Fall’s arrival brings not only the pumpkin spice latte but also a deluge of design books. Nearly 50 books hit shelves last fall and this season will prove equally abundant with new titles.
No need to dash to the book store just yet. Editor at Large will be highlighting select books coming out each month, from now through November. Here's a look at 16 making their debut in September.
A passion for luxury and beauty propels the multifaceted work of international architect and interior designer Robert Couturier. In his new book, Robert Couturier Designing Paradises (Rizzoli), the dialogue between Old World elegance and contemporary design is on display. The book opens with a tour of Couturier's country retreat in bucolic Kent, Connecticut. Composed of neoclassical style pavilions, early American guesthouses and beautiful gardens, the house features imaginative rooms that are filled with his collections of European art, furniture and decorative objects. A selection of the designer’s other projects—from contemporary apartments to Mexican villas to a stately English manor—provide further design inspiration.
Elle Decor: The Height of Style: Inspiring Ideas from the World's Chicest Rooms (Abrams) by Michael Boodro and Ingrid Abramovitch showcases more than 220 stunning rooms selected by the editors of ELLE DECOR over the past few years. The rooms, which range from extravagant living spaces to sleek, state-of-the-art kitchens, baths and dressing rooms, are organized into distinctive categories including “Classical,” “Fanciful,” “Functional,” and “Personal.” “What the Pros Know,” which occurs throughout the pages, presents insights, ideas and practical advice from top interior designers, architects and homeowners. Every chapter also incorporates “Anatomy of a Room”—in which the magazine’s editors explain how to make the inspiring ideas a reality.
Design in the Hamptons (The Monacelli Press) by Anthony Iannacci, takes a look at the architecture, interiors and gardens from celebrity designers including Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan, John Barman, Fox-Nahem, Thad Hayes, Tony Ingrao, Todd Merrill, Roman and Williams and Joe d’Urso. The properties range from shingled beach cottages to a redesigned 1840s barn and a sustainable, glass-walled guesthouse on pilings. They display a curated blend of traditional references with cutting-edge architecture and enviable art collections, finished by the South Fork’s famous light and ocean views. Whether they are decorated with natural materials and iconic 1950s and 1960s furniture from Charles Eames and Hans Wegner, or eighteenth-century antiques and industrial objects, all have been carefully selected to demonstrate the possibilities of authentic design in the Hamptons today.
Jean-Louis Deniot Interiors (Rizzoli) by Diane Dorrans Saeks and Xavier Bejot is the first book on the work of the designer whose refined classical interiors are widely emulated as the epitome of French style. Known for his custom treatments and furniture designs, he is familiar to international magazine editors and stylists. Blending elegance with architectural rigor, Deniot’s spaces express his philosophy, “I aim for my interiors to be eclectic chic as well as serene” in this compendium of cosmopolitan homes and rustic retreats. The book demonstrates Denoit’s new, sophisticated classical style that is changing the scene for international design and offering inspiration and ideas to decorators, homeowners and antiques enthusiasts.
In Heart and Home: Rooms That Tell Stories (Rizzoli) by Linda O’Keeffe, innovative tastemakers from the worlds of interior design, architecture, fashion and art open their doors to show readers how to fill their homes with personal flair. The book offers a panorama of forward-looking interiors—from an eclectic, bookfilled New York loft in a 1920s factory building to an updated, art-filled "Old Hollywood" estate in Beverly Hills to a supremely serene haveli in Udaipur, India. Spaces by interior designers including Kelly Wearstler, Gene Meyer and Frank de Biasi; architects Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown; and fashion designer Wolfgang Joop, among others, are featured in the book.
Markham Roberts: Decorating: The Way I See It (Vendome Press) is structured the way an interiors project unfolds, taking readers step-by-step through the design process. It begins with the basic interior elements—floor plan and furniture layout, color palette and fabric schemes, furniture selection, and incorporates objects and art. The book then moves on to architecture, landscaping and gardens, showing the important interrelationship between interior and exterior design. Illustrated with more than 350 photographs of some 40 projects, including New York City apartments large and small, historic estates on Long Island, seaside Florida mansions, stately Southern and Midwestern houses, rustic Montana ski retreats, and modern Puget Sound compounds, the book reveals Roberts’ diversity as a decorator.
Gardens in Detail: 100 Contemporary Designs (The Monacelli Press) by Emma Ruess explores horticulture from historical style to planting and landscape design. This comprehensive reference offers gardens from many periods of history—Islamic, Renaissance, English Landscape, Arts & Crafts, and more, and delves into geographically diverse environments—from a nighttime sculpture garden on the Oregon coast to a sustainable water garden in the mountains of Vermont, and the Mughal garden at the Indian president’s palace in New Delhi. The book boasts 500 illustrations, leading readers through each garden and providing them with the tools needed to understand and replicate each exemplary design.
