Visual Contrast

Spotted this at the bookstore this weekend. It's chockablock with interesting vignettes, beautifully photographed. All put together by a stylist and definitely looks it, but worth checking out all the same.

Gio Ponti

Feels very current to me right now. (More here.)

Converted church in the Hudson Valley

Mismatched chairs done right.

Despite my phobia of floating shelves, I must admit these look pretty great.

photos by Solvi Dos Santos, from the gorgeous book Simply Contemporary

"At Home with the Makers of Style"

Not a new title, but I picked it up cheap this weekend. Recommended.

Old books...

... framed for their covers.

from Design*Sponge

Dream books

I hear that in France it's tradition to custom-bind your books (that's why French bookcovers tend to be so plain). These shots (from the exciting Parisian sojourn of The Selby) show an incredible collection of custom covers for the mysterious "NRF." While I tend to think of custom-bound books as solid blocks of dyed leather, these show remarkable variety. They seem like art objects, and I'm curious if the covers live up to the spines.


from The Selby. Follow the link to wonder how this couple obtained the library. (As always, the site doesn't explain.)

Hammershøi

Among the gifts given out at my Christmas this year, was this book, on the painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, who I'd never heard of. He was a Danish painter who worked around the turn of the century. He repeatedly painted his Copenhagen home and the pictures, in gorgeous shades of grey, would look right at home in a contemporary interiors magazine. (There are also some lovely, empty streetscapes of London.) Well worth checking out.

Apartamento

I got this over the weekend. It's the second issue. I'd actually seen the first issue, but felt to cheap to pay for it at the time (it's $25, so I look at it as a book purchase). I'm quite intrigued by the idea of an "everyday life interiors magazine."

In many ways, it reminds me of The Selby, in that the subjects all seem to be from the creative class, and their homes have a lot of artful clutter. The quality of the photography is not nearly on level with Todd Selby's, but Apartamento provides what I really miss from that site: context. There are lengthy interviews that provide all the information I'm curious about — who are they? how'd they find the place? why did they make the choices they did? There is actually quite a lot of reading material, and I have quite a bit still to go through (quite a change from the latest issue of Domino, which I "finished" in about a half an hour).

And what of the interiors themselves? Mixed bag. Some of them are just cluttered studios, but there are a few that are truly charming and inspired. Still, it's a magazine with a strong point of view, and some interesting material. I'll keep an eye out for the next issue.

More Taschen goodness

After the previous post, I took a longer look at the Taschen site, and found these color saturated shots from "Brussels Style." It really is a great book!

As a bonus, here's a shot from "Berlin Style" (which I also own). Considering how I've been obsessively hanging art lately, it's nice to see the impact of a blank wall. High ceilings, of course, help.

Brussels Style

I think that Brussels Style is my favorite of the Taschen Icons "Style" series (and I own far too many of them). So many of the rooms have this great laid-back bohemian feel, which I find makes an extravagant home much more relatable.

(The Icons books are kind of impossible to scan from though.)