The DesignAddict Shop: Books, magazines and DVD on modern and post-modern design, architecture and contemporary art

Switzerland

American Modern, 1925-1940: Design for a New Age
by Stewart J. Johnson (Author) / Harry N. Abrams (Editor)

In the years between the world wars, a pioneer group of designers, architects, and artists-including Norman Bel Geddes, Donald Deskey, Paul Frankl, Raymond Loewy, Gilbert Rohde, Eliel Saarinen, Walter Dorwin Teague, and Russel Wright-forged a new design aesthetic that was unmistakably American and undeniably modern.

This book, the companion volume to an exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts and opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, showcases more than 125 of the most influential works by these and other legendary designers. From chairs, dinnerware, and textiles to lamps, cocktail sets, and clocks, these strikingly innovative objects made stylish modern design accessible to a broad audience-and are much sought after by collectors today.

The introductory essay ranges from the role of museums and department stores in promoting modern design to the obsession with streamlining to the origins of planned obsolescence. This extraordinary book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in American design.

170 illustrations, 140 in full color, 9 3/4 x 9 3/4"

J. STEWART JOHNSON, the consultant for design and architecture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Modern Art, has curated exhibitions on Alvar Aalto, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Marcel Breuer, among many others.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkMay 15, 200 0-Jan. 2001

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OurPrice: $35.10

United States

Swiss Design 2004
by Bundesamt für Kultur (Editor) / Lars Müller Publishers (Editor)

Presented here by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture are the 20 winners of this year's national design competition and their prize-winning works, along with illustrations and a descriptive essay by the jury. Swiss Design 2004: Innovation focuses on innovative aspects of single works by these young designers within a framework of individual interviews. These interviews explore the sometimes complex subject of innovation through specific questions from the points of view of Industrial Design, Jewellery, Graphics/Typography, and Design Theory.

Essays by Paul Elliman, Renate Menzi, Joachim Huber and Sibylle Omlin.

Paperback, 7.75 x 11 in./216 pgs / 80 color.

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OurPrice: $31.50

United States

Designing Modern America: Broadway to Main Street
by Christopher Innes (Author) / Yale University Press (Editor)

From the 1920s through the 1950s, two individuals, Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes, did more, by far, to create the image of ?America? and make it synonymous with modernity than any of their contemporaries. Urban and Bel Geddes were leading Broadway stage designers and directors who turned their prodigious talents to other projects, becoming mavericks first in industrial design and then in commercial design, fashion, architecture, and more. The two men gave shape to the most quintessential symbols of the modern American lifestyle, including movies, cars, department stores, and nightclubs, along with private homes, kitchens, stoves, fridges, magazines, and numerous household furnishings.

Illustrated with more than 130 photographs of their influential designs, this book tells the engrossing story of Urban and Bel Geddes. Christopher Innes shows how these two men with a background in theater lent dramatic flair to everything they designed and how this theatricality gave the distinctive modernity they created such wide appeal. If the American lifestyle has been much imitated across the globe over the past fifty years, says Innes, it is due in large measure to the designs of Urban and Bel Geddes. Together they were responsible for creating what has been called the ?Golden Age? of American culture.

United States

Simply Droog
by Droog Design (Author) / Droog (Editor)

Droog's debut and subsequent immense success at the 1993 International Furniture Fair in Milan proved that simplicity does not have to be boring. The number of products in the Droog collection has now grown to over 150. With a new 700 sq. metre headquarters in Amsterdam within their sights, a review of the last 10 years' exhibitions, ideas, and designers is well timed. Informative, illustrative and a complete documentation of their entire range. Includes a Droog Design biography and articles.

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OurPrice: $21.56

United States

California Design: The Legacy of West Coast Craft and Style
by Suzanne Baizerman (Author) / Jo Lauria (Author) / Toni Greenbaum (Author) / Eudorah M. Moore (Foreword) / Donald Albrecht (Introduction) / Chronicle Books (Editor)

The furniture, jewelry, recreational objects, ceramics, fabric arts, and other designs that emerged from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s California would come to identify its outdoorsy, eccentric, sometimes entirely funky persona. And the best of these were exhibited, sometimes idolized, through a series of popular shows at the Pasadena Art Museum. California Design is a detailed retrospective of these exhibitions and the West Coast style they epitomized, replete with hundreds of innovative photographs showcasing the works in all their original glory. Signature works from Charles & Ray Eames, Tropi-Cal, Don Chadwick (co-creator of the Aeron chair), and many other designers and studios illustrate twenty years of style that was as diverse as it was pioneering.

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