World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
SAT 12—4 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2024, English
Flexibound hardcover housed in an embossed black sleeve, 448 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Judd Foundation / New York
MACK / London
$150.00 - In stock -
"The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness, and scale as a chair."
Donald Judd Furniture includes more than one hundred pieces of his furniture, spanning 1970 to 1991, designed for his living and working spaces at 101 Spring Street and in Presidio County, Texas. The publication introduces readers to Donald Judd’s furniture designs, initiated during the renovation of his home and studio at 101 Spring Street in New York, and as the result of the difficulty Judd later had in furnishing his home in Marfa, Texas. These furniture designs exemplify the directness of form and presence for which his artworks are celebrated, as well as offering a distinct and unadorned functionality. In this book they are presented through detailed drawings and breakdowns of materials, and color photography exploring their placement and function within these spaces. As well as surveying a central aspect of his work, Donald Judd Furniture details Judd’s understanding of functionality, form, and his deep interest in the possibilities of design in a world of mass-production.
2020, English / French / Italian / Dutch
Softcover (3 volumes in slipcase), 400 pages, 24 x 16.9 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$300.00 - In stock -
At 400 pages, this is the definitive overview of the great and influential pioneers of Italian radical architecture, Superstudio. Immediately out-of-print and now collectible.
The avant-garde Italian architecture collective Superstudio was founded in 1966 by Adolfo Natalini (1941–2020) and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia (1941–2019), and quickly leaped to the forefront of the 1960s radical architecture movement alongside the likes of Archigram and Haus-Rucker-Co. Through their architectural projects (housing, industrial buildings, banks, interiors), design objects, photocollages, drawings, texts, installations, models, films and exhibitions, Superstudio found brilliant and highly inventive ways in which to inhabit a world transformed by capitalist forces and technological evolutions. This beautifully produced, slipcased, 400-page volume explores their oeuvre through the lens of “migrations” (migrazioni). Borrowed from Superstudio’s vocabulary, this term serves as a conceptual and poetic key to the group’s architecture and their works in all mediums.
Presented in 3 books, the first is a collection of critical essays and interviews with three prominent figures in architecture who have been in close contact with Superstudio over the past 50 years; By examining their personal and theoretical careers, these different voices show the great influence of the small group, bringing to life this “journey to the higher realms of reason.” The second book proposes a thematic journey through the work: it shows the rich iconography through a series of concepts from Superstudio’s vocabulary. They reveal the richness of the projects and images produced over the active years of the group that go beyond the narrative contained in some of the quasi-iconic photo collages. The last book presents previously unpublished letters from the archive of Adolfo Natalini. The exchanges between the members of Superstudio and the letters to prominent architects from the second half of the twentieth century form a collective autobiography in which architecture and life increasingly converge. In addition to the group’s oeuvre, the publication also presents work by 9999, Archizoom, Hiromi Fujii, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, Ugo La Pietra, Leonardo Ricci, Aldo Rossi, Leonardo Savioli, Ettore Sottsass Jr. and Bernard Tschumi.
Edited with text by Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou. Text by Beatrice Lampariello, Gabriele Mastrigli, Frédéric Migayrou. Interviews with Veronique Patteeuw, Rem Koolhaas, Aurelien Vernant, Bernard Tschumi, Yûki Yosikawa, Hiromi Fujii.
As New sealed copy. Out-of-print.
2014, English
Hardcover, 320 pages 25 x 18 cm
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$65.00 $50.00 - In stock -
German writer, critic, and theorist Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) died nearly a century ago, but his influence is still being felt today. Considered by some a mad eccentric and by others a visionary political thinker in his own time, he is now experiencing a revival thanks to a new generation of scholars who are rightfully situating him in the modernist pantheon.
Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is the first collection of Scheerbart’s multifarious writings to be published in English. In addition to a selection of his fantastical short stories, it includes the influential architectural manifesto Glass Architecture and his literary tour-de-force Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention. The latter, written in the guise of a scientific work (complete with technical diagrams), was taken as such when first published but in reality is a fiction—albeit one with an important message. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is richly illustrated with period material, much of it never before reproduced, including a selection of artwork by Paul Scheerbart himself. Accompanying this original material is a selection of essays by scholars, novelists, and filmmakers commissioned for this publication to illuminate Scheerbart’s importance, then and now, in the worlds of art, architecture, and culture.
Coedited by artist Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, with new artwork created for this publication by McElheny, Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is a long-overdue monument to a modern master
1996, English
Softcover (staple bound), unpaginated, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
A Constructed World / St. Kilda
$10.00 - In stock -
Artfan No. 5 (Autumn 1996) — "Public Art" issue. Features contributions by Callum Morton, Rose Nolan, Mutlu Çerkez, John Nixon, Eliza Hutchison and David Noonan, Charlotte Day, Jon Campbell, and many others. "The global is often represented as an oppressive culturally controlling influence yet it has often been known to relieve oppression from overly uniform and diminishing alternatives. Apart from audience, Public Art is usually, in some way, about place and in this issue of Artfan there are contributions from many places including Estonia, India, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Sweden, Jordan, and Israel.”—From the editors (Jacqueline Riva, Geoff Lowe, D. H. Thomas)
Artfan (Contemporary Art Review Magazine to Read) is a magazine published by artists Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva in St. Kilda, Melbourne, who have been working together as A Constructed World since 1993 when they founded the magazine. Each issue is an international collaboration between the contributing editors, filled with artworks and texts, the magazine is largely centred around illustrated exhibition reviews by artists and writers, and many memories of a bygone Melbourne.
