Collecting Design

Insiders’ Tips on Your Favorite Design and How to Enjoy and Make Profit

Adam Lindemann’s previous book for TASCHEN, Collecting Contemporary, has been an unprecedented success, introducing the lay reader to collecting contemporary art, with tell-all interviews by the biggest players in the global art market. Where this book was mainly the outcome of Lindemann’s personal fascination with the art, Collecting Design, in similar fashion, started when he was furnishing his new house. "Art collectors like myself who hung beautiful contemporary paintings on their walls suddenly saw their furniture look sad and tired," Lindemann writes in his preface and relates how hobby became passion and an overwhelming desire to know everything. Which is how this latest volume manages to give such a perfect introduction into collectible design: it follows the path its author went.

It all started in the late eighteenth century: artists designed porcelain pieces that became editioned works in high demand. Art Deco to the Wiener Werkstatte, Bauhaus to the Eameses, the French modernists, and a whole bunch of designers you haven’t heard of yet, this volume is the best guide to the collectability and overall desirability of the best design for connoisseurs and anybody interested in the way we live today.

Collecting Design tells all about an addictive occupation, vintage pieces vs. limited editions, the big names and what to keep an eye on, all from the perspective of a passionate collector meeting market luminaries for in-depth conversations—his fellow collectors (Bruno Bischofberger, Michael Boyd, Peter Brant, Dennis Freedman, Reed Krakoff, Ronald Lauder, Rachel Lehmann), the dealers (Anthony DeLorenzo, Suzanne Demisch, Barry Friedman, Clemence and Didier Krzentowski, Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman, Murray Moss, Patrick Seguin, Alasdhair Willis), select tastemakers (Jacques Grange, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Peter Marino, Robert Rubin, Ian Schrager, Axel Vervoordt), and auction experts (Philippe Garner from Christie’s, Alexander Payne from Phillips de Pury, Richard Wright, James Zemaitis from Sotheby’s).

Lindemann writes: "Sitting down for hours with 24 experts, I can now discuss the finer points of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann versus Eileen Gray, Carlo Mollino versus Gio Ponti, of Marc Newson versus Ron Arad, and so on. I hope you will enjoy and profit from this fascinating field as much as I have."

About the author:
Adam Lindemann is a New York-based entrepreneur and financier, who started collecting tribal art as well as works of artists of the '80s before turning to contemporary art, his passion for several years and the impetus for his previous TASCHEN?title, Collecting Contemporary. His love of iconic design was sparked while furnishing a new house several years ago; ever since he has been consumed by a burning desire to know everything about the subject.