Review by Choice Review
Salisbury (Anglia Ruskin Univ., UK) and Styles (Univ. of Cambridge, UK) have created a volume that is both informative and inspiring. The information on illustrators and their respective works offered here will be a valuable acquisitions resource for librarians who are serious about collecting children's books. The scope of the featured works is international. Chapters range from "A Brief History of the Picturebook" to "The Children's Publishing Industry." Arranged chronologically, the narrative moves from the application of traditional art form as illustration to the modern use of digital art. Excellent examples of books and illustrators are provided, with the bulk covering the period from the 1930s to the present day. On another level, this work is useful as art appreciation in and of itself, providing readers with an understanding of the illustrators' perspectives. This knowledge moves readers beyond the usual relationship to the text and its accompanying imagery. Perhaps illustrator Kow Fong Lee's perspective, so aptly stated here, expresses the essence of this work: "I believe the appreciation of visual art is universal." This work makes it even more so. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. A. Salter Oglethorpe University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
FURNITURE manufacturers have long been Medicis of design. The company now known as Knoll Inc. was one of the great patrons of midcentury modern designers, including Herbert Matter, Alvin Lustig, Ladislav Sutnar, Massimo Vignelli, Alexander Girard, Eero Saarinen, Robert Venturi and a pantheon of so many past and present others that they could fill the Pantheon. The money that went into graphic, advertising, exhibition, textile and product design was well spent: it helped maintain a legacy that continues to contribute to the visual and material culture. Hans Knoll (1914-55), a German immigrant, founded his small New York company in 1940. Two years later he met Florence Schust (born in 1917), an American architect who had studied with Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe. She introduced an experimental agenda, expanded the company into interior and textile design for contemporary corporate use, and assembled the impressive roster of luminary designers. In 1946 she also married Hans Knoll, initiating one of the legendary design and business partnerships. Various monographs and collectors' guides about Knoll's wares have been published, but most resemble high-end product catalogs. KNOLL TEXTILES, 1945-2010 (Yale University, $75) is indeed a catalog of the Bard Graduate Center's "Knoll Textiles" project, but it is also a stunning, brick-size compilation of little-known and rarely seen materials - fabric swatches, photos, ads and brochures - boisterously presented by the Dutch book designer Irma Boom (known for producing brick-size books) and printed in full color on uncoated paper. "Until now," the editor, Earl Martin, writes in the introduction, "only a small number of publications have touched upon aspects of Knoll textile production or have profiled a few of its textile designers," Usually, textiles are included in broader design histories. But in the last decade, textile design has been given a higher profile, notably in galleries and museums like Bard, the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Arts and Design. Textile designers like Florence Knoll (who became Florence Knoll Bassett in 1958) have also been increasingly recognized by art historians and critics. Florence Knoll was integral in starting a separate textile division in 1947, which by the early '50s was known as Knoll Textiles and "almost immediately became a leading purveyor of textiles appropriate for modern interiors," Martin writes. Other companies followed her lead by offering special services to architects and interior designers. With this clientele it is no surprise that Knoll's visual promotion was as arrestingly innovative as it was. In addition to the impressive promotion, branding and product design, a large number of Knoll's designers were women, including the prolific Eszter Haraszty, Gunta Stadler-Stölzl, Suzanne Huguenln, Antoinette Lackner Prestini and Anni Albers, among others. And what a distinct range of materials and pattern varieties they introduced. This book's design is mesmerizing. Many books documenting textiles are particularly flat, yet Boom's choice of scale, crop and dimension makes the 2-D reproductions seem as though they were glued onto the page. The numerous small visual details give this book a kinetic air rather than a static presence. The text, however, requires sustained interest in Knoll's elaborate history. Yet it well serves Bard's documentary mission and the needs of scholars. Graphically, "Knoll Textiles" bridges the divide between scholarship and enjoyment. The book is so rich with photographs, like the alluringly surreal shot of the Knoll showroom in 1948 (by Robert Damora), that it's hard not to let one's mind drift off into the Knoll world. Another textile book that tugs at my heartstrings, Michael Maharam's MAHARAM AGENDA (Lars Müller, $65), is decidedly more pristine in terms of the graphic design, by A4 Studio, but no less enticing - perhaps more so. In fact, the elegant gray type, printed on semi-glossy pages, better frames the crisply photographed examples of textiles than does the heavy black sans-serif typeface in the Knoll book. The photos are shot and lighted in such a tactile way you will want to caress each piece of fabric. Unlike Knoll, the Maharam company has always been exclusively engaged in the production of fabrics and upholstery, not furniture or interiors. The business began in 1902, when Michael Maharam's great-grandfather Louis, a Russian immigrant, started selling remnants from a pushcart on the Lower East Side. Eventually, the Maharam Fabric Corporation supplied Broadway with "an amusing array of costume patterns" (some of which are shown in the book). Throughout the '50s and into the '70s Maharam invested itself more in commercial trade. And in 1997 Michael and his brother Stephen took over the company. "We had no particular agenda apart from the furious desire to prove oneself," the brothers note in their introduction. The way to do this was to bring textile design into the 21st century with collections that routinely drew from past masters, including the Wiener Werkstätte, Anni Albers, Charles and Ray Eames, and George Nelson and Irving Harper. Maharam also regularly commissions collaborations with the likes of Hella Jongerius, Maira Kalman, Luisa Cevese and Bruce Mau. And the new technological world has beckoned too, resulting in projects that are