Craving a new page-turner? Another month has come and gone, which means its time for a new list of book releases. No need to dash to the bookstore just yet. Editor at Large will be highlighting select books coming out each month, from now through November. Here's a peek inside 13 making their debut in October.
Inspired By… (Gibbs Smith) by Kathryn M. Ireland, is a personal travel log, detailing the designer’s inspirations, from the people who inspire her creativity to her journeys in rural England and Southwest France, up the East Coast in the U.S. to the West Coast. Mixing textiles and fabrics with furnishings gathered on trips to Morocco, France, London and other international destinations, Ireland shares room designs in the States and abroad, from city apartments to ranch homes and French farm houses.
With a foreword written by Celerie Kemble, The Artisanal Home: Interiors and Furniture of Casamidy (Rizzoli) by Anne-Marie Midy and Jorge Almada, showcases the design duo’s homes and other projects in urban and country settings that illustrate their appealing bohemian aesthetic. For a Mexico home, the front doorway is collaged with tin ex-votos and religious charms and crowned with a dramatic cement concha shell. Baroque mirrors, French-style armchairs re-covered in remnants from a fine Paris textile shop and weathered Moroccan side tables grace the comfortable living spaces. The terra-cotta floors warmed by the sun recall homes in the South of France. For each project in the book, the couple shares their design process, giving the textures and a color palette.
Comfort Zone: Creating the Eco-Elegant Interior (Pointed Leaf Press) by Trudy Dujardin welcomes readers to a fresh 21st century approach to interior design, one that emphasizes beautiful rooms, green furnishings and building materials and extraordinary comfort, while thoughtfully considering the outside world. The book offers an intimate view into beautiful, award-winning interiors across the United States—from chic urban apartments to luxurious coastal vacation homes, meticulously restored sea captains manses, and modern houses built by renowned architects.
With a foreword written by Dara Caponigro, interior designer Nancy Braithwaite’s first book Simplicity (Rizzoli) is a striking tutorial in the power of simplicity in design. Divided into five sections, the book begins with her manifesto on simplicity and the aspects of design used to achieve it, including architecture, scale, color, texture, pattern and composition. She then presents three categories of style—country, classic, and contemporary—and explains and illustrates each with iconic rooms from her portfolio. Finally, she presents several houses as case studies, displaying the power of these principles in action and emphasizing the importance of craftsmanship in design, from a stunning modern seaside retreat on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, to her charming country house in Atlanta.
Organized by rooms in the house, Elements of Style (Simon & Schuster) by Erin Gates invites readers into the designer’s own home as well as her clients’ homes. Fresh, modern, and colorful, the book brims with glamour and style as well as advice on practical matters from choosing kitchen counter materials to dressing a bed with pillows, picking a sofa, and decorating a nursery without cartoon characters. Readers will also find a foreword by Gate’s husband, Andrew, and an extensive resource and shopping guide that provides an indispensable roadmap for anyone embarking on their first serious home decorating adventure.
In A Frame for Life (Rizzoli) by Ilse Crawford and Edwin Heathcote, renowned designer and style expert Ilse Crawford showcases her body of influential, holistic work for the first time, articulating her groundbreaking philosophies for design and living. This volume illustrates why Crawford’s design philosophy is so seminal—her work has influenced not only a generation of Dutch and European designers, but also Americans due to her acclaimed Soho House New York. The book features new photography and essays by both Crawford and Heatcote.
Inspired by Tradition (The Monacelli Press) by Norman Davenport Askins and Susan Sully, presents a portrait of Southern elegance through Askins’s infusion of traditional design with understated innovation and style. New color photographs of interiors and landscape commissioned specially for the book complement traditional hand-drawn plans and elevations. Fifteen lavishly detailed Southern houses in Atlanta, Georgia, South Carolina, the Virginia Piedmont, along the Florida coasts, and in the mountains of North Carolina, make up the book.
Architects Jeffrey Matz and Cristina A. Ross, photographer Michael Biondo, and graphic designer Lorenzo Ottaviani present a vanishing generation of iconic American houses in Midcentury Houses Today (The Monacelli Press). Selecting a representative group of 16 houses covering the period between the 1950s and 1978, they portray each one in great detail with floor plans, timelines and both archival and luminous new photography—from the clean, minimalist look of the initial construction to subsequent additions by some of the most significant architects including Toshiko Mori, Roger Ferris and Joeb Moore.
Vintage Industrial (Rizzoli) by Misha de Potestad and Patrice Pascal covers the period from 1900 to 1950, which produced the raw, functional aesthetic that has become a cornerstone of modern design. The advent of the second industrial revolution created the need for a new kind of furniture to satisfy the demands of a rapidly growing workforce. Chairs, tables, lamps, and modular storage were designed from new materials to be mass-produced, stackable and adjustable to the developing needs of brand-new industries that in turn were manufacturing the products that would define a changing society. These pieces that inform a reclaimed style are now highly popular among collectors and interior designers. This volume celebrates the engineers who shaped the industrial aesthetic as the unsung heroes of modern design and showcases their creations.
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Rooms (Rizzoli) by Margo Stripe presents the warm interior spaces and exceptional design work of this beloved American master. The book offers the reader an immersion into this work by means of extraordinary artful detail in intimately explored rooms and spaces. From the Oak Park Home and Studio in Illinois to the majestically appointed Darwin D. Martin House with its abundance of art glass, including Wright’s famous "Tree of Life" and "Wisteria" designs, this volume ranges over the whole of Wright’s oeuvre. It highlights a number of Wright masterpieces, including Hollyhock House, the mysterious Aztec-like home and arts complex built on a hill in Los Angeles; the Dana House, with its luminous "butterfly" transom glass; and the fabled living room at Fallingwater.
Anchored by Austin and San Antonio, Texas Hill Country is celebrated for its frontier history and natural beauty. Hill Country Houses: Inspired Living in a Legendary Texas Landscape (The Monacelli Press) by Cyndy Severson, presents 19 of the area’s most remarkable private houses, with lush photography to provide a glimpse of how life in Central Texas is unique—from restored Victorian houses in bohemian Southtown to a glass-walled ranch in Boerne canopied by oak trees; from floating stairs and sustainable systems to the casual elegance of country antiques, screen porches and longleaf pine floors.
The most densely populated state in the nation and one of the original thirteen, home to the largest public iris garden in the country and the glacier-swept endpoint of the last Ice Age—for Nancy Berner and Susan Lowry, who look to gardens as an entry to the history and culture of a region, New Jersey presents an array of surprising diversity. The 28 selected gardens in Gardens of the Garden State (The Monacelli Press) illustrate the ways in which New Jersey’s long garden traditions are upheld to this day.
With historic photographs and drawings from Georg Jensen’s extensive archive, Georg Jensen: Reflections (Rizzoli) by Murray Moss displays the incredible craftsmanship and technical innovations of the brand’s highly skilled silversmiths. The eponymous founder was trained as an artist at the turn of the 20th-century, and is known for his jewelry designs in the art nouveau style. Georg Jensen is a sumptuous visual celebration of Danish design, and the book offers an in-depth look at some of the most stunning silver creations in history.
Related Story: Hot off the press: 16 new design books kick off the season
