Decorative Art 70s

By Dashka Slater

Book Overview

Published annually from 1906 until 1980, Decorative Art, The Studio Yearbook was dedicated to the latest currents in architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, metalware, and ceramics. Since the publications went out of print, the now hard-to-find yearbooks have become highly prized by collectors and dealers.

This volume spotlights the futuristic, experimental aesthetic of the 1970s. After the revolutions of the '60s, the world of design and architecture became an increasingly exciting and fast-moving hotbed of ideas, rife with vehemently opposing schools and movements. In many ways it was a more extreme era for design than the previous decade.

Experimentalism was everywhere, and many projects, thought not practical, were forward-thinking visions of a new kind of decorative art and design. Various groups advocated returning to natural methods, rejecting style in favor of craft or pushing the logic of industrial living to its concrete, high-rise extreme. Decorative Art 1970s includes the work of the decade's brightest stars, such as Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Luigi Colani, Ettore Sottsass, Achille Castiglioni, Kisho Kurokawa, Norman Foster, Richard Meier, and Theo Crosby.

About the series

Bibliotheca Universalis -- Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3836546566
• ISBN13: 9783836546560
• Release Date: October 2013
• Publisher: Taschen
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

"Decorative Art Yearbooks" Revisited

Decorative Arts 1970's is a presentation of "[t]he fascinating history of design traced by [the] Deorative Art Yearbook (Yearbook)...printed in a somewhat revised form." Divided into 8 sections: Architecture and Interiors; Furniture; Textiles and Wallpapers; Glass; Lighting; Silver and Tableware; and Ceramics, this book offers a plethora of color and b & w images, along with somewhat limited text, which is written in English, French and German. The book is dominated by the Architecture section, which is filled with mostly b & w (some color) photos, floor-plans and useful information about the structure, the architect and the interior design. The remaining sections, all much smaller, offer examples of the pieces, their designers, measurements, materials, distributors and countries of origin. The overall layouts of these sections, while pleasing to eye, are presented in a very confusing manner. The description of each item is numbered, but instead of numbering each photo, a "key" is offered (in a different spot on each page), which maps out the number of each photo. Furthermore, the book goes for pages at a time without page-numbers, rendering the index difficult to use. Overall, the book presents many interesting pieces of 70's design and includes works by all the usual suspects, along with some unusual ones. I would have liked to have seen sections devoted to plastics (some of which can be found in the furniture section) and electronics (completely missing in action), but overall I am not complaining. If you are a fan of books such as "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" and "L'utopie du Tout Plastique" you are likely to enjoy this one as well!