Reading list

reviewed by Stanley Abercrombie -- Interior Design, 11/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Textiles From Mexico

By Chloë Sayer

Seattle: University of Washington Press, $20 paperbound

88 pages, 100 color illustrations, map

Silk in Africa

By Chris Spring and Julie Hudson

Seattle: University of Washington Press, $20 paperbound

88 pages, 100 color illustrations, map

What delights these little books are! With Paul Welti's extraordinarily spirited design, finely detailed photography by Mike Rowe, a modest price, brief but informative text, and striking content, each vividly conveys the essence of the subject at hand. Both titles are recent additions to the University of Washington's Fabric Folios series. (Previous volumes covered printed and dyed African textiles, Indian and Pakistani embroidery, Guatemalan textiles, and Miao textiles from China.) All lovers of fabric techniques and design should hope that the series goes on and on.

David Adler, Architect: The Elements of Style

Edited by Martha Thorne

New Haven: Yale University Press and the Art Institute of Chicago, $60

224 pages, 220 illustrations (95 color)

Chicago architect David Adler was an important eclectic residential designer of the early 20th century, his houses praised here in Robert A.M. Stern's foreword for the "sophistication of the ensemble, the ingenuity of the arrangements of the plan, and the combination of high style and informality." After enthusiasts drove the price of Richard Pratt's 1970 cult classic, David Adler, into the hundreds of dollars, Stephen M. Salny published The Country Houses of David Adler in 2001, bringing his work a wider audience. Now he receives more well-deserved notice in a book accompanying an Art Institute of Chicago exhibition of the same name, running December 7 through May 18.

Architectural-history professor Richard Guy Wilson begins with Adler's family history and training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Seventeen of his houses and a country club are beautifully shown, complete with plans. Of particular interest to designers is the chapter by Pauline C. Metcalf, author of Ogden Codman and the Decoration of Houses. Metcalf considers Adler's collaboration with his sister, the noted California interior designer Frances Elkins, giving the impression that it was Elkins's flair and cosmopolitan taste that pushed Adler's style beyond the usual limit of tradition. Together, they experimented with rich and novel materials such as leather walls, ebony flooring inlaid with the alloy Monel, stair railings of glass rods, and Russian wall coverings used as rugs. The two also worked with other exciting talents of the time, such as Eyre de Lanux, Adolphe Chanaux, and Jean-Michel Frank.

The Stones of Venice

By Lionello Puppi

New York: Vendome Press, distributed by Rizzoli International Publications through St. Martin's Press, $38

175 pages, 157 color illustrations

John Ruskin's 1853 Stones of Venice, famous for its elaborate descriptive passages, was a paean to Venetian Gothic architecture in general. A 2002 Stones of Venice, dominated by color photography, focuses specifically on the characterful stonework of that architecture. Most of art-history professor Lionello Puppi's examples are exteriors, but important interior views include the floor paving of Santa Maria della Salute and the mosaics of the Basilica of San Marco. It is one of life's great delights to read Ruskin's book while wandering around Venice. It would be almost as great a treat to read the 1853 version while thumbing through this attractive portfolio.

A Good House Is Never Done

By John Wheatman

York Beach, Maine: Conari Press, distributed by Publishers Group West, $26

152 pages, 94 color illustrations

John Wheatman is not only a fine interior designer. He has also, for upward of 35 years, operated a San Francisco firm that comprises a stable of other fine interior designers. Meditations on Design: Reinventing Your Home With Style and Simplicity, the 2000 book on the projects of John Wheatman and Associates, has recently been reissued in paperback and is now joined by another. As its title suggests, Wheatman sees interior design as an "ongoing engagement" and believes that "change keeps the eye awake." The interiors shown to support this view, while all very handsome, are convincingly relaxed and non-formulaic—one can imagine them as compositions subject to revisions. Standouts by members of Wheatman's firm are a home office by Wheatman himself, country-house interiors by Peter Gilliam, outdoor furniture by Gilliam for Summit, a skylit kitchen and family room by Helen R. Craddick, a black-walled bedroom by Siobhàn Brennan, and an expansive concrete-floored living area and kitchen by Wheatman and Gilliam.