Monday, November 4, 2013

Books, Books, and More Glorious Books: Part Two

Part Two of My Picks of the Best Design/Style/Inspiration Books for Fall 2013

Over the last month, I’ve read dozens of great and wonderfully illustrated newly published books.

I went in search of the best and brightest authors, the most sensuous and creative photography. I focused on new important books that delight, inform, thrill, educate, arouse, amuse, surprise, and perhaps even mystify. Last week I proposed the new Axel Vervoordt book, and the new François Halard volume.

This week I invite you to consider my new list, Part Two. I’ve selected images from the new books—so collectible.

In case you missed Part One of my first ten favorite design books, read on below this week's post. You can scroll down at the end of this story to read it.


From MEMOS DIANA VREELAND: The Vogue Years Edited by Alexander Vreeland (Rizzoli International)

This week the scope of my book picks includes new books by authors and personalities I follow like Diane Vreeland and Patrick Leigh Fermor and James Salter and Ivan Terestchenko.

I’m inspired this fall by new books that are original, generous, vibrant and lively. It’s a wonderful season for book lovers and book collectors like me who want to be swept away. 

And I’ve got a few non-design books below…books about lives well-lived and writing that’s very evolved, and a few witty books that make delightful reading late at night, or in between ‘the great books’.

From BEYOND CHIC: Great Fashion Designers at Home by Ivan Terestchenko (Vendome)

This is a long and vivid post with lots of ideas and excitement about books. I invite you to make a delicious pot of Assam or Darjeeling tea. Perhaps this would be the time to pour a glass of an offbeat wine from distant places like Mendoza, or Marlborough Sound on the South Island of New Zealand, where I grew up.

Recent wine discoveries I made at a tasting are the Pinots by Flowers Vineyards and Hirsch Vineyards from the newly named Fort Ross-Seaview appellation on the northern California Coast. This AVA is rocky and remote with vineyards often perched on terraces too steep for machinery or even a horse for tilling. The Fort Ross-Seaview region is in and out of the fog. Wines from the area are mysteriously rich, thought-provoking, and delicious. 

Come with me for a look between pages.


Marina Faust / Architectural Digest (c) 1998 Conde Nast Publications, Inc.

1. WILLIAM HODGINS INTERIORS by Stephen M. Salny (Norton)

I’ve admired Boston designer William Hodgins since I first saw images of his apartment—with his ultra-refined all-white color palette, all ivory and off-white and blanc cassé and cream.

Hodgins’ work is precise, superbly edited, and well-versed in proportion, texture, contrast, and scale.

Stephen Salny (who previously documented Frances Elkins and David Adler so well) has collected the complete body of work, a lifetime career of Hodgins. I’m so impressed by the quiet beauty of these rooms.

There are some precious lessons here for designers. Hodgins’ work shown on these pages starts in 1979 and in the eighties—and those early rooms look fresh, alive, relevant and current even today.

Photo by Julie Carpenter, courtesy of Pamela H. Gottfried.

Photo by Julie Carpenter, courtesy of Pamela H. Gottfried.

Reprinted with permission of House Beautiful (c) 1990.

Michael J. Lee

Michael J. Lee

The book is quiet. It has a soft voice, like Hodgins.

In the survey of his life’s work—you can see how rooms have evolved, how he has worked with beloved clients over a lifetime, and how he has designed with the same antiques and art in different locations.

Photo by Gordon Beall

Photo by Gordon Beall

The rooms are airy, light, often pretty. Hodgins does not do bombastic or aggressive pillows, or self-important or oppressive rooms. It’s all controlled. His furniture placement is elegant and refined, often sensual. His mastery of all white rooms with a touch of gold is an inspiration.

Understatement and fine-tuned intelligence are qualities I admire in decorating. A book for every library.



2. MEMOS DIANA VREELAND: The Vogue Years Edited by Alexander Vreeland (Rizzoli International)
Pizzazz!

Attention Diana Vreeland fans. Alexander Vreeland has served a fantastic feast of Vreeland wisdom, wit, irony, insight, history. In the mixsuperbly printed color images of Vogue pages and images. Memos, letters, dictated notes, scribbles from 1962-1971 are reproduced on these pages.

Vreeland was an opinionated, witty, frisky and detail-oriented editor and a genius at getting her team to create miracles.