A Constructed World is the collaborative project, founded in 1993, of Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva, based in Paris, France. ACW believe in the notion of collectivity. Their practice is concerned with the multiple narratives we use to construct and understand our world. They encourage the exchange of ideas and embrace the idea of chaos. Influenced by post-structuralism and relational aesthetics, ACW explores how reality is perceived through cultural models.
As New.
1971, English / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 162 pages, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Verlag Gerd Hatje / Stuttgart
$100.00 - In stock -
Tenth edition of Gerd Hatje's absolutely invaluable and highly collectable modern furniture series, New Furniture / Neue Möbel, published in eleven comprehensive volumes between 1951-1971. This volume particularly special for those lovers of late 1960's European design and radical developments in plastic/modular/space furniture.
Profusely illustrated throughout with 468 gorgeous studio product photographs, featuring the work of manufacturers, architects, designers: Archizoom, Sergio Asti, Cini Boeri, Luigi Colani, Alvar Aalto, Eero Aarnio, Franco Albini, Gae Aulenti, Mario Bellini, Hans Bellmann, Harry Bertoia, Marcel Breuer, Achille and Pier Castiglione, Norman Cherner, Joe Colombo, Le Corbusier, Robin Day, Charles Eames, Eileen Gray, Walter Gropius, Josef Hoffmann, Arne Jacobsen, Grete Jalk, Pierre Jeanneret, Henning Jensen, Knud Joos, Finn Juhl, Arne Karlsen, Poul Kjaerholm, Kaare Klint, Florence Knoll, Estelle and Erwine Laverne, Oliver Lundquist, Charles Rennie Macintosh, Vico Magistretti, Bruno Mathsson, Paul McCobb, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, Verner Panton, Pierre Paulin, Sigurd Persson, Warren Platner, Gio Ponti, Harvey Probber, Robert Probst, Gerrit Rietveld, Jens Risom, Eero Saarinen, Tobia Scarpa, Richard Schultz, Ettore Sottsass, Ilmari Tapiovaara, Hans Wegner, Edward Wormley, Marco Zanuso, Artek, Artemide, B&B Italia, Cassina, Domus, Dunbar Furniture Company, Dux Mobel, Fritz Hansen, Kartell, Knoll International, Van Keppel Green, Laverne, Herman Miller Furniture Company, Olivetti, Pierre Paulin, Harvey Probber, Jens Risom, Steelcase, Thonet, and many more (!)
Contents: introduction; illustrations; chairs; seating arrangements, sofas, beds; tables; office furniture; cabinets and shelves; nursery and school furniture; index: manufacturers, designers, photographers.
Edited by Gerd Hatje and Elke Kaspar.
A fantastic furniture resource.
Text in English and German.
Average—Good ex-libris w. only a few markings but general wear to cloth covers and extremities/corners. Lacks dust jacket.
2024, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 24.1 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Atelier Editions / Los Angeles
$74.00 - In stock -
Black Mountain College (BMC) was a wellspring of 20th-century creative unorthodoxy. Through deep original research, this title follows renegade students, faculty & farmers as they establish a campus farm in the 1930s, build a better farm in the 1940s and watch it all collapse in the 1950s. In these engrossing pages, we encounter the extraordinary folk whose endeavours on the land helped shape the Black Mountain College of myth and extraordinary reality.From its founding in 1933 and over its celebrated 23-year history, the small liberal arts school in rural North Carolina attracted a remarkable number of famous and soon-to-be famous artists, writers and visionaries including Anni and Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Ray Johnson, Charles Olson and M.C. Richards. The exploits of these BMC cultural luminaries have been recounted time and time again.David Silver’s fascinating new book offers a very different perspective. The farm was vital to BMC. Throughout the Depression and World War II it provided vital sustenance, while serving as a testing ground for self-sufficiency, communal living and collaboration—the most precious and precarious ingredient at the college.
David Silver (born 1968) is professor and chair of environmental studies at the University of San Francisco. He teaches classes on urban agriculture, hyperlocal food systems and food, culture and storytelling.
1970, Italian / English
Softcover, 116 pages, 32.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Editoriale Domus / Milan
$65.00 - In stock -
Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal, distributed in 89 countries. With exuberant style and rigor, it offered energetic up-to-date coverage and analysis of major themes, developments and stylistic movements in product, structure, interior, and industrial design. Called the "Mediterranean Megaphone," domus has always been considered the most concrete published expression of Italian style, documenting generations of radical, practical, and beautiful production, both local and across the world. Amongst a seemingly endless archive of contributions and features, domus frequently covered the works of the protagonists of the Anti and Radical Design movements, modern architecture, new experiments in environmental/spatial/commercial design, international product design, the activities of the Arte Povera, Pop art, Minimal Art and Nouveau Réalisme movements, and much more.
No. 485 Aprile 1970
Editor : Gio Ponti
Editorial committee and contributors include : Cesare Casati, Pierre Restany, Agnoldomenico Pica, Pierre Restany, Carmela Haerdtl, Joseph Rykwert, Ettore Sottsass jr., Charles and Ray Eames, Kho Liang je, Bernard Rudofsky, George Nelson, Fausto Melotti, Tommaso Trini, Tapio Wirkkalaand, Rut Bryk, Hans Hollein, and more.
features :
architectural projects by Kenzo Tange; Bruno Morassutti; Fabrizio Carola; Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza; George Gardner, Ted Judson, Philip Monteleoni, Jeremy Scott Wood; new Tecno showroom in Rome by Osvaldo Borsani, Marco Fantoni, Eugenio Gerli; department store display by Sergio Asti; Tobia Scarpa works for Flos, Cassina; new design objects from Mario Zanuso, Gio Pomodoro; Richard Feigen Gallery New York by Hans Hollein; Vienna feature w. Haus-Rucker-Co, Walter Pichler, Heinz Frank, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Helmut Richter, Max Peintner; book reviews; and much more.
Beautifully printed in Italy and heavily illustrated throughout with vivid colour and black and white photography across multiple paper stocks, page crops and fold-out spreads.
Good copy with edge wear and corner bumping from age.
1971, Italian / English
Softcover, 116 pages, 32.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Editoriale Domus / Milan
$60.00 - In stock -
Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal, distributed in 89 countries. With exuberant style and rigor, it offered energetic up-to-date coverage and analysis of major themes, developments and stylistic movements in product, structure, interior, and industrial design. Called the "Mediterranean Megaphone," domus has always been considered the most concrete published expression of Italian style, documenting generations of radical, practical, and beautiful production, both local and across the world. Amongst a seemingly endless archive of contributions and features, domus frequently covered the works of the protagonists of the Anti and Radical Design movements, modern architecture, new experiments in environmental/spatial/commercial design, international product design, the activities of the Arte Povera, Pop art, Minimal Art and Nouveau Réalisme movements, and much more.
No. 505 Dicembre 1971
Editor : Gio Ponti
Editorial committee and contributors include : Cesare Casati, Pierre Restany, Agnoldomenico Pica, Pierre Restany, Carmela Haerdtl, Joseph Rykwert, Ettore Sottsass jr., Charles and Ray Eames, Kho Liang je, Bernard Rudofsky, George Nelson, Fausto Melotti, Tommaso Trini, Tapio Wirkkalaand, Rut Bryk, Hans Hollein, and more.
features :
architectural projects by Vittorio Gregotti, Valentino Parmini, Franco Paulis; Lorenzino Cremonini; Angelo Mangiarotti; Alberto Salvati, Ambrogio Tresoldi; Ugo de Pietra; Claudio Dini, Valerio Di Battista; Cini Boeri for Gavina; design objects bby Richard Sapper; Tom Ahlström, Hans Enrich; interiors by Arne Jacobsen; Shiro Kuramata; Gérard-Roger Ifert, Rudolf Meyer; furniture by Angelo Mangiorotti; Kho Liang Ie; Cini Boeri; Joseph Beuys; book reviews; and much more.
Beautifully printed in Italy and heavily illustrated throughout with vivid colour and black and white photography across multiple paper stocks, page crops and fold-out spreads.
Good copy with edge wear and foxing/page edge damages from age.
1970, Italian / English
Softcover, 116 pages, 32.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Editoriale Domus / Milan
$65.00 - Out of stock
Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal, distributed in 89 countries. With exuberant style and rigor, it offered energetic up-to-date coverage and analysis of major themes, developments and stylistic movements in product, structure, interior, and industrial design. Called the "Mediterranean Megaphone," domus has always been considered the most concrete published expression of Italian style, documenting generations of radical, practical, and beautiful production, both local and across the world. Amongst a seemingly endless archive of contributions and features, domus frequently covered the works of the protagonists of the Anti and Radical Design movements, modern architecture, new experiments in environmental/spatial/commercial design, international product design, the activities of the Arte Povera, Pop art, Minimal Art and Nouveau Réalisme movements, and much more.
domus No. 488 Luglio 1970 (EURODOMUS 3 Issue)
Editor : Gio Ponti
This special issue is entirely dedicated to the incredible EURODOMUS 3. Introduced by Gio Ponti and featuring a who's who of European design and art in 1970, all the presentations, environments, exhibitions and products are featured here, including the work of Michelangelo Pistoletto, Piero Gilardi, Gino Marotta, Joe Colombo, Charles and Ray Eames, Mario Bellini, Cino Boeri, Ugo La Pietra, Cesare Leonardi, Rodolfo Bonetto, Giorgio De Ferrari, Marc Berthier, Vico Magistretti, Raymond Loewy, César, Pierre Cardin, Guido Crepax, Bruni Munari, Olivier Mourgue, Fabio Mauri, Marc Held, Pierre Paulin, Enzo Mari, Alberto Rosselli, Claudio Salocchi, Ettore Sottsass jr., Giuseppe Rossi, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, De Pas, D'Urbino, Lomazzi, and so many more, plus new products from Brionvega, Olivetti, Kartell, Cassina, Artemide, Gufram, Zanotta, Henry Miller, Flexform, Artifort, Stilnovo, Roche e Bobois, Sintesis, Tenco, Driade, and so many more.
