguing hardcover. Twenty-two houses, built of adobe, rammed earth, straw bale or reinvented material (in one case, chunks of discarded sidewalk, torn-up slabs from demolished buildings, recycled wood and salvaged roof tiles) are profiled. One look at the rammed-earth Provencal-style house in Napa, CA, and you will never assume an Earth-friendly structure is a spartan box again. Though all of the houses hail from the Southwest and West, their interiors supply ample inspiration for the ecologically minded elsewhere: cast-aluminum bar stools in a windowed kitched to reflect late-afternoon light, recycled bowling alley lanes for a kitchen island, or corrugated-metal cladding to make a ceiling luminous. Serious about building such a structure? A thorough bibliography and house-by-house resources are a good starting point. (via Elements of Living)

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Swatches : A Sourcebook of Patterns with More Than 400 Fabric Designs

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Dorsey Sitley Adler and Robert D. Adler Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $29.95
This pleasingly chunky book is sized perfectly for flipping through, making the job of zeroing in on the right fabric for that chair or pair of drapes much less burdensome than lugging around unruly sample books. In fact, you’d have to juggle quite a stack to see the range of fabrics pictured in this excellent resource, compiled by a husband-and-wife textile-expert team. The Adlers are the founders of the largest privately owned textile library in the country, and their archives are bursting with more than 4 million pattern swatches, ranging from nineteenth-century historical patterns to contemporary fabrics. Though the book offers a mere fraction of those archives, the 400 fabric swatches pictured are well edited and helpfully organized by pattern type, including stripes (ombre, ticking, variegated, twist yarn), geometrics (polka dots, deco, op-art, foulard), ethnics (tropical, paisley, batik, overprinted madras) and plaids (tattersall check, herringbone, houndstooth). What’s more, there’s just one full swatch pictured per page, making it easier to see. The text is spare—this is a look book on the order of a fan of paint chips—but what little accompanies each chapter may help the truly undecided; it describes the origins of and typical uses for each pattern. (via Elements of Living)

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Color for Interior Design

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

New York School of Interior Design
By Ethel Rompilla
Harry N. Abrams, $40
You won’t find page after page of magazine-style interiors in this sober and refined work by the New York School of Interior Design’s award-winning professor of color theory. While other books on the subject attempt to teach how to choose and use colors in interiors, Color for Interior Design asks more of readers by inviting them first to learn about color from prehistory through the Renaissance to the nineteenth century to today. Next, author Rompilla devotes more than 60 pages to color theory and meaning, including a fascinating discussion on exactly how we see colors. Color charts and diagrams are smartly arranged next to photos to illustrate text points, helping to make the information as accessible as possible without the benefit of a lecture by the professor herself. Readers might be tempted to pass over the first two sections and go straight to the final chapter, in which the scientific lessons taught in the previous chapters are applied to actual interiors, but they would be cheating themselves. Color for Interior Design is the next best thing to attending a semester’s worth of Rompilla’s classes on the subject. (via Elements of Living)

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The Complete Kagan: Vladimir Kagan: A Lifetime of Avant-Garde Design

Updated Apr 11, 2006

1st to recommend

Description

Preface by Tom Ford
Pointed Leaf Press, $65
No modernist’s library would be complete without at least one book devoted entirely to Vladimir Kagan, the high priest of far-out furniture design, whose lifelong fascination with organic shapes is a hallmark of his dynamic pieces. Unlike much of mid-century modern furniture, which has been mass-reproduced to the point of being common, Kagan’s chairs, sofas and tables—now considered classics—remain sensuous and fresh. The first complete compendium of Kagan’s life and work, the book is packed with childhood drawings, family photos, loose sketches, and both color and black-and-white photographs of his exquisitely designed furniture—including dozens never before published. (via Elements of Living)

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Real Art! : The Paint by Number Book & Kit

