Dominique Browning
Books Every Interior Designer Should Read
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You will never forget the description of the gem-encrusted tortoise.
This book fascinates because Vervoordt is such an omnivore; his tastes are huge, and eclectic, and he has an outsized ego to match. But sometimes that’s what it takes. It is amazing—and entertaining—to follow the evolution of what can only be called a modernist baroque style.
Baldwin describes the apartment he designed for Cole Porter in the Waldorf Towers as the most outstanding of his accomplishments. In the middle of the 20th century, Baldwin championed an American sensibility in decoration. The lessons he shares—in chapters such as “How to be an expert with pattern” and “What to make of a wall”—are as relevant today as they were then.
A delicious memoir, disguised as a design book, which chronicles the lifestyles of mid-century High Wasp society. It contains a rather astonishing chapter on two visits with Jackie Kennedy. The first took place a week before President John F. Kennedy's fateful trip to Dallas; the other three weeks after he was assassinated. Baldwin was asked to decorate a house for Mrs. Kennedy and her children that she had quickly purchased in Washington. One doesn't stop to think about how difficult it must have been for the newly widowed First Lady, her life shattered, to have had to suddenly move house, and give her small children a new, warm, and secure sense of home. Baldwin's descriptions are sensitive and fascinating.
I happen to love all of Hicks’s books: On Decoration, On Living with Taste, and On Bathrooms. But the fabric book, written in 1971, pushes the envelope—as he did with his bold, idiosyncratic decorating style—and remains a useful eye-opener today.
First published in 1897, as a reaction to the fussy, ornate Victorian style, this book describes a classical tradition in decorating and architecture. It makes an eloquent plea for a return to better principles of design—and expresses those simply and elegantly.
Elsie de Wolfe, also known as Lady Mendl, invented interior decoration as a profession. She championed the use of chintz, unusual color combinations, and painted and stenciled furniture. She was a colorful, eccentric character, an American actress who became a prominent socialite. She was the author of an influential book in 1913, The House in Good Taste.
This lovely, intimate memoir written in 1965 by the wife of composer Richard Rodgers describes the house in Connecticut she designed with the help of a young architect. It gives a rare glimpse into the way an engaged client enters into the design process.
Nichols is generally thought of as a garden writer, but his descriptions of renovating his Georgian manor house are equally wonderful. He has a dry, acerbic wit, but one that is overlain with a rich and emotional sensuality. Nichols captures what it means to love and rescue a house. You’ll laugh so hard that I defy you not to read the two other books in this trilogy.
John Saladino, a graduate of the Yale School of Art and Architecture, is a highly respected contemporary designer, who also happens to be unusually articulate. His book is full of information about how to work with color, scale, and light.
We think of Hollywood glamour as quintessentially American, but it actually grew out of the style of an English designer credited with designing the first all-white room. She worked in New York, Chicago, and Palm Beach; many of the techniques she employed are still popular today. Maugham was a contemporary of Elsie de Wolfe’s, and though their tastes differed, each left a profound impression on the history of interior design.
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Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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