Do you take books on vacation? You know, actual books? Not a grainy seventy-five percent screen of text on an electronic tablet. Books.
I do. This trip I took A Moveable Feast, A Passage to India, The Hunger Games, Scat and a broad collection of Poppleton. Also, Metropolitan Home's Design 100: The Last Word on Modern Interiors. Normally, I do not take design books on vacation. I often buy design books on vacation, happy to lug them home, but usually I don't pack them to go along.
This time I did. I miss Met Home and its unique, and I think broad, definition of "modern." The book is a wonderful collection of some of the highlights of the magazine's thirty years of coverage. There are great, large glossy pictures and short bits of copy, a happy balance for the design crazy. This particular image, above, has stuck in my head for years. I hunted through a stack of old issues five times to try to find it before giving up. The work of architects David Lake and Ted Flato, I have thought of it half-a-dozen times since it was published; I am happy to have it in hand again.
Particularly charming is editor Michael Lassell's introduction; it is the kind of writing that makes you think you might want to hang out with him and have a beer after work. Which is kind of what he's doing with the book. Even if your design library leans a bit traditional, you should find good inspiration here.
Photo, top, photography by Erik Johanson, next, photography by John Ellis and last, photography by Langdon Clay, all images courtesy of Filipacchi Publishing 2010 for Design 100: The Last Word on Modern Interiors.Labels: design books