The first book on the interior designs of San Francisco–based Paul Vincent Wiseman and The Wiseman Group, Inner Spaces (Gibbs Smith) by Brian Coleman and Matthew Millman showcases distinctive homes where clients find themselves at peace in a profound way. The homes range from a Victorian update on San Francisco’s Russian Hill to an Art Deco apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side; from a sleek urban high-rise in Chicago to a tropical sanctuary in Ka’upulehu, Hawaii.
The Winterthur Museum’s richly illustrated history of British and American fabrics made or used from 1700–1850 is a visual reference for designers and a definitive contribution to textile studies. From slipcovers that belonged to George Washington to bedhangings described by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Delaware’s Winterthur Museum holds some of the finest cotton and linen textiles made or used in America and Britain between 1700 and 1850. Printed Textiles (The Monacelli Press) by Linda Eaton is a major update to the classic text published by Winterthur in 1970—a sourcebook compiled by celebrated curator Florence Montgomery that detailed all aspects of the fabrics’ lifespan from their design and method of manufacture to their use and exchange value.
DesignPOP (Rizzoli) by Lisa S. Roberts is a survey of trends in contemporary furniture and products that reveals how design is not only changing with the times, it is inventing the future. The game changing projects that compose DesignPOP push the boundaries of human expectations and show new ideas, new possibilities and ultimately new products that enrich people’s lives. The book presents work from stars in the field, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson, Marcel Wanders, Yves Behar, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, the Campana brothers, Hella Jongerius, Tord Boontje, Philippe Starck, Karim Rashid, Ron Arad, Ross Lovegrove, Dror Benshetrit, Tokujin Yoshioka, Jasper Morrison, James Dyson and Jonathan Ive.
From America's preeminent museum collection, this definitive volume places the quilt firmly in the realm of art. Quilts (Rizzoli) by Elizabeth Warren and Martha Stewart combines economy with artistry and everyday craftsmanship with extraordinary beauty, proving quilts hold a unique place in American culture. Each quilt tells a story about its maker and her community; seen together, these monumental textiles paint a broad picture of the development of a national character and uncover the hidden history of women's contribution to art. This volume brings together the 200 most important examples from the esteemed collection of the American Folk Art Museum, many of which are shown here for the first time.
The Drawing Room (Rizzoli) by Jeremy Musson, Julian Fellowes and Paul Barker is a highly detailed look at the most accomplished English country house interiors. The Drawing Room, a formal place within a house of status where family and honored guests could retire from the more public arena, is one of the most important rooms in an English country house, therefore great attention has been paid to preserving the decoration of this most elegant of spaces—the center of life in the English countryside and the epitome of English country house decoration. This book offers privileged access to 50 of the finest drawing rooms of country houses and historic townhouses, many still in private hands, including Althorp, Attingham and Knepp Castle.
A lavishly illustrated volume that showcases the work of the most prestigious Italian kitchen designers and manufacturers, Kitchen Between Heart and Design (Rizzoli) by Cristina Morozzi showcases why Italian kitchens are so legendary. With every detail and surface readers will discover the passion, quality, functionality and talent used to create these kitchens, which are comfortable and welcoming. The volume features 11 companies, among them Snaidero, Scavolini and Aran World.
A historical, cultural and architectural journey through a dozen exquisite and refined French châteaux and residences, Private Residences of France (Flammarion) by Christiane de Nicolay Mazery and Francis Hammond features a dozen aristocratic French families who invite readers to experience their elegant lifestyle, from the royal stag hunting tradition of Louis XI and Louis XIII at the Château de Champchevrier to Hubert de Givenchy's elegant Parisian townhouse imbued with grandeur and comfort in the style of Napoleon III. The featured houses, illustrated with specially commissioned photography, represent key periods of French decoration.
A revealing collection of astonishingly fresh and undiscovered midcentury architecture and interiors in Havana, Havana Modern (Rizzoli) by Michael Connors and Ricardo Porro guides readers through an unprecedented tour of Havana, presenting stunning and architecturally important private homes and buildings that have been meticulously preserved, previously unphotographed and mostly inaccessible to visitors. This book represents the modern movement in Cuban architecture, from Art Nouveau and Art Deco to the flowering of high Modernism just before the Revolution, spanning from the early 1900s to 1965.
Design is only part of an interior designer’s job—they're also responsible for scheduling client meetings, conducting design surveys, creating drawings and specs, and overseeing installation. Multiply all that by the number of projects on a designer's plate and there's a recipe for overwhelming disorganization. The Interior Design Productivity Toolbox (Wiley) by Phyllis Harbinger helps designers to juggle multiple projects with ease, with a comprehensive self-management system tailored to the needs of decorators.
