Furniture Books

This book was a big help on understanding the design history of things we all use, everyday. Well laid out and easy to follow, this book is an excellent guide for anyone more curious about what furniture really is; art.

This book contains great works of furniture design and I think that it is priced reasonably too. I find it to be very inspirational and just great to own!

This is a great book - it saved me a fortune because stuff that I would have thrown away I just made look brand new. I'm really bad at craft/decorating but the projects are really easy and it doesn't really matter if you make mistakes - it just adds to the charm!

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding and Appreciating Well-Built Furniture, March 28, 2008
By Global Citizen (Planet Earth) - See all my reviews

People buy furnishings for the charm, appearance or utility they give their home. Appearance, design, and style are also to be considered. Whether you're a home furnishings pro or just shopping for your home, this is a great, concise reference to understanding just what goes into what may seem to be "a simple piece of furniture."

Furniture Facts goes beyond the individual piece (although it certainly details motifs, construction, ornamentation and details with plenty of description and pictures). The book is organized with the intention of integrating the piece into an environment with the best possible results.

The first section includes an illustrated section on styles and periods with excellent descriptions that can help you recognize the origins of a design. Part two delves into the construction, upholstering, equipment and care of a wide variety furnishings, and expands to how better furniture is built, along with tips on cleaning, repair, and restoration. The third area covers interior design and how the decorative elements of furnishings can and should be complementary. I especially love the handy color charts, explanatory section on floors and floorcoverings, as well as the identifier of window treatments. But my favorite is the detailed reference grid, "How to Correlate Decorative Element." This takes you through different periods and styles and cross references them to associated styles, appropriate architectural details like walls, ceilings and floors, and how each might be treated or covered.

There's really so much more than can be listed here (like the section on fabrics and textiles or the one on flowers and plants! And don't let me forget the extensive glossary on furniture parts and terminology...). this condensed encyclopedia covers a lot of ground and most sections in surprising detail. For the money, it's a nice, almost pocket-sized, (GBC bound for easy page-turning-- plus, the book lies flat when opened) that you can take with you while shopping, or keep at home or your workshop. Even the paper is heavy coated stock that you can wipe off liquids or spills.

This (27th) edition has been expanded from its previous incarnation fifty additional pages of current furniture styles, trends in interior design and bedding, and updated dictionaries on furniture woods, fabrics and home furnishings vernacular. The authors and editors who contributed technical data, charts, photography, articles and reference material are all experts in their field.

This is a richly illustrated, panorama of contemporary English furniture makers and their designs. Several pages of color photos are devoted to each artesian. If there is a focus it is on lamination and the blending of several materials with wood, such as metals and glass. The quality of the illustrations could allow one to faithfully adopt proportions and curves to ones own designs. I look foreward to similar books dealing with other cultures and countries.

The book I ordered arrived on time, in a quickly manner. It was in excellent condition- brand new. I will use this service again.

Excellent book for the beginner or amateur woodworker. Well written, simple explanations of all the basics with hundreds of great, clear drawings and diagrams (the excellent illustrations in this book really makes it stand out over the vast majority of books of this type). Also included are instructions for eleven different interesting furniture projects.

This is far more than your coffee table antiques book. The author provides a facinating social history wrapped around John seymour's early life in England and the move to Maine and Boston. Through the window of the ups and downs of furniture making we can get an understanding of the times. This aspect reminds this reviewer of Morison's Pulitzer Prize winning book, John Paul Jones, A Sailor's Biography, which addressed the same time period and began with Jones early life in Scotland.
But the book is really about the furniture, some of the finest and most significant to have been made during the Federal period. To understand the Seymour's work Mussey devoted ten years and didn't look at just a few exampls-he looked at and studied just about every suggested example. From this he developed a construction and aesthetic dictionary that allowed him with some confidence to identify pieces that are really made by Seymours, father and son. In chapter 5 he lays out these criteria. My only very slight quibble with the book is that I would like to have seen a page of say lunette-inlays and say a page showing many examples of Seymour dovetail joints. This would better allow the reader to come to his own conclusions.
The remainder of the book, basically the last two thirds, is a catalogue of the furniture. The photographs are beautiful and the descriptions are far more interesting and informative than the norn for this type section.
The book qualifies as a coffee table book because it is a big, has significant weight and is beautiful. But this is not the reason that it should be in the library of those who appreciate American furniture. Rather it is because this is in this reviewer's opinion the most significant American furniture book to have been written in recent years.

THE FURNITURE OF JOHN HENRY BELTER AND THE ROCOCO REVIVAL BY MARVIN SCHWARTZ, EDWARD J. STANEK AND DOUGLAS TRUE. THE COLLECTION OF GLORIA AND RICHARD MANNEY IN AN EXHIBITION ORGANIZED BY THE MUSEUM OF OUR NATIONAL HERITAGE. THE COLLECTION IN THIS BOOK IS WITHOUT QUESTION, THE FINEST, MOST COMPREHENSIVE ASSEMBLAGE OF BELTER PIECES THAT HAS EVER BEEN FORMED, AND BECAUSE IT IS COMPREHENSIVE, IT IS NOW POSSIBLE TO STUDY BELTER'S GREAT WORK IN DEPTH.

What is fantastic about this book is it's emphasis on furniture design as part of the total architecural environment- a belief Schindler shared with other masters of modern architecture. The book tells the stories of the wonderful pieces of sculptural furniture that Schindler designed for his projects and includes his sketches as well as numerous photos- old black and whites which have the charm of an old Hollywood movie and provide an appropriate backdrop to the innovative thinking of Schindler at such a transitional time in architectural history. Also included are essays and articles written by Schindler about his design beliefs. Loved it!