Books

Edited by Stanley Abercrombie -- Interior Design, 4/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Tord Boontje

by Martina Margetts

New York: Rizzoli International Publications, $75

224 pages, 300 illustrations

Tord Boontje's most characteristic designs are transitory installations. At London's Victoria and Albert Museum, he constructed a Christmas tree of Swarovski crystals, stainless steel, and reflective glass in 2003; two years later at New York's Moss gallery, he offered an exhibition of prototypes and unique fairy-tale objects. In virtually every case, he manipulates an otherwise mundane color and materials palette to evoke the ethereal: light and shadow, snowflakes and icicles, foliage, and flowers, flowers, flowers.

Some of his achievements are more concrete. After studying industrial design at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands and the Royal College of Art in London, he worked in Milan under a number of free spirits, Alessandro Mendini and Ettore Sottsass among them. Boontje's mediums include paper, fabric, recycled glass, copper, nails, and, in his Rough-and-Ready furniture, wood strips that appear casually glued together. From such items, he has fashioned lamps for Artecnica, glassware for Dartington Crystal, tableware for Authentics, ceramic tiles for Bardelli, fabrics for Kvadrat, and, recently, products for Target.

All this has been remarkably well captured in book form. A design by Graphic Thought Facility uses atmospheric photographs staged by Boontje—many in forests around his studio in the southern French village of Bourg-Argental—and taken by Annabel Elston and Angela Moore. The volume also incorporates sketches and employs adventurous bookmaking techniques such as perforations in patterns and a transparent mesh laminated over the cover. In other words, an exceptional and highly idiosyncratic talent is presented in an unusually sympathetic format.

New York in Store

by Valérie Weill and Philippe Chancel

New York: Thames & Hudson, $20

224 pages, 200 color illustrations

Here's a strange one: A nine-page preface by New York novelist and poet Harry Matthews is a rambling stream of semiconsciousness that this reader admits to finding utterly impenetrable. Otherwise, there's not a word of text from cover to cover. Fine. What we have instead is delightful and informative: 100 spreads, each showing a store's business card and a full-page image of the interior. We go from ABC Dry Cleaners to Zabar's, with stops along the way at Henri Bendel, Katz's deli, and Steinway & Sons Hall. While this is no one's idea of the best retail design in New York, the refreshing ensemble displays the genre's—and the city's—magnificent diversity.

Poul Kjærholm Furniture Architect

by Michael Sheridan

Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, distributed by DAP, $50

224 pages, 360 illustrations (200 color)

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, a perfect small museum nestled in a suburb of Copenhagen, mounted an exhibition on furniture by Poul Kjærholm last year. The show is now on view, through August 5, at the Vendsyssel Museum of Art in Northern Jutland, the region where Kjærholm was raised and buried. Published as the catalog for the exhibition, this long-overdue monograph is a welcome addition to the literature.

The masterful Kjærholm worked for Jørn Utzon as well as Hans Wegner, and the influence of both Arne Jacobsen and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also makes itself evident. Fritz Hansen was manufacturing Kjærholm's designs as early as 1952; Herman Miller and ICF brought his chairs, tables, and other furniture to the U.S. starting in 1973. Along the way, he found time to teach at several Danish colleges of architecture and design—and to win numerous awards from international furniture fairs.

What They're Reading. . .

Ron Pompei

Principal of Pompei AD

A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets

by Christopher Alexander

New York: Oxford University Press, $150

352 pages, 285 illustrations (90 color)

In this age of information, we're constantly thinking of the most innovative, fluid ways to connect disparate elements. It turns out that weavers were doing the exact same thing as early as the seventh century, at least according to Christopher Alexander's classic, part tour of the author's peerless collection of early Turkish carpets, part meditation on the structure of textile as a metaphor for communication. "Information streams come together to make networks," Ron Pompei explains. Similarly, he continues, the threads of a carpet are woven together to function ultimately as chronicles of the zeitgeist. "It's a beautiful inspiration for what we're trying to weave together—commerce, culture, and community," says the designer, who's known for his retail spaces for Anthropologie and Té Casan footwear. —Deborah Wilk