Design

A book that accompanied the 1946 exhibit "If You Want To Build A House" exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art. The book highlights mid-century modern architects such as Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and Richard Neutra as well as Prairie School architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The book describes the concepts of modern architecture from the prospective of a potential home builder.

This beautifully illustrated and colorful book focuses on the work of the designers and architects who apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright at the Taliesin Fellowship in Scottsdale, Arizona from 1937-1950s. There are hundreds of photographs and drawings in this first edition book, many from the apprentices’ own archives and previously unpublished. The author interviewed and traced the careers of many former apprentices, including internationally known architects E.

As a former apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship program, Curtis Besinger provides a lively account of daily life in this community of architects established by Wright in Wisconsin and Arizona. While an apprenticeship with the Fellowship was unlike standard architectural training, it did entail some architectural tasks, such as drafting, designing, and overseeing projects, including the actual building of Taliesin West.

Constructions: buildings in Arizona is the accompanying catalogue to the one and only exhibition of Alfred Newman Beadle V’s architectural work, mounted by Arizona State University in 1993. Interestingly, due to persistent demand, Gnosis, Ltd. has published a second edition, generously illustrated with 31 black-and-white photos and 25 drawings that includes a new foreword by ASU Professor Emeritus and architectural historian Bernard Michael Boyle. The Cooper Hewitt edition is the original catalogue.

Taliesin is a relatively rare edition self-published in Scottsdale and signed by the author, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. In this book, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, the third wife of Frank Lloyd Wright, tells beautifully illustrated accounts of The Fellowship, The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, The Taliesin Associated Architects, and Taliesin West itself. There are many intimate color images of Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona that was completed in 1937.

Book artist and engineer Joe D'Ambrosio wrote, printed, illustrated, signed, and bound just 125 editions of this book. The first twenty-five copies of the printing have a deluxe binding and additions such as extra hand-coloring, metallic inks, and feathers. This edition is one of the rare twenty-five. The text of the tale is letterpress printed in four colors on two different colors of confetti paper.

The first of six colorful pop-ups in Creatures of the desert world depicts early morning in Arizona’ s Sonoran Desert as bobcats and birds around a large saguaro cactus dramatically lift off the page when the book is opened. The subsequent pages follow the vibrant and alive desert environment throughout the day into a full moonlit night when the night hunters, including bats and kit foxes, begin their search for food.

This volume on Western style encompasses everything from humble denim jeans to the fanciest rhinestone-covered cowboy costumes. Brimming with photos, it presents a history of the American West spanning its early days to the present, told through clothing. You’ll find a buckskin hunting shirt from the 1820s, Angora chaps worn by a Colorado cowboy in the 1920s, and a colorful gauze fiesta dress from the 1950s made by Thunderbird Fashions of Prescott, AZ.

A rare illustrated catalog detailing the curriculum, philosophy, and staff of the School of Design in Chicago –also known as The New Bauhaus.   The school was created by Hungarian born Bauhaus masters László Moholy-Nagy and Gregöry Kepes in 1937, both of whom had recently arrived in Chicago. Also included are several examples of photograms and innovative layouts by the aforementioned designers.  A copy of the catalog is currently on display at Moholy-Nagy exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.   

The popularity of the French fashion plate was revitalized in the early part of the 20th century by artists like Paul Iribe (1883-1935), working with fashion designers such as Paul Poiret. These illustrations were hand colored using the pochoir process, whereby stencils and metal plates are used allowing for colors to be built up according to the artist's vision. The fashion plate, in use for some time, was in essence an advertising tool—a piece of artwork used to create desire for the latest styles aimed at an audience of the fashionable and moneyed.