Chapters include ‘Show Then Direction’, ‘Please Get Organized’, “Beauty is Within’, ‘Objects and Inspiration’ and ‘Create the Future’.

Alexander Vreeland also, thoughtfully, gathered anecdotes from editors and collaborators about working with her, with insights into the ‘no cost spared’ style of the time.

There are letters to Cecil Beaton praising a 1971 shot of Chanel in her rue Cambon apartment; to Alexis de Rédé, requesting that Vogue cover one of his Hotel Lambert Balls. Everyone who read ‘The Eye Has to Travel’ last year, will want this book. Those who are familiar with Polly, Pilar, Cecil, Horst, Dick, Consuelo, Baron de Gunzberg or Mrs. Di Montezemolo will feel totally at home here. I must say I’d love to see a very chic and clever mimic with a wicked sense of humor reading these memos…there’s madness in the detail. Wonderfully so.


“Dear Cristobal, Though the shutting down of your house had been mentioned and rumored—and I had thought of it often sometimes in advance, “Will this ever happen”, when the actual and official news came it was a complete surprise and shock. I was staying with Mona Bismarck in Capri at the time.” — DIANA VREELAND memo dated 1968 to Cristobal Balenciaga, Paris





“Luxury at a price. The look and feel of luxury is what we want these days. Everybody wants to look luxurious today. As the look of poverty is démodé and makes us sad. Do by all means use real jewels on these clothes. Luxury is a point of view. It is not what you pay but what you make of yourself.”— DIANA VREELAND, in a memo dated July 19, 1969, to twenty Vogue staff members





“Regarding Cher, the great thing is to wash her face. And if you have any trouble tell her that I will talk to her and she simply has to realize that certain makeups, such as a thick opaque one with thick opaque eyelashes simply don’t photograph.”— a 1968 memo, DIANA VREELAND






“What can you do about fatigue? Surely mental health and physical and spiritual rhythm, love, all keep fatigue at bay. Also regular exercise and fresh air. The above may be clichés but at least they get results.”— office memo 1967, DIANA VREELAND


“No war or pestilence in history has ever stopped fashion and manners in dress from progressing and changing. It is an indomitable force to adore and to please, to change and to create.— Letter, 1969, to a college student who wanted to write a profile on her, from DIANA VREELAND



3. STAIRCASES THE ARCHITECTURE OF ASCENT by various authors who contributed essays (Vendome)

This virtuoso book was originally prepared for a Spanish museum exhibit, and it is the definitive, scholarly and most inspirational book on this magical topic. Chapters, all superbly illustrated, include ‘Requiem for the Staircase’, ‘A Lesson in Architecture’, ‘A Theatre of Power’, ‘From Art Nouveau to the Present Day’. The depth and erudition of the dynamic book are breathtaking. 








“The reader became the book; and summer nightWas like the conscious being of the book.” ― Wallace Stevens

It’s the education required by every interior designer, architect—or poet. It’s also a tribute to the ingenuity, skill, artistry, and physics of staircases.

After seeing exterior and interior staircases on these pages, some on a grand scale like the Rastrelli staircase in the Winter Palace, and the new Reichstag, you’ll want to go and see them. Climbing stairs will never be a mundane exercise after this fine volume. 




4. AERO: Beginning to Now by Thomas O’Brien (Abrams)

I’ve always admired Thomas O’Brien’s warm modernism, with its tufty fabrics, nubby sofas, shimmering steel, satiny leather chairs, rattan baskets, rackety old antiques and no-nonsense art. His shop, Aero, on Broome Street, is a mecca for stylists and designers and anyone who wants to get a clue about how to pull a room together. 





He designed for Target, creating a small collection of honorable accessories. Nice. There’s a lot of study here, on O’Brien’s eye, his fine-tuned sense of contrast, juxtaposition, and counterpoint in rooms. Lessons on each page.



5. FARROW & BALL: Decorating with Colour by Ros Byam Shaw (Ryland Peters and Small)

Ros used to be on-staff at The World of Interiors, so the writing is erudite and worldly. And the images of paint used artfully are excellent. I’ve always admired the Farrow & Ball paints. The British company, which based many of its colors on historic houses in England, changed paints forever. Their subtle and moody and ancient-modern hues give rooms a look and style that so few modern paints can aspire to. 