Beautifully printed in Italy and heavily illustrated throughout with vivid colour and black and white photography across multiple paper stocks.
Good copy with edge wear and corner bumping from age.
2024, English
Hardcover, 308 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Nero / Rome
$95.00 - In stock -
A "minor" and alternative history of architecture.
Initially founded as a Facebook group in May 2019, Forgotten Architecture's goal is to research and unearth not well known modern architecture worldwide. The idea behind it is simple: to recover projects by little-known architects and works left in the shadows of the masters, to delve into the work of "minor" figures, and to unite alternative takes on the History of Architecture as a complement to university courses.
The book maintains its distinctive features of a collective, dynamic, and horizontal experience born on a social network. The publication uses the architectural categories most frequently featured in the group as guiding themes, providing for each project a collection of photographic materials, documents, and drawings from prominent professional firms, institutions, and private archives—such as Fornasetti, Gaetano Pesce, Nanda Vigo, Vitra. Ephemeral architecture, gas stations, night clubs, playgrounds, houses, vacation resorts, cemeteries, churches, architectures in music videos.
Several forgotten projects by well renowned architects, such as the house designed for Arnaldo Pomodoro by Ettore Sottsass Jr. and the avant-garde Binishells by Dante Bini, are published exclusively in the book, alongside drive-in churches, flying houses, psychedelic inflatable architectures, etc.
At the end of the book, a series of critical essays reflect on its characteristics as a collective and pedagogical experience, considering the repercussions of this experience on the discipline of architecture through different points of view.
Bianca Felicori is an architect, author, curator, and PhD researcher at UCLouvain, Bruxelles (FNRS Research Fellow). Her research aims to demonstrate the convergence of artistic and architectural experimentation that emerged in Europe and America during the 1960s and 1970s. Felicori has curated exhibitions and cultural programs, collaborating with institutions such as Triennale Milano and La Biennale di Venezia. Her articles have been featured in magazines such as Domus and AD, and she currently serves as a guest curator for the Elle Decor Italia architectural section. In 2019, she founded the Forgotten Architecture Facebook group, about less-known modern architecture worldwide. In 2021, she co-founded the cultural center DOPO? in Milan.
2024, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 21.6 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Afterall / London
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$38.00 - In stock -
A strikingly original analysis of Isa Genzken’s move towards merging sculptural and architectural morphologies into a trailblazing practice of contemporary assemblage.
Fuck the Bauhaus, a series of audacious architectural models for future high-rise buildings in Manhattan, marks a poetic and provocative shift in Isa Genzken’s artistic oeuvre. Made in the year 2000, out of quotidian objects and cheap materials foraged in the streets and stores of New York, these sculptural assemblages depart from the German artist’s ‘post-Minimalist’ works begun in the 1970s. The earlier works conjured the haunting spectres of catastrophe, destruction and failed utopia, as well as the potential for freedom amidst the ruins of post-War reconstruction culture.
Analysing Genken’s post–2000 penchant for appropriation, collage and montage, André Rottmann draws on the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, Bruno Latour and other theorists of "assemblage," to show how her ‘late style’ is not a return to (neo-)avant-garde traditions but a powerful reimagining of them for the contemporary moment.
André Rottmann is an Assistant Professor for Art and Media Theory at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and the editor of the October Files volume John Knight.
1996, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 224 pages, 31.3 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Monacelli Press / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
Texts by Rosalind Krauss, Patricia Leigh Brown, Steven Holl, Michael Sorkin, Stephen Tilly.
Surprising juxtapositions between high elegance and downtown funkiness — a choreography of bright colors and shapes, contrasting textures and patterns, theatrical lighting and quirky found objects — make up the world of Alan Buchsbaum. An imaginative architect and designer, he was deemed one of the originators of the supergraphics look of the 1960s, the high-tech aesthetic of the 1970s, and the loft look of the 1980s. This lavishly illustrated monograph collects — for the first time ever — over forty of his incredible projects. Working in New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s, he became famous for his ad-hoc style. The postwar era's bold materials (vinyl, formica, plastic) were united with his flair for embellishing modern forms while mimicking popular culture's nuances — a big curve here, a little wiggle there. A favorite among design professionals and magazine editors, his death in 1987 robbed the industry of a major talent. Featured are his notorious loft spaces for his star clients, who collaborated with Buchsbaum on these dramatic transformations. His world of fantasy and luxury was also a place of function and comfort, as seen in his commercial spaces, retail stores, and hotels — the 1986-87 Nevele Hotel renovation is a tour de force of retro-chic design. Also documented is a cornucopia of his furnishings, including rugs, tables, chairs, and slipcovers. Contributors, all friends, clients, and/or collaborators, recall his ingenuity and flamboyant personality.
