The World of Interiors

Christmas round-up chosen by Damian Thompson books

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All titles (but one) can be ordered for the prices indicated (plus £5.50 UK p&p) from the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747

In 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago a chunk
of the Blarney Stone a row of faux cottages and ‘Lads and lasses...
plying the needle loom wheel or carving tool’ would stereotype
Ireland as a backward rural nation for decades. Recently the Windy
City’s own Art Institute offered a corrective in the form of IRELAND:
CROSSROADS OF ART AND DESIGN 16 90-1840 [ 1 ] (eds William Laffan and
Christopher Monkhouse; Yale rrp £30 Wo I price £28.50). Weighing
such topics as landscape and tourism and Dublin as a centre of
commerce and culture the catalogue has reassembled over 300 far-
flung objects to stress the Emerald Isle’s cosmopolitanism.
In symbolising man’s dominion over nature gardens speak to
power. Perhaps that’s why the royal collections of horticultural art
are so rich encompassing Persian miniatures and Fabergé pansies
Dutch still lifes and silk floral fans. The catalogue to PAINTING PARADISE:
THE ART OF THE GARDEN [ 2 ] (by Vanessa Remington; Royal Collec-
tion rrp £45 Wo I price £40.50) may lack coherence so broad are
its themes; but it offers intriguing pointers to changing monarchical
tastes. William IV had a passion for Tudor woodcuts on grafting trees
and knot planting schemes while the late Queen Mother snapped
up Chelsea cauliflower tureens and other novelty crockery.
With shows in Paris and New York Swiss designer MATTIA BONETTI
[ 3 ] (2 vols; by Jacqueline du Pasquier and Jean Jacques Wattel; Editions
Louvre Victoire rrp £90 approx) is having a big 2015. And this hefty
monograph is another high-calorie helping of Neo-Baroque eye
candy. We’re talking Hansel and Gretel on fly agaric: a table that dou-
bles as a forest canopy acrylic wardrobes dripping with golden glob-
ules Smartie-studded cabinets and a hand mirror fashioned from

silver twigs. Ideas seem to pop out of his head fully formed – initially

realised in meticulous coloured-pencil drawings – and emerge as

one-offs not collections to be sold to a devoted coterie of art collec-

tors. His signature? Sheer whimsy executed in the most rarefied ma-

terials: travertine rock crystal tufa lacquered aluminium...

And now a rags to riches story. Everyone knows about endpapers

but fancy sheets have also been used to line lead chests to prettify the

keywells of harpsichords and throughout Europe to wrap ginger-

bread. The young Goethe prized the alphabets printed on gold-col-

oured brocade paper while Ben Franklin claimed that the marbling

added to early American banknotes to counter fraud was instrumen-

tal in winning the War of Independence. Be they paste or block-

printed embossed or combed AN ANTHOLOGY OF DECORATED PAPERS:

A SOURCEBOOK FOR DESIGNERS [ 4 ] (by PJM Marks; Thames & Hudson

rrp £38 Wo I price £34.20) comes gift-wrapped on the inside.

Ever since the earliest Mesopotamian cities 6000 years ago when

the alluvial deposits of the Indus formed insulated breathable shel-

ters BRICK [ 5 ] (ed. William Hall; Phaidon rrp £29.95 Wo I price £26.96)

has been bonded with human building ingenuity. To what curva-

ceous service has the banal rectangular solid been put beginning

here with the spiralling ramp of the Malwiya Minaret of 851 in Iraq.

Then a thousand years younger there’s the four-tiered Göltzsch river

viaduct in Germany the world’s largest brick bridge 26 million units

strong. And in the modern era Louis Kahn’s awesome arches in the

Assembly Building in Dhaka Bangladesh. A hat-tip to the picture re-

searchers: variety in bonding mortar and colour from Tudor chim-

neys to Burmese stupas make this well above par for the course. r

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