Rare 'Ilmari Tapiovaara' MONOGRAPH: Finnish Mid Century Modern Furniture, Lighting & Industrial Design.

This gorgeously illustrated book explores the development of Tapiovaara’s extraordinary body of ideas and forms as well as his role in the construction of Finnish’s modern image and cultural tradition. Through a detailed discussion of his intoxicating experiments in wood inspired by the cuvers of nature, the book offers the opportunity to relish the stream of pleasures afforded by Tapiovaara’s important designs, including his mid-century projects as chief architect of Finnish Modern Design. Providing the first comprehensive analysis of Tapiovaara’s radical work and dissident perspective, Tapiovaara's Monograph sheds a new light on the route the designer has followed transgressing orthodox Modernist aesthetic doctrine and subverting hegemonic cultural models, his work privileged invention and affirmed spectacle and luxury, pleasure, beauty, and sensuality as legitimate architectural pursuits. A scarce copy in excellent (as new) condition with only very minor signs of shelf wear.

Ilmari Tapiovaara (1914-1999) was a pioneer in the new design trade. Having a more pragmatic attitude than his predecessors, and vitally and culturally rooted to his country, he laid the foundations for the development of incipient industrial design through his objects and writings, thus bridging the radicalism of early European rationalism and the realism of post-war objective needs. Tapiovaara’s work contains crucial elements that arise out of a meticulous, laborious, precise investigation into the quest for perfection, the worship of beauty and the poetics of form. This monographic study includes an extensive file of designs, drawings and interior design works by this creator of international scope, placing his work in the contemporary context of Finnish design and industry.