Collectible Art and Design Books

Large-format coffee-table books, which are meant to be shown off rather than shelved, are coveted by art and design connoisseurs. Thanks to their exquisite photographs and high-quality printing, their appeal is largely visual, the opposite of the text-heavy dogged-eared paperbacks you might read in bed or take to the beach. Books like those mistreated paperbacks require writers and readers alike create picture in one's mind through words, but books were not always so text heavy or cognitively demanding. In fact, many of the earliest books were highly visual and artistic, starting with ancient illuminated or painted manuscripts, wherein the initial letters, marginalia, and illustrations would all be lushly hand-decorated. The development of woodblock printing in the 15th century led to hand-crafted woodcut illustrations. During the 16th century, the engraving and etching techniques used in intaglio printing took over. Many historians cite the works of William Blake, including "Songs of Innocence and Experience," as the first "artist's books," or books that are works of art in and of themselves. Blake and his wife, Catherine, printed, hand-illustrated, and bound the earliest copies of this collection of poems in 1789. In the 19th century, lithography, photogravure, and chromolithography gave artists even more license to create beautiful visuals for books. At the end of the 19th century, a young artist by the name of Aubrey Beardsley, who was a part of the Art Nouveau movement and was inspired by Japanese shunga art, created stunning, erotic, black-and-white illustrations for artistic editions of titles like Aristophanes' "Lysistrata," Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," and Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur." Some assert that the earliest book composed primarily of photographs, also known as a "photo-book," was Anna Atkins' taxonomy of marine plant life titled "Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions" (1843-53), which was produced for scientists via a non-silver cyanotype printing process. William Fox Talbot followed with "The Pencil of Nature" (1844-1846), which used a technique known as "photogenic drawing" and the calotype photography process. Books about art and design became particularly important in the 19th century. Designer Owen Jones' 1856 book, "The Grammar of Ornament," was a defining book of the Arts and Crafts movement that rejected Victorian excesses of decoration and Industrial-Era consumerism. In it, Jones laid out principles for designers, architects, illustrators, and craftsmen to adhere to the aesthetic standards he felt the public should embrace. In 1872, historian and architectural theorist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc published "Entretiens sur l'architecture," in which he insisted that the function of architecture should determine the material, and the material should determine the form. This book had an impact on Art Nouveau style and architects such as Louis Sullivan (Frank Lloyd Wright's mentor), Antoni Gaudi, Victor Horta, and Hector Guimard. In the early 20th century, avant-garde art movements such as Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism relied on artist's books using hand-illustration, collage, photography, and chromolithography to spread their ideas outside of the museum system. After World War II, artists like Dieter Roth attempted to deconstruct the standard book form. The development of inexpensive color printing in the 1960s created what we think of as art-and-design books today. In 1960, the Sierra Club published what might be the first modern coffee-table book, "This Is the American Earth," which features gorgeous ecological photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Philip Hyde, Edward Weston, and Margaret Bourke-White. "Twentysix Gasoline Stations," published in 1963 by American Pop artist Ed Ruscha, is widely considered the first modern artist's book. It has very little in the way of text—aside from its introduction and captions—and instead highlights 26 photographs of gas and service stations across the United States. His innovation provided artists with a new format for experimentation, as well as a new way to market their work to the public. Also in the '60s, museums, particularly art museums, began to produce large catalogs with color photos and formal descriptions of every piece on display in an exhibition. These books often begin with at least one essay detailing the reason and logic behind the exhibition. Some of these exhibition catalogs are enormous, comprising multiple volumes and running for hundreds of pages.