Customer Reviews

Decorative Arts 1900s & 1910s (Varia)

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The remark that this book "traces this aesthetic revolution..and is a compleling guide through the founding years of Modernism" rings false after even a cursery examination. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the great architectural geniuses of the period, is represented by a chair. Grueby Faience is given a reproduction, but Greene & Greene and Bernard Maybeck are not mentioned. Several of Otto Wagner's students are repesented, but he does not appear. Gaudi and Horta cannot be found. Josef Hoffmann, the great genius of Secessionism, is poorly represented and two of his most famous chairs are attributed to Kammerer. Tiffany appears to be a minor window designer. Etc. One suspects that the authors saved photos in a shoebox and threw this series together. This is a great idea that is unfortunately very slovenly assembled and ultimately serves to distort and flatten this inventive and extravegent period of architecture and art. Taschen and his authors should be ashamed of this endeavor.

TASCHEN's Decorative Art series spans the 20th century through the 1970s and carefully reproduces the best of Studio Magazine's Decorative Art yearbooks. Published annually from 1906 until 1980, the yearbook was dedicated to the latest currents in architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, metalware, and ceramics, and remained on the cutting edge throughout its nearly eight-decade run. Since going out of print, the now hard-to-find yearbooks have been highly prized by collectors and dealers. Preserving the yearbooks' original page layouts, TASCHEN's Decorative Art books bring you an authentic experience of each decade's design trends and styles. The now complete six-volume set is an essential addition to the comprehensive design library and the devoted collector will want them all.

Decorative Art 1900 ~ 1910s - This volume highlights the aesthetic transition from the Victorian era to the modern age at a time when `modern' was a genuinely new concept. Eschewing designs that displayed excessive ornamentation, this era of Decorative Art yearbooks showcased the work of progressive designers like Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Charles Voysey, Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte.