Interior & Furniture Design

With expert analysis, great photography, and a huge selection of familiar and unusual objects, this book explains what truly makes a design great and reveals the hidden stories behind the everyday things that surround us. The author, a writer and journalist specialising in design,...

Includes a 100+ page appendix featuring translations of the book's essays and chronology in French, Spanish, Finnish, Thai and Mandarin Formica Forever, published to celebrate Formica’s centenary, takes us on a lively, informative walk through the life of this much-loved material: from its beginnings as...

German company Resopal have been pioneers in the manufacture and design of plastic laminates since their invention in the early twentieth century. Like Formica in the U.S., the brand name Resopal is practically synonymous with the entire field of laminates in Germany.  This study...

In collaboration with IKEA, this inspirational study explores how to live more sustainably and well based on the experience of both ordinary and extraordinary lives, showing how small changes at home will work positively towards sustainability for our planet. Ever since the 1950s, IKEA...

Best of German Interior Design introduces the reader to the fifty most renowned German designers and fifty leading German manufacturers of home interior products. It portrays a scene that, in its self-perception, tends to fly "below the radar." Around the world, by contrast, German...

This lavish volume is a photo-essay of exquisitely composed tableaux featuring Patrick Norguet's furniture and product designs. Sometimes paired with the human body, sometimes resembling the human body, and others standing in contrast to it. Norguet's sense of colour, formal reserve, elegant purity, and steadfast...

This is the first comprehensive presentation of the work of Danish furniture designer Jakob Berg (1958–2008). As a designer, he was ahead of his time and not only continued the story of the golden age of Danish Design but, building on this legacy, fundamentally...

Two design styles perfectly embrace tidiness. One was developed in the United States in the 18th century by a devout sect of Quakers who had emigrated from England, the other was formed over thousands of years on the islands of Japan. Although they have...

Rare & Collectible At the first mention of his name, one can easily picture his buildings - light-flooded bungalows that are lavishly composed into nature and that characterise the architectural style of the American West Coast surrounding Los Angeles. But it is sometime overlooked...

You may have braved IKEA, where the promise of a brighter and better living space comes sealed in a cardboard box. But what do we lose when big-box retailers rule the home furnishings marketplace―and, by extension, our homes? Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to...

The bentwood furniture developed by Michael Thonet made style history and served as the foundation of one of the world’s most successful furniture brands. At the end of the 1920s, Thonet also entered the tubular steel furniture business, which continues to be an important...

Published in association with the V&A, this is a comprehensive history of plywood, from its use in 18th-century furniture to its popularity in the digital age.Beautiful, sustainable and ubiquitous, plywood’s worth far exceeds its general reputation. A manufactured wood product, it is capable of...

In this intriguing insight into the work and history of a museum, V&A director and historian Dr Tristram Hunt brings together ten renowned V&A curators to tell the stories behind ten of their most treasured objects. ‘Tipu’s Tiger’ (an almost life-size wooden semi-automaton mauling...

This luxurious book explores contemporary wallpaper through three approaches to design - Architectural Illusions, Fabulous Florals and Pasted Pictures. Each section starts with 21st century examples, then traces the history back through the key moments, developments, designers and manufacturers to the origins of the style....

Christopher Dresser (1834–1904) is one of the most influential British designers of all time and he is widely regarded as Britain’s first independent industrial designer. His works still look remarkably modern more than a century later. Like his contemporary William Morris, Dresser advocated for...

Scholar and historian Christopher Long turns his attention to the little-known German-born architect and designer Jock Peters (1889–1934). Long’s engaging study introduces us to the modernist’s architectural work in Germany, before World War I, and also to Peters’s work created after he immigrated to...

In 1929, Eileen Gray designed Villa E 1027 for herself and her youthful partner Jean Badovici, but only lived there for three years. Today, the elegant house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in southern France is an icon of modernism. In 1937, Le Corbusier discovered the place...

The modular did not have to be invented: it can be found everywhere. We divide surfaces into grids, spaces into parts, and time into rhythmic units. Modular structures are also increasingly being recognised as a way of communicating, where the aim is not to...

This insightful, wide-ranging book surveys the applied arts and industrial design from the eighteenth century to the present day, exploring the dynamic relationship between design and manufacturing, and the technological, social and commercial contexts in which this relationship has developed. Extensively revised and expanded...

This book documents the career of a pivotal figure of the Danish postwar avant-garde, Poul Gernes (1925–96) - Artist, designer and co-founder of the alternative art school Eks-Skolen. His serial, colorful works move between pop art and minimalism. In 1961 Gernes founded the Den...