Architect Alan Buchsbaum was a figure of central importance on the American design scene during his two decades of independent practice. His career, and his unique ability both to draw from and to draw out the world around him, reflected the revitalized spirit of his times, the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties. This lavishly illustrated monograph collects, for the first time, over fifty projects; its unique intertwining of work and text, image and type, presents an integrated portrait of Alan Buchsbaum and his design oeuvre prior to his 1987 death from AIDS. Buchsbaum's design outlook was at once irreverent and respectful, ironic and classical, versatile and idiosyncratic, elegant and entertaining. His Pop Art-influenced projects of the late sixties initiated the Super-Graphics look; elements of his High-Tech style of the mid-seventies became ubiquitous in interiors designed during that time; and his romantic modernism of the eighties, rich in materials and textures, foretold more extraordinary work to come. These three broad periods are presented in this volume in more than twenty-five residential designs (for such clients as Ellen Barkin, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, and Anna Wintour and David Shaffer), as well as commercial spaces, installations, furniture, and rugs. In addition to the wealth of designs, this book features a variety of Buchsbaum's own writings - a fellowship essay, project descriptions, and zingy one-liners - as well as those of architect/editor Frederic Schwartz, architect/critic Michael Sorkin, writer Patricia Leigh Brown, critic Rosalind Krauss, and architects Stephen Tilly and Steven Holl. The complex picture that emerges is atestament to the individual whose untimely death robbed the design industry of a major talent.
As New copy.
2014, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 216 pages, 31 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Arnoldsche / Stuttgart
$300.00 - In stock -
Published in 2014 and quickly out-of-print, Paul Evans: Crossing Boundaries and Crafting Modernism is the first comprehensive monograph published by Arnoldsche in Stuttgart on the occasion of the first comprehensive survey of American artist Paul Evans’s work held at the Cranbrook Museum, documenting Evans’s role in the midcentury American studio furniture movement, his approach to furniture as sculpture and abstract composition, and his unremitting new approaches to metal.
Creating furniture as sculpture, defined by abstract composition, designer-craftsman Paul Evans (1931—1987) consistently pushed boundaries with his innovative approaches to metal work and furniture-making, his designs revealing the fascinating juxtaposition of sculpture and design. Constantly experimenting with traditional and synthetic materials while also borrowing techniques from industrial manufacturing, Evans and his shop workers invested their furniture with an expressiveness that is quite distinctive in the realms of traditional craft and design.
Constance Kimmerle has been Curator of Collections at the James A. Michener Art Museum since 2001, where she has curated exhibitions on the work of impressionist Edward W. Redfield (2004) and modernist artist Elsie Driggs (2007).
2008, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 31.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Rizzoli / New York
$350.00 - In stock -
Rare first English hardcover edition of the immediately out-of-print, immediately collectible and invaluable monograph on visionary modern French designer Jean-Michel Frank, published by Rizzoli in 2008 after he original French edition by Norma in 2006. A beautifully printed hardcover book in original publisher's illustrated dust-jacket, profusely and lavishly illustrated in colour and b/w with hundreds of photographs including vintage shots of room settings and individual pieces. Preface by Bruno Foucart. Foreword by Alice Frank. Bibliography.
This monograph, now very scarce in English, examines both his life and work as a furniture and interior designer, and remains the key work on Frank.
"I wish one could more often see artists collaborating in arranging houses," said Frank, who admired the sets masterminded by the ballet impresario Sergey Diaghilev in conjunction with Picasso, Braque, Derain and Matisse. "The result would be, at the very least, something of our time, and alive."
Jean-Michel Frank (1895–1941) was perhaps the most influential Parisian designer and decorator of the 1930s and 1940s, a refugee desolated by the Nazi occupation of France who had a short and tragic life which ended in suicide in 1941. Frank established his reputation and signature look with his 1926–27 design for Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles's hôtel particulier at 11 place des Etats-Unis in Paris. Man Ray's black-and-white images of the salon have become shorthand for le style Frank. The Noailles were leading progressives of their day and patrons of the major painters of Paris. Frank's style of understated luxury, vellum-sheathed walls, bleached leather, lacquer, quartz and shagreen perfectly complemented the Picassos and Braques on the walls. He collaborated with the artist Christian Bérard, the brothers Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Dali, and the architect-designer Emilio Terry. Frank's blocky, rectangular club chairs and sofas have been endlessly copied and produced by many admirers. He is credited for the design of the modern Parsons table, a stark form that Frank embellished with the most luxurious finish. His style continues to exert its influence through the powerful combination of the simplest forms and the most exquisite materials to produce objects that are truly noble and utterly modern. This book is a testimony to Frank's rigour and the timelessness of his design.
Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier is a noted art historian based in Paris whose specialty is twentieth-century applied arts. He is a frequent contributor to leading French publications including Connaissance des arts and Maison francaise.
Near Fine copy.
2003, English
Softcover, 418 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$220.00 - In stock -
A very rare copy of the inaugural issue of Purple Fashion, edited by Olivier Zahm, featuring Richard Prince, Bruce Benderson, Gary Indiana, Paolo Roversi, Olivier Mosset, Camille Vivier, Mark Borthwick, Pierre Bailly, Elein Fleiss, Viviane Sassen, Helmut Lang, Kerry Hallihan, Antek Walczak, Marcelo Krasilcic, Michael Lonsdale, Maison Martin Margiela, Katja Rahlwes, Niels Schumm, Dike Blair, Vava Ribeiro, Monte Hellman, Comme des Garçons, Slavoj Zizek, Balenciaga, Tony Alva, Marina Faust, Wolfgang Tillmans, Terry Richardson, Dominique Gonzales Foerster, Jeff Rian, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Anuschka Blommers, François Laruelle, Yan Céh, Issey Miyake, Rick Owens, Susan Eldridge, John Galliano, Ann Demeuelemeester, Vava Ribeiro, Serge Leblon, Hiromix, Cecile Bortoletti, Vanessa Bruno, Takashi Suzuki, Miltos Manetas, Pascale Gatzen, Stéphanie Moisdon, Junya Watanabe, Ferdinand Gouzon, and many more...
In 1992, Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm started the magazine Purple Prose as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980s; much as a part of the global counterculture at the time, inspired by magazines like Interview, Ray Gun, Nova, and Helmut Newton's Illustrated, but with the aesthetics of what usually is referred to as anti-fashion. Based on their personal interests and views; Purple was, and in a sense still is, made much in the same spirit of the fanzine. Started "without any means, and without any experience, because we wanted to make a magazine that was radically different. We wanted to support the artists around us that no one else supported, much less talked about."—Olivier Zahm. The magazine became associated with the "realism" of the new fashion photography of the 1990s, with names like Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mark Borthwick, Corinne Day, and Mario Sorrenti. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm and Fleiss created spin-off publications such as les cahiers purple, Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction, and of course, Purple Fashion, in which Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art. Now one of the most iconic and influential fashion magazines in history.
Very Good copy, some light wear to spine and extremities.
1983, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 294 pages, 28.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Residenz Verlag / Salzburg
$220.00 - Out of stock
Phenomenal 1983 monographic hardcover survey of Austrian artist Walter Pichler's sculptures, paintings and projects, profusely illustrated and designed by Pichler himself, with accompanying text in German by Friedrich Achleitner.
Walter Pichler (1936—2012) was an Austrian sculptor and draughtsman, particularly striking for his almost permanent association of the intrinsic tension between sculpture and architectural space throughout his entire oeuvre. At the forefront of the avant-garde spatial experimentations of the 1960s—1970s, alongside architect Hans Hollein, Pichler pursued a utopian, anti-rationalist and conceptual approach that was highly influential in the Vienna scene, from which groups such as Coop Himme(l)bau and Haus-Rucker-Co emerged. Pichler exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and at the Biennale de Paris. In 1968 he participated in the 4th documenta and in 1977 in the 6th documenta, Kassel, Germany. Resolute in the pursuit of his vision, Walter Pichler ignored the pressures of the market, avoided unnecessary public appearances, and spurned the slightest compromise, zealously guarding his independence and confronting the art world with great skepticism. Influenced by the archaic civilizations and a transformative trip to Mexico, he constantly challenged the convictions of the sculptors, architects and designers of his time by continuing to create spiritual architectural objects, spatial installations, drawings of utopian cities by playing with perception, space and by freeing himself from the constraint of construction. This is undoubtedly why he sometimes took several years to build his sculptures, multiplying drawings, plans, preparatory models. From 1972 Pichler lived and worked in seclusion in an old farmhouse in Sankt Martin an der Raab in southern Burgenland, where he erected single buildings for his sculptures. He almost always turned down teaching positions at universities and state awards.
“I could hardly think without drawing.”—W.P.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1995, English
Softcover, 144 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Princeton Architectural Press / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
First 1992 edition.
From the Japanese Zen Garden to André Le Nôtre's Versailles, the history of landscape reveals that every garden embodies a philosophy. Focusing on the metaphysics, aesthetics, and theology of the seventeenth century, Allen Weiss's analysis offers new insight into the major gardens of this period: Vaux-le-Vicomte, Chantilly, and Versailles.From the Meditations of Descartes and Pascal's Penss, to the intrigues of court politics, Weiss reveals how the structure of these gardens reflects—sometimes literally—the power of Louis XIV, the relationship between God, King, sun, and infinity, and the new science of optics. Weiss's sophisticated yet highly readable text combines contemporary theory with a careful historical reading. He gives us a richer understanding of gardens than allowed in more traditional formal and stylistic analyses.
Near Fine copy.