nourished and produced through digital means. As with the Knoll book, the text here probably offers more inside details than even the most devoted design fan would want. But that does not interfere with the fundamental content: the visuals. Anyone who has ever appreciated Maharam's workmanship will savor this outstanding eyeful while marveling at the range of functional and experimental designs, in that span from classic modern to midcentury modern to postmodern. There are scores of irresistible patterns, and a few shockers too. A piece by Gio Ponti from the '30s is described this way: "We were perversely and momentarily attracted to a Ponti textile that incorporated the Fascist flag of Italy, and to the notion of exploring the dark side of modern history through weaving." "Maharam Agenda" is as much a history of design as it is a corporate promotion. Michael Maharam is so committed to exposing design talents through textiles that each project addressed in the book feels more like an experiment than a commercial product. It is that marriage of passion, scholarship and commerce that makes this book so engaging. Did I mention that the cover's lettering and decoration are both embroidered? Almost any repeating pattern can be adapted for textile design. So the ambitious textile entrepreneur might want to take note of THE WORLD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CALLIGRAPHY: The Ultimate Compendium on the Art of Fine Writing (Sterling, $35), edited by Christopher Calderhead and Holly Cohen. It is an excellent resource. Of course, textile design is not the reason this book was conceived. However, the calligraphic samples included are as appealing for their graceful forms as they are for what the words mean and how they are composed. Calligraphy, or the art of beautiful writing, shares characteristics with textile design. As the illustrations from Hebrew, Arabic, Indic, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Armenian script traditions reveal, letter forms can be just as abstract as a Franz Kline brush stroke. If one does not know the respective alphabets, they can be appreciated only as design. Look how Yoo Sung Lee photographically "demonstrates the use of the brush by writing two Korean characters." The technique is more deliberate than an abstract painting, yet the result is very similar. Nonetheless, I admit I have not been a fan of calligraphy as opposed to hand lettering, which is rough and free, like doodling; calligraphy is much fussier and more precise. But after spending time with Calderhead and Cohen's exhaustive survey, in which they expertly walk the reader through a broad swath of calligraphic approaches, I appreciate the skill and talent necessary to make the writing as beautiful as it must be to be considered calligraphy. In addition to illustrations of calligraphy in situ, the authors provide how-to charts, showing the proper pen or brush-stroke directions. Discussion of the right tools and techniques is essential. There is more to writing in tongues than meets the eye, and the authors explain the origins and nuances of writing in, say, Indic scripts or Cyrillic majuscules and minuscules in a voice that is thoroughly accessible and enjoyable. Some of my favorite children's book illustrators are also letter drawers. They are not calligraphers, per se, but rather illustrators who roughly or precisely draw letters and words as an essential part of their pictorial storytelling. In CHILDREN'S PICTUREBOOKS: The Art of Visual Storytelllng (Laurence King, paper, $35), by Martin Salisbury with Morag Styles, a survey of this venerable popular art form, hand lettering and more conventional picture-and-type methods are showcased. But for me, the most delightful books - like Marta Altés's "No!" and Claudia Boldt's "Stargazers, Skyscrapers and Extraordinary Sausages" - are those that seamlessly wed the illustrations to the text through drawn letters. And I particularly like the witty way Franciszka Themerson's byline, on the cover of "My First Nursery Book," is lettered in a stylized script with a tiny doodle of the author writing her name with a crow-quill pen. Still, as in the children's book industry itself, a majority of the examples in "Children's Picturebooks" are not hand lettered, lest kids be unable to read them, but produced with image and type. In some rare cases, like Ajubel's "Robinson Crusoe: A Wordless Book," there are no words at all. But "Children's Picturebooks" is not just about hand-lettered or typeset books. It is a tutorial on what it means to be a children's book author and illustrator - what the rules are, when to break them, what is appropriate for children (and at what ages), and what is inappropriate at all ages. Also, how to address violence, love and sex, death and sadness. And in the tradition of message-driven books, there is even a section called "Man's Inhumanity to Man." Various books are used as case studies. In a section on "stylistic suitability," the idea of a personal voice is analyzed. In the chapter "Print and Process: The Shock of the Old," vintage processes like relief printing and etching are examined for how they hold up in the digital era. Salisbury, a professor of illustration at Anglia Ruskin University in England, and Styles, a professor of children's literature at the University of Cambridge, provide the aspiring children's book illustrator with answers to some important practical and theoretical questions. In other words, this book is meant mostly for students - of any age. From the late 1940s, Knoll showrooms have followed a distinctly modern approach to interior design and planning - known as "the Knoll look" - established by Florence Knoll. From top: Dot Pattern sketches by Charles and Ray Eames, from "Maharam Agenda," and "My First Nursery Book," by Franciszka Themerson, from "Children's Picturebooks."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 26, 2012]
Review by Library Journal Review
Salisbury (illustration, Anglia Ruskin Univ., UK) and Styles (children's literature, Univ. of Cambridge, UK) discuss all aspects of both the theory and the practice of the hybrid art form of picture books-e.g., the history of picture books, visual literacy, and the children's publishing industry. Professional case studies highlight individual works and explain particular techniques in detail. Essential for a book about picture books, this guide contains a wealth of picture book covers, page spreads, and initial sketches covering a very wide range of styles. -VERDICT This book will serve as a thorough introduction to picture books for art students, education students, graphic designers, and parents. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
