Atlas of Furniture Design

It's a tome. It should be read from a lectern but rest assured this book fully lives up to the hype and five-star ratings. It is comprehensive, scholarly, and visually striking.I hemmed and hawed with the purchase because a $150 book seems a little bit extra. Clocking in at 1000+pp it's a bargain if you need to intellectualize a purchase like this. I found a used copy that was a little banged up to alleviate the price guilt.If you're interested in furniture design, history, or maybe kinesiology - I wouldn't wait until the price skyrockets should this book go out of print.

I am not an artist, designer, or "maker." As an academician outside the field of manufacture or design, but with an interest in objects and the human perceptions of them, I can say that this is by far the most complete volume of recent (19th through 21st) furniture design that I have seen. Accompanied by concise but pithy essays, the collection of artifacts in this encyclopedic work demonstrates how furniture and culture coexist. I spent about 2 straight hours wondrously devouring the form and content of this beautiful edition as soon as it arrived: beautiful photographs, wonderful descriptions and scholarly details abound.This is a different style and approach than Miller' book of Furniture: World Styles. It is not as expository or historical as Lucie-Smith's Furniture: A Concise History. It is not as witty as Morley's History of Furniture, but it is much more structured and focused than Hinchman's History of Furniture: A Global View.One physical treat of this book is the offset recessed pages for the essays, making them easy to find (almost like the tabs on your binder dividers), and the inclusion of fold-out charts and timelines to help visually organize the overlapping styles and cultural movements. The price is steep, but the 1000+ pages are worth every penny.

Definitely the best book on the subject. Photos in very high quality great temporal organization.

If you are a furniture design freak, this is the book. Major focus is on seating, which is the basis of the Vitra collection. In addition to information on individual objects, historical background is provided on a major artistic movements, as well as brief biographies of major designers. This is not a coffee table book, but a unique scholarly work with rich photographs of all objects discussed.

An amazingly complete survey of modern furniture design, presented in a beautiful and easy-to-navigate format. The latter is important, as the thing is just massive. The list on its spine counts off these incredible numbers:1,740 object, 2,852 images ...etc, which seems a little gimmicky, but no worries, this vast sea of scholarly content is pure quality.

I was bit worried because in my past experience of ordering books from Amazon, most of the books arrived with damaged covers, but this book arrived with excellent packaging in a sturdy box and I'm super pleased. Great book!