2016, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 29.2 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$150.00 - In stock -
First 2016 hardcover edition of the out-of-print and immediately collectible major monographic study of visionary French furniture designer and architect, Pierre Chareau, highlighting his virtuoso designs and versatile creativity. First edition hardcover of this now highly sought after, stunning and in-depth volume committed to Chareau.
The designer and architect Pierre Chareau (1883–1950) was a pivotal figure in modernism. His extraordinary Art Deco furniture is avidly collected and his visionary glass house, the Maison de Verre, is celebrated, but the breadth of his design genius has been little explored. Chareau linked architecture, fine arts, and style; designed furniture for avant-garde films and chic homes; collected artists such as Picasso and Mondrian; and was a radical innovator in the use of materials. Essays by leading scholars embrace the full scope of his invention, offering detailed analyses of individual projects, the interdisciplinary nature of his work, his Jewish background, his place in the avant-garde of Paris between the wars, and his more recent reception. Extensive illustrations present a rich sampling of Chareau’s furniture, architecture, interiors, fabrics, and wallpapers, as well as his own important art collection.
Esther da Costa Meyer is professor of modern architecture at Princeton University. Bernard Bauchet is an architect and scholar based in Paris. Olivier Cinqualbre is chief curator of architecture at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Jean-Louis Cohen is Sheldon H. Solow Chair for the History of Architecture at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Robert M. Rubin is an independent scholar and curator. Kenneth E. Silver is professor of modern art at New York University. Brian Brace Taylor is professor of history and theory of architecture at the New York Institute of Technology.
As New copy. Not the later re-print.
1999, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 115 pages, 22.3 x 22.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Galerie Jacques Lacoste / Paris
$300.00 - In stock -
Important, very rare hardcover catalogue produced by the Galerie Jacques Lacoste for the first major retrospective exhibition of one of the most audacious, free-spirited decorators of the twentieth century, Jean Royère, held in 1999. Lavishly illustrated overview featuring Royère's furniture (chairs, tables, consoles,...), light fittings and lamps, interior design, and more, all recorded in colour and monochrome photographic documentation, accompanied by descriptions, history and various texts throughout in French. An incredible resource published by Galerie Jacques Lacoste, specialist in twentieth-century French decorative arts and home to Royère's archives.
Jean Royère (French, 1902—1981) was a French interior designer known for his bright, plush, and playful furniture. Born in Paris, France in 1902 into a wealthy family, he initially worked as a banker before leaving in 1931 to apprentice with Pierre Gouff under whom he learned the meticulous craftsmanship of cabinetmaking. Royère won a prestigious competition in 1934 to design the restaurant of the luxurious Hotel Carlton on the Champs-Élysées, garnering widespread acclaim and launching his career overnight. He founded his own company in 1944 and began building a global clientele, opening offices in Cairo, Beirut, Tehran, and São Paulo, with famed customers that included King Farouk, the King Hussein of Jordan, and the Shah of Iran. In 1947 the French designer redecorated his mother’s Paris apartment, including a rotund sofa called Boule, covered in a deliciously fuzzy velvet that would later inspire the design’s charming nickname, Ours Polaire—“polar bear”, one of his most iconic designs. He died in 1981 in New York, NY just one year after moving there. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris held a museum show of his work in 1999, and in 2008, was the subject of a major posthumous retrospective at Sonnabend Gallery in New York.
Fine copy.
1980, English / French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and slipcase), 216 pages, 31 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions du Regard / Paris
$300.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the best book on important French designer Jean-Michel Frank, published in Paris in 1980 by Editions du Regard in a limited edition. A beautifully printed hardcover book in original publisher's cardboard slipcase and illustrated dust-jacket, profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with the work of Frank (1895-1941) and his associate, Adolphe Chanaux (1887-1965).
"I wish one could more often see artists collaborating in arranging houses," said Frank, who admired the sets masterminded by the ballet impresario Sergey Diaghilev in conjunction with Picasso, Braque, Derain and Matisse. "The result would be, at the very least, something of our time, and alive."
Jean-Michel Frank (1895 – 1941) was perhaps the most influential Parisian designer and decorator of the 1930s and 1940s, a refugee desolated by the Nazi occupation of France who had a short and tragic life which ended in suicide in 1941. Frank established his reputation and signature look with his 1926–27 design for Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles's hôtel particulier at 11 place des Etats-Unis in Paris. Man Ray's black-and-white images of the salon have become shorthand for le style Frank. The Noailles were leading progressives of their day and patrons of the major painters of Paris. Frank's style of understated luxury, vellum-sheathed walls, bleached leather, lacquer, quartz and shagreen perfectly complemented the Picassos and Braques on the walls. He collaborated with the artist Christian Bérard, the brothers Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Dali, and the architect-designer Emilio Terry. Frank's blocky, rectangular club chairs and sofas have been endlessly copied and produced by many admirers. He is credited for the design of the modern Parsons table, a stark form that Frank embellished with the most luxurious finish. His style continues to exert its influence through the powerful combination of the simplest forms and the most exquisite materials to produce objects that are truly noble and utterly modern. This book is a testimony to Frank's rigour and the timelessness of his design.