Updated Apr 11, 2006

1st to recommend

Description

By Douglas Brenner
Paintings by Nancy Stahl Workman, $24.95
Paint-by-numbers used to be considered the Muzak of wall art. But in the past decade, the color-keyed paintings have become wildly popular with the design cognoscenti, who love the chic yet playful effect they create in combination with again-fashionable midcentury modern furniture. The demand for these charming color-keyed canvases may exceed the once-plentiful supply, but collectors and interior designers can create their own masterpieces now that writer Douglas Brenner and artist and illustrator Nancy Stahl have created the perfect paint-by-numbers kit. Budding van Goghs can break out the brushes, dip them into one of 18 big acrylic pots and begin painting on one of the 10 board “canvases,” each one recalling a familiar subject from the enormous paint-by-numbers repertoire. In Real Art!, Brenner writes the compelling history of the wildly popular ’50s pastime (who knew there were Cubist and Frankenstein’s monster paint-by-numbers?) and gives a brief description of each canvas included, plus an excellent primer on how to paint, frame and display finished work. In all of its charm, Real Art! serves as a much-needed reminder that the most inviting interiors always include something hand-crafted. You could do worse than rendering your very own version of the Mona Lisa. (via Elements of Living)

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The Wabi-Sabi House : The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Robyn Griggs Lawrence
Clarkson Potter, $25
There are no photos of perfectly appointed, expensively furnished rooms in The Wabi-Sabi House. In fact, there are no color pictures at all but rather duotones that rightfully set the serene tone of this special book. If your idea of beauty is the simple, unaffected brand, then you won’t need to see pictures to grasp the meaning of this home design philosophy, a marriage of the Japanese wabi, meaning “humble,” and sabi, which connotes beauty in the natural progression of time. It is dry leaves, not cherry blossoms; Arts and Crafts, not rococo; clotheslines, not electric dryers. Griggs Lawrence, the editor in chief of Natural Home, a magazine devoted to helping readers create healthy, serene abodes and lifestyles, was turned on to wabi-sabi when she met a woman in rural Maine who had been practicing it for years. It moved her to do research in Japan, where most of the people she met suggested Americans would never “get” it. But Griggs Lawrence distills the concept in ways that we can understand and employ: On space, she draws up a list of practical ways to manage clutter, including, “Allow only three items on each surface,” and “Just say no to refrigerator magnets.” In the “Hands On” chapter, in which Griggs Lawrence explains the Japanese admiration for the rustic, primitive and handmade, she includes instruction on how to make a mosaic with broken tiles—very wabi-sabi in its inherent imperfection. There are plenty of attractions along the narrative way, with sidebars on what to stock in your cleaning cupboard, how to soundproof the space around you and a list of things a beginner can do—one is to wash the dishes by hand one day each week—to immediately implement wabi-sabi at home. An excellent list of sources for creating a wabi-sabi environment is included. (via Elements of Living)

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Learning to See : Bringing the World Around You Into Your Home

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Vicente Wolf
Artisan, $40
“I learned to learn by seeing,” writes interior designer, photographer, and furniture and rug designer Vicente Wolf, who grew up dyslexic. Lucky for the rest of us: This native Cuban experienced the world around him in images from a very young age and may be better equipped than most to teach us not just to see but how to see. For example, don’t stand in the middle of an ugly room and try to make it over, advises Wolf: Get out a clean piece of paper, draw the outlines of the space and sketch out your ideas within them. Wolf takes you through his personal view of the essential elements of design: planning, space, form, color, light and texture. And in the most personal chapter of all, he takes you on a guided tour of his own New York City loft apartment. Though you won’t come away from Learning to See knowing how to make Roman shades or lay a parquet floor, you will better understand how to bring your external and internal worlds together in a way that pleases you. The book also has a generous list of resources. (via Elements of Living)

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Mary Gilliatt's Great Renovations and Restorations: A New Life for Older Homes

Updated Apr 11, 2006

Description

By Mary Gilliatt
Watson-Guptill, $35
The roll-up-your-shirtsleeves title of Gilliatt’s book may be a bit misleading—if you expect to see the beast before the beauty, you will be disappointed, since there isn’t an ugly “before” image to be seen—but it does little to detract from the well-researched, handsomely photographed and logically organized contents of this recent title from the acclaimed international interior designer and writer. With more than 30 books to her credit, Gilliatt knows how to tell a design and decoration story in both words and pictures; on the subject of replacing the original features of a house or sensitively updating them, she’s covered expansive territory. Town houses, apartments, suburban homes, farmhouses, cottages, converted warehouses, churches, industrial buildings, barns, schools and lighthouses are all considered here. Chapters to help understand the period and historical context of buildings, as well as pages on their bones—the doors, windows and floors—start would-be renovators on the right track. A comprehensive architectural, building and style glossary promises that a porte-cochere will never be confused with a portico. (via Elements of Living)

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Modern House 3

Updated Apr 11, 2006