BOOKS
A celebration of furniture designer Grant Featherston, a look at London’s emerging skyline and Ashley Hicks shares his love of details
IN THE ROUGH: RAW INTERIORS& RUGGED MAKERS by IRIS DE FEIJTER AND IRENE SCHAMPAERT ( Peribo, $80)
Lifestyle journalist De Feijter and design blogger Schampaert explore the passion for imperfection — think patinaed surfaces, weathered plaster, raw woodwork, rusty metals and discarded materials — as exemplified by the creators who live it. Brazilian architect Débora Lima, Danish designer Niels Strøyer Christophersen and Amsterdam-based duo Formafantasma are among the artisans who have thrown open the doors of their artfully rugged abodes to share their insights and inspirations.
THE RUMPUS ROOM (timross.com.au, $36) by TIM ROSS
“This was the era of being able to do anything yourself, as long as you had a spirit level, a string line and the ability to call out to your next door neighbour when you were trapped under a toppled tank stand.” So begins broadcaster Tim Ross’s nostalgic journey back to 1960s Australia’s suburban spread in this affectionately irreverent collection of short stories celebrating our architecturural quirks.
NEW ARCHITECTURE LONDON ( Peribo, $70) photography by AGNESE SANVITO AND RICHARD SCHULMAN
London’s skyline has been transformed by an unprecedented vertical growth this century, introducing garish towers like ‘The Cheesegrater’ alongside innovative structures reinventing the capital’s architectural language, such as Zaha Hadid’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery and Herzog & de Meuron’s Tate Modern Switch House. With an introduction by architecture and design expert Edwin Heathcote providing thoughtful social and historic context, this rich volume showcases the dramatic and often brazen juxtaposition of old and new.
DE TAI L S by ASHLEY HICKS ( Idea, $78)
The devil is in the details but so is the divine, as Hicks duly illustrates in this luxurious book filled with annotated images — most taken by the London designer, and many on his phone — that focus on the small but significant decorative features inside vast historic homes and institutions that have inspired his own interiors. The leaded glass in Somerset’s Montacute House; the crowned ‘L’s in the colonnade created for Louis XVIII at The Louvre… no accent is too trivial to escape Hicks’s discerning eye.
FEATHERS TON by GEOFF ISAAC ( Thames & Hudson, $70)
Author Isaac, a lifelong collector of Grant Featherston chairs, was astonished to discover that no books about the pioneering Australian furniture designer existed, so he decided to change that. With access to exclusive archived material; the blessings of Featherston’s wife and creative collaborator, Mary; and backing from a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, he has produced this comprehensive and strikingly illustrated monograph celebrating Featherston’s groundbreaking achievements and underrated genius.