Michael Maharam

Writer; Executive / Product Design / United States / Maharam

Michael Maharam’s Book List

If you really want to read about theory in the applied arts, Panofsky or Rudofsky will do.

If you want to read and look at pictures, it’s the Vision + Value series by György Kepes.

If you just want to look at pictures (like the rest of us) that tell the story, here’s my very short list that could have included many other titles. Have no shame—in my view, these books embody the best of composition, form, material, technique, utility, fashion, and, most of all, style.

And scattered among them are a few classics in case you need a change of scenery.

22 books
Giovanni Verga

The realism before neo-realism, though charmingly so.

Gert Bekaert

Elemental style and a career cut short.

Hans Brockhage
Reinhold Lindner
Foreword by Alberto Alessi

A specialist.

Donald Judd
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen

Art or design or design or art—is there really a difference?

Charles Baudelaire

The very best and worst of the French being French.

François Burkhardt Editor
Inez Franksen Editor

The Dürer of modern industrial design.

Marco Ferreri Editor

The splendor of variation.

Georg Gerster

True religion.

Jens Bernsen

A man with a beautiful imagination.

Mateo Kries
Alexander von Vegesack

Genius unrealized.

François Burkhardt
Juli Cappella
Francesca Picchi

Humor infused with intellect will never go out of style.

Edwin A. Abbott

The inspiration of Huxley, Orwell, and Welles.

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann at his lighthearted best—truly!

Toos van Kooten

A master of composition and restraint.

Brigitte Felderer

A fashionable lesson in the value of the moment and the nature of obsolescence.

Gaspare Barbiellini Amidei
Aldo Lorenzi

Classicism meets utility in traditional materials at the luxury shop Lorenzi, on Milan’s Via Montenapoleone.

François Cali
Photographs by Lucien Hervé

The rudiments of form.

Makoto Suzuki
Christian Norberg-Shultz
Yukio Futagawa

Perfect beauty in joinery.

Torbjörn Lenskog

The beauty of anonymous design.

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