The international interiors—Amsterdam, Paris, London, and Venice, for example—display many uses of F&B paints. Essential for design students—or anyone who’s about to take up a paint brush. 



6. BEAUTY AT HOME by Aerin Lauder (Potter Style)

This lovely book would make an ideal gift for a young design student, a bride, or a teenage daughter. Aerin Lauder (of the very philanthropical Lauder family) takes the reader into her Hamptons house, her Upper East Side apartment, and her office—with photos by Simon Upton. 




The book shows a continuity of style, a clarity of design and a freshness of modern ideas. It's refreshing and not overdone. It’s light as air—but with ultra-feminine ideas for students and new brides looking for ideas, concepts, and practical tips on décor, guest rooms, and children’s rooms.



7. IT’S MODERN: The Eye and Visual Influence of Alexander Liberman by Charles Churchward (Rizzoli USA)Charles Churchward, a longtime Conde Nast art director and creative director, is the perfect insider to create both the book’s contents and the look of this handsome volume.

The material covers 1912—the 1990s and presents the evolving artworks of Liberman, and his creative sensibility on the pages of Vogue and other Conde Nast magazines. 




This is a book for design insiders, magazine and book art directors, and for those who have followed the pages of Vogue with interest. Liberman worked closely with Avedon, Penn, Beaton, Newton and Cartier-Bresson. 



For some there may be one or two too many images of Liberman sculptures, perhaps. For others, his bracing editorial concepts on the page will prove energizing.




8. BEYOND CHIC: Great Fashion Designers at Home by Ivan Terestchenko (Vendome)
OK, here’s the ‘who’s who’: Reed Krakoff, Alaia, Blahnik, Armani, Kenzo, Missoni, Chanel, Franca Sozzani (one of the best, in Marrakech), and Nicole Farhi Saint Laurent, and even the late great Loulou de la Falaise. It’s a fascinating book.




At one point, I picked up the book, and recognized the handsome cover image as Gilles Dufour's apartment. I had not so long ago stood there in the apartment beside the fireplace, surrounded by paintings, with views of the 16th arrondissement mansions through the open windows. Ed Hardy and I were chatting about the swallows chirping outside, and nibbling on tea sandwiches from Gérard Mulot. Other interiors also have a fantastic ‘you are there’ quality; certain softness in his approach makes the rooms romantic and suffused in soft light. Franca Sozzani’s riad—terrifyingly chic. I love also the mood and softness and intimacy of his shoot of Manolo Blahnik, with snaps of his closets and books, Blahnik sketching, and a very sweet close-up mood.




If you really really want to treat yourself—acquire this TERESTCHENKO book and the new François Halard I recommended last week, and disappear into a comfortable chair for the weekend. Oh, and a few tea sandwiches for sustenance.

“I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.” ― Dorothy Parker, The Collected Dorothy Parker



Books and Authors I Recommend:


1. RENZO MONGIARDINO: Renaissance Master of Style by Laure Verchere (Assouline). Mongiardino is one of the most emulated designers—for his theatrical effects, his bravado, and his innate sense of design history and fantasy décor. He designed houses for Italian families like the Agnellis, as well as theatre sets for Gian Carlo Menotti and Franco Zeffirelli. Mongiardino, with his talented band of artists and staff decorated rooms for several Barons de Rothschild, Jil Sander, Aristotle Onassis, and famously for Lee Radziwill, and Valentino Garavani. To know: the Los Angeles designer Michael S. Smith is a longtime admirer and connoisseur of Mongiardino.


2. JAMES SALTER — A writer to discover. I heard Salter reading a short story recently on BBC Radio. His voice and emotion and deep understanding of the frailties of humans and our deep vulnerability and desires were so compelling I re-played the recording many times. I’ve now gathered many of his books. I’ve found the rare ‘There & Then’, a collection of his travel writing, and ordered from London his ‘All That Is’ his new novel. I have read only the first lines (I'm in the middle of reading Edith Wharton's biography) and can’t wait to immerse myself. Salter’s topics range broadly over his fifty-year writing life, and some books may more of less compelling for your interest (for example, “The Hunters’ is about wartime pilots). Salter has a fantastic ear for dialogue, a love of his characters, and an insightful and true sense of place.


3. PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR was the greatest travel writer of the 20th century. He died recently, in his nineties, and his books are few. Fermor wrote extensively and with force and passion about southern Greece (where he lived and died). I have them all. Recently, a book of letters between Fermor (known as Paddy) and his great friend the Duchess of Devonshire (diverting) was published, and now there’s ‘The Broken Road From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos’, a kind of biography/collection of writing, edited by his executors, Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron. And you’ll want his biography by Artemis Cooper, if you are a Fermor-ophile, like me. For travelers, or travel writers, he is the ultimate inspiration.


4. BARRIE KERPER, formerly an editor with Chronicle Books, worked on some of my early design books. I’ve always admired her eye and ear and style. Some years ago Barrie started The Collected Traveler travel anthology series, in which she collects fine examples of travel literature. Her 2001Morocco volume provided inspiration and insight, enrichment, and background for my recent trips to Marrakech and Tangier. Now Kerper’s new 'Paris: The Collected Traveler An Inspired Companion Guide', (Vintage Departures Original), edited by Barrie Kerper offers rich feasts of French history. Paris quartiers, cuisine, the Seine, personalities, museums, discoveries, excursions. It’s a fat and juicy book, perfect to read before taking a trip. I also love the Kerper books on Istanbul and on Tuscany and Umbria.


5. I’ve been following the artist LUCIAN FREUD for years, and have every book on this vivid artist. Recently, I acquired, from Hatchard’s in London, a signed copy of ‘Breakfast with Lucian: The Astounding Life and Outrageous Times of Britains’s Great Modern Painter’ by Geordie Greig. I can’t wait to receive it. It’s en route, said my friend Mark at Hatchard’s.







A Book Story

Memories of my early obsession with books, traveling books, first editions, and Colette, Edith Wharton, Gide, and Jack Kerouac in my living room.

While preparing this blog post on my favorite new design books, my memory floated back to a time when I was living in Sydney ( design editor for Vogue Living).

I love the look and touch and smell and design of great books—and over my life, rare and out-of-print books, piles of books, stacks of books, bookshelves a-jumble with every book I love—have been a constant.

I once… I had been living in Sydney for some time, and left in rather a hurry. I asked my dear friend Warren Scott to take care of my books. Weeks and months later I turned up in London—and had to have the books (which included first editions of ‘On the Road’ and ‘Big Sur’ and oh, goodness, many precious books. There were collections of Gerard Manley Hopkins and C.P. Cavafy poems I’d been awarded as prizes at high school, along with Thomas Mann, Wharton, Colette, everything by Lesley Blanch, Salinger and anthologies of French poetry (high school prizes). Photography. Magnum. Beaton.

I sent Warren some money, he loaded the books into a huge trunk, drove them to a pier in Woolloomooloo, and sent them by merchant ship to London.

It was a Compagnie Génerale Maritime ship whose itinerary included Nouvelle Caledonie, the island of Flores (close to Bali) and Sri Lanka, and then through the Suez Canal, Malta, Lisbon, and finally to Southampton. Took three months.

I worried that the ship would sink, that big hungry bugs from Colombo would get into my books, or that the captain might lose my precious cargo.

Months later, I was working at The Times in London (when that paper was the best) and I got a notice to come and pick up the books. There was the metal trunk, my name on it. I found a man with a truck, and soon enough my books were on shelves at my apartment in Ennismore Gardens, London. Gerard Manley Hopkins and Lesley Blanch with Jane Digby and Aimée Dubucq are such good company.

I still have every book.

They have traveled far—and now Jack and Thomas and Franny and Zooey and Tadzio and Sal Paradise live in a brightly lit apartment overlooking the bay in San Francisco. Books do make a room. Books do make a life.



CREDITS, B
OOKS AND COMMENTS:

All images used with specific and express permission of the publishers of each book. 

I always propose and recommend that avid readers purchase their books at local independent bookstores like Browser Books in San Francisco — send the owner, my friend Fred, a message at browserbookstore@aol.com.

Green Apple Books in San Francisco is a rambling, rambunctious, wonderland of a bookstore—where you can find rare art books, travel volumes, used books of wondrous variety, and sale books, photo books, and rooms upstairs for garden books, royal history, Europe, architecture, film, economics. Worth a trip to Clement Street, definitely.

