Coffee table books are to me the original instagram. Pages upon pages filled with tantalizing photos of art, fashion. Iconic photography, imagery of the human body in all of it’s sexy glory. Images of breathtaking homes or far away places that stayed with me for days after first seeing them across the pages.
My passion for coffee table books started long before I even found my way into the design world as a career. I was living in New York and working on a feature film in the art department and we were shooting in a super swanky loft apartment in Soho. I had to photograph and move a huge bookshelf filled with coffee table books so that we could reset the shelves for the film. It took me forever because they were so heavy, but perusing a few pages of some of the volumes and I was hooked.
I remember thinking that some day, when I’m older and had money to actually buy nice things - not a starving artist working on a film, I was going to have a collection of coffee table books like the one I had discovered that day.
I still love to flip through my coffee table books. I use coffee table books in all of our projects. It’s a great way to give insight into your personality - whether it’s an unexpected genre or subject, or the outside is bold and unexpected - (Mario Testino grabbing his crotch), graffiti writing of Stephen Sprouse. And just shake things up a bit. Here are a few of my go-to favorites:
Check them all out here