Edited by Adolphe Chanaux
Text by Leopold Diego Sanchez.
In English and French.
Very Good with tanning to dust jacket spine. In original slipcase, light wear and tanning to edges.
1984, English / Japanese
Softcover, 150 pages, 26 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sogetsu Kaikan / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition, "Mobili Italiani" held in Tokyo at the Sogestu Kaikan, a building designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, in February 8-16 1984.
This important survey exhibition on Italian furniture from the 1930's to the 1980's featured the work of furniture designers and companies such as Enzo Mari, Archizoom, Michele De Lucchi, Alessi, Casanova, Castelli, Flos, Aldo Rossi, Kartell, Olivetti-Synthesis, Vico Magistretti, Ettore Sottsass, Mario Bellini, O Luce, Zanotta, B&B Italia, Arflex, Arteluce, Driade, Afra Scarpa, Tobia Scarpa, Vistosi, Artemide, Sergio Asti, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Paolo Pivi, Molteni, Achille Castiglioni, Piero Castiglioni, Sottsass Associati, Carlo Mollino, Danese, Venini, Franco Albini, Carlo Scarpa, and so many others, displaying work across furniture, lighting, glassware and flatware. All design objects from the exhibition are documented here in this handsomely designed catalogue; beautifully photographed and accompanied by production information.
The book also documents, again through fantastic colour photographic spreads and also sketches and technical drawings, the exhibition's "Environments" displays. Entire interior settings are here designed and fitted out by Sottsass Associati (Ettore Sottsass and Marco Zanini), Achille Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Vico Magistretti, Cini Boeri, and Giotto Stoppino.
Features an introduction by Kenzo Tange and texts by Vittoria Gregotti and Giovanni Klaus Koenig, all published here in English and Japanese.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 440 pages, 15 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kyoto Shoin / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
First 1997 edition, first printing of the hefty 440-page pocket version of what is now one of the truely iconic interior "design" books - Tokyo Style. Over a period of two years, Japanese writer-photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki visited apartments, condos and suburban homes in Tokyo, and documented exactly what he saw in colour photography. First published in 1993 in the larger format, Tokyo Style is a collection of these photographs along with Tsuzuki's texts. Divided into eight sections - Beauty in Chaos, The Fancy Fetish, Artsy Pads, The Traditional Touch, Monomaniacs, Kiddie Kingdoms, Inertial Living and Hermitages - the book shows readers a demystified Tokyo and the ordinary lifestyles of the Tokyo people. No wide-angles or post-production here, just the most amazing compendium of hundreds of tiny Tokyo living spaces, no two alike. Somehow this print format seems all the more appropriate!
Reprinted many times since, this is the first edition of this format, first printing from 1997.
Very Good copy. Good—Very Good dust jacket with light wear to extremities.
1995, English / Italian
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 260 pages, 30.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edizioni L'Archivolto / Milan
$90.00 - Out of stock
First 1995 edition of Vetrine a Milano, a lavish hardcover photographic document of window displays in the fashion capitol of Milan in the mid—1990's, published by L'Archivolto. Stunning gloss full-page and double-page colour photographic spreads by Alberto Ferraro capture the displays of the most famous and prestigious shops in Milan (Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Hermés, Artemide, Krizia, Moschino, Valentino, Missoni, et al.) designed by leading interior designers and window-dressers of the day, all mapped out street by street, with comprehensive indexes and profiles.
Silvio San Pietro is an architect and publisher. In 1980 he founded L'Archivolto, a combined publishing company, bookstore, and gallery specializing in architecture and design. Since 1986 he has created, edited and published over 130 books for Edizioni L'Archivolto.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1996, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 23 x 15.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Harry N. Abrams / New York
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1996 edition.
The Sex of Architecture brings together twenty-four provocative texts that collectively express the power and diversity of women's views on architecture today. Edited by Diana Agrest, Patricia Conway, and Leslie Kanes Weisman, three leaders in their field, this volume presents a dialogue among women historians, practitioners, theorists, and educators concerned with critical issues in architecture and urbanism.
In their insightful essays the authors explore history, public space and the city, housing, con-sumerism, and discourse itself. They reexamine some long-suspect "truths"— that man builds and woman inhabits; that man is outside and woman is inside; that man is public and woman is private; that culture is male and nature is female. The texts are accompanied by a rich selection of over ninety illustrations, from Vitruvius to Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier to examples of current architectural work by some of the contributors themselves.
Contributors: Diana Agrest, Diana Balmori, Ann Bergren, Jennifer Bloomer, M. Christine Boyer, Lynne Breslin, Zeynep Celik, Beatriz Colomina, Margaret Crawford, Esther Da Costa Meyer, Diane Favro, Alice T. Friedman, Ghislaine Hermanuz, Catherine Ingraham, Sylvia Lavin, Diane Lewis, Mary Mcleod, Joan Ockman, Denise Scott Brown, Sharon E. Sutton, Susana Torre, Lauretta Vinciarelli, Leslie Kanes, Weisman Marion Weiss