In Paris, you must go every day to Gallignani on rue de Rivoli, and to La Hune, rue Bonaparte, or Lagerfeld’s shop at 7 rue de Lille, with the newest and latest fine art and photography books (and all of the above often have my books…which is lovely for me).

There’s the Rizzoli book shop on 57th Street in New York (a library, really…where you can browse and read and scope for hours).

So many great bookshops and salons, like Leadapron in LA (www.leadapron.net) who sells rare and specialized art books.

I want you all to support small privately owned bookshops—which offer their own point of view, their unique selections, and always books by new authors, small pres publishers, and less-know writers, new ideas, original concepts.

Thank you,
DIANE


6 comments:

The Swan said...


From your written words to God's Eyes...or whichever higher power rules this Universe of Energy! You've inspired MANY lives with your EYE, honed by Beauty, polished by Time and brilliant as a Diamond. Kudos in exposing the plight of the vanishing dwellings of OUR Dear Friends - The Local Bookseller!

Parisbreakfasts said...

Will there ever be another DV?
The biggest mistake of my life was to turn down the call to be an assistant/goffer to HRH DV...

peggybraswell said...

must have that Vreeland book + i am off to buy the book + great post. xxpeggybraswelldesign.com

Beth Scanlon said...

Dear Diane,
As a fellow Fermor-ophile, I was delighted by a travel story for a book collection. And then, when the books departed from Woolloomooloo in a merchant ship my mind said, "Kipling too, amazing"! Thank you for your generosity in The Style Saloniste.

A Super Dilettante said...

My dear Diane,

Hello. I'd like to say how much I am inspired by this beautiful post. I've always been very lucky to follow your recommendation especially I start to browse for Christmas shopping very early. Since I have a lot of friends who love reading (like you), I appreciate your suggestion as I know I can rely on your idiosyncratic choice in books.

I would definitely look into "AERO: Beginning to Now by Thomas O’Brien" and "Breakfast with Lucian Freud".

I also love reading the story about your books. I absolutely agree with you when you say "Books do make a room. Books do make a life."

Gerard Manley Hopkins - I absolutely adore his poetry ("Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend...Send my roots rain" is one of my all time favourites).

Lesley Blanch - Alas, I only have one book by her on my shelf. It's the biography she wrote: "Pierre Loti: Travels with the Legendary Romantic". I greatly admire her travel writing. It makes me smile when I read one of her interviews in which she said that one book that she must have whenever she travelled is the memoirs of Russian writer, Alexander Herzen's "My Past and Thoughts", translated by Constance Garnett. Herzen was one of the greatest Russian writers who is very much underrated these days, sadly.

The Times - I do miss the highbrow period when the Times was the broadsheet newspaper. The critical literary analysis and the book reviews in those days were very much in depth and very scholarly. Those were the days....

Wishing you the best possible week, Diane and thank you once again for sharing your fascinating reading list.

Best wishes, G.

A Super Dilettante said...

My dear Diane,

Hello. I'd like to say how much I am inspired by this beautiful post. I've always been very lucky to follow your recommendation especially I start to browse for Christmas shopping very early. Since I have a lot of friends who love reading (like you), I appreciate your suggestion as I know I can rely on your idiosyncratic choice in books.

I would definitely look into "AERO: Beginning to Now by Thomas O’Brien" and "Breakfast with Lucian Freud".

I also love reading the story about your books. I absolutely agree with you when you say "Books do make a room. Books do make a life."

Gerard Manley Hopkins - I absolutely adore his poetry ("Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend...Send my roots rain" is one of my all time favourites).

Lesley Blanch - Alas, I only have one book by her on my shelf. It's the biography she wrote: "Pierre Loti: Travels with the Legendary Romantic". I greatly admire her travel writing. It makes me smile when I read one of her interviews in which she said that one book that she must have whenever she travelled is the memoirs of Russian writer, Alexander Herzen's "My Past and Thoughts", translated by Constance Garnett. Herzen was one of the greatest Russian writers who is very much underrated these days, sadly.

The Times - I do miss the highbrow period when the Times was the broadsheet newspaper. The critical literary analysis and the book reviews in those days were very much in depth and very scholarly. Those were the days....

Wishing you the best possible week, Diane and thank you once again for sharing your fascinating reading list.

Best wishes, G.