Mid-Century Modern Design: A Complete Sourcebook

This book has tons of photos and is great for identifying the names and designers of furniture pieces and styles you've probably seen but haven't known how to identify. A good reference. It has other stuff besides furniture, like textiles and classic houses and vases and radios, which was of secondary interest to me yet still interesting. It would be neat if they threw in a section on mid century modern clothing, if there is such a thing.

Should be a core part of your library if you are interested in MCM design and history

This is the paperback edition of the 2014 hardback. The essence of the book is ninety-five heavily illustrated biographies of the designers and artists from around the world who produced the feel and look of mid-century creativity. The seven chapters cover: Furniture (109 pages) Lighting (42) Glass and ceramics (58) Textiles (46) Industrial and product design (48) Graphics (55) Houses and interiors (123). This is a very comprehensive coverage of modernity though, in my view, with some slight idiosyncrasies: why does the rather narrowly defined Lighting get so many pages and the broad scope of Industrial design only forty-eight and not one Case Study House is featured in the Houses chapter.Each of the chapters has one or two essays with an overview of the subject with Furniture and Houses also looking at the collecting aspect. I thought these illustrated essays well worth reading especially Steven Heller's on 'Type, design and technology' and the author neatly sums up modernity with his six-page intro. There is also a useful thirty-three page illustrated A-Z at the back of the book with about three hundred entries of individuals and companies, looking through these I found it hard to think of someone who had been left out.Because the biographies are more or less standard detail, the sort of thing you can read in books by design historians Charlotte and Peter Fiell, it's the photos that made the pages come alive for me, there are over a thousand of them, all in color and mostly big on the page. Slightly annoying that several hundred are cutouts floating on the page without a slight drop shadow, some do have this shadow effect and it makes them look much more interesting. The Houses chapter, the longest in the book, is particularly fine with plenty of wonderful interiors, rather the opposite of many architectural books that tend to favor just an exterior shot of a house. You can look inside the book at Westread Book Reviews then click 2021 and April

Terrific book, anchors my little Mid Century Modern collection. Fascinating, beautiful layout and photos, comprehensive (type fonts; travel posters; fabrics; industrial design).

As a serious reference book on mid century design or an entertaining coffee table book this does the job nicely

La bibbia del design! Prezzo un pelo alto è tutto in inglese