Here are 100 books that Axel Vervoordt fans have personally recommended if you like
Axel Vervoordt.
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I am mainly known as an Interiors Photographer and although accidentally falling into photographing Interiors, it has become a passion, always interested in the story these places tell and alongside my husband we have built our own home creating a unique space using recuperated materials. As part of my work, I am always looking for interesting and inspirational books and places. It is how I train my eye, drawn to the unusual. I am as happy photographing a chateau in Provence as I am in a small and remote cabin in Norway.
This book was not only an inspiration for my first book but a book that visually spoke to me not only through the photography, but the spaces and places included in it. There are many Interiors books on the market but this one is up there as one of my all time favourites. It inspires me to be a better photographer and I find myself looking at this book over and over again.
If you have read The House that Pinterest Built, Smart Spaces, The Alchemy of Things, or Elements of Style you're going to love Perfect Imperfect.
Wabi-sabi and new creative interior design expressions: Perfect Imperfect is a stunning collection of homes and studios of creatives from all over the world, with thought-provoking text by Karen McCartney and stunning visuals by Sharyn Cairns and Glen Proebstel. Perfect Imperfect takes as its founding principle the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi. Wabi-Sabi advocates the beauty to be found in imperfection, impermanence and the authentic. Importantly this is done without losing sight of the benefits of…
I am mainly known as an Interiors Photographer and although accidentally falling into photographing Interiors, it has become a passion, always interested in the story these places tell and alongside my husband we have built our own home creating a unique space using recuperated materials. As part of my work, I am always looking for interesting and inspirational books and places. It is how I train my eye, drawn to the unusual. I am as happy photographing a chateau in Provence as I am in a small and remote cabin in Norway.
A recent purchase, when I discovered this book on Instagram (secondhand) I immediately wanted to buy it.
First published in 1993 it is still relevant today as I am sure it was then. We are all in love with Cabins, sheds, corrugated iron, escapism and there are many books on this subject. Marie France Boyer works for The World of Interiors amongst other magazines and has a wonderful eye and this book inspires me in my research for cabins in the world.
Intriguing and strangely magnetic, cabins fulfil the longing in all of us to indulge again in our childhood reveries of secret hideaways, built of branches and leaves or whatever is to hand; to enter our own private world; to commune with nature and with our own selves. Hidden in the forest, up in the treetops, by the side of still or moving water, down at the end of the garden, the cabin is the most magical of dwellings. Magical, but real too, as these photos from all over the world testify: fishing cabins in Maine; the shed in Wales to…
I am mainly known as an Interiors Photographer and although accidentally falling into photographing Interiors, it has become a passion, always interested in the story these places tell and alongside my husband we have built our own home creating a unique space using recuperated materials. As part of my work, I am always looking for interesting and inspirational books and places. It is how I train my eye, drawn to the unusual. I am as happy photographing a chateau in Provence as I am in a small and remote cabin in Norway.
This book is one of my most recent purchases. I really love Sean Scherer’s style and it speaks to both myself and my husband.
The photography is great in this book and Sean has a wonderful eye for detail. It’s a feast for the eyes. It has that ‘cabinet de curiosité’ style and so many details I want to keep looking at. I have visited the Catskills area and this book certainly makes me want to go back there again. It is a well-thought-out and inspiring book.
Interior designer, artist, and collector Sean Scherer shares his secrets about applying the principles of two-dimensional art to home design
Sean Scherer’s Kabinett & Kammeris equally a celebration and a guide to both collecting and showing how lively design can integrate disparate objects into beautifully layered ensembles. Scherer’s interiors feature vintage display cabinets housing discarded collections of whittled songbirds, stunning 19th-century maps and school teaching aids, ferns in cast-iron planters, and photomurals. The effect is a supercharged nod to American Gothic heightened by Scherer’s sophisticated palette and sense of proportion. Each photograph by William Abranowicz is a lesson on color…
I am mainly known as an Interiors Photographer and although accidentally falling into photographing Interiors, it has become a passion, always interested in the story these places tell and alongside my husband we have built our own home creating a unique space using recuperated materials. As part of my work, I am always looking for interesting and inspirational books and places. It is how I train my eye, drawn to the unusual. I am as happy photographing a chateau in Provence as I am in a small and remote cabin in Norway.
I was given this as a present and what a wonderful present it was. Deborah Turbeville is a wonderful photographer whose work I admire. Her fashion photography was innovative, imaginative and so creative.
This book, a visual diary of her house and time in Mexico is filled with her signature blurred images, from black and white portraits to colourful interiors. It goes against everything we learn in Interiors but it’s magical, evocative, and gothic.
In the tradition of Kahlo and Allende, Turbeville’s brilliantly stylish portrait of her Mexican house evokes both her vivid imagination and the mystique of Mexico. High-ceilinged rooms surround a central courtyard that is lined with faded frescoes of biblical scenes. The glimmer and shafts of diffused light that stream into the courtyards and curtained rooms add to the romantic atmosphere—one feels as though they have entered into a quintessential Turbeville photograph. Turbeville has captured the spiritual nature of Mexican culture by incorporating into candlelit interiors such traditional religious artifacts as colorful painted tin retablos, hand-carved saints, wooden tableau boxes, and…
Frederik L. Schodt is an award-winning author of non-fiction books on the convergence of Japanese and American cultures, and he has written on subjects including manga, technology, acrobats, history, and religion. He is also a well-known translator of Japanese manga and literature, and a veteran interpreter. In 2009 the Emperor of Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for helping to introduce and promote Japanese contemporary popular culture. In 2017 he also received the prestigious Japan Foundation Award.
This book is by a Japanese poet and Buddhist priest in the 12th century, who rejected life in the capital of Kyoto for a tiny hut in forested mountains. At a time when Kyoto was wracked by earthquakes, storms, fires, and political unrest, he records his life and his opinions about both human misery and the advantages of simplicity. It has always been an inspiration to me. It’s a small book of fewer than 100 pages, easy to carry around, but always somehow calming.
Japan's capital city of Kyoto was devastated by earthquake, storm, and fire in the late 12th century. Retreating from "this unkind world," the poet and Buddhist priest Kamo-no-Chomei left the capital for the forested mountains, where he eventually constructed his famous "ten-foot-square" hut. From this solitary vantage point Chomei produced Hojoki, an extraordinary literary work that describes all he has seen of human misery and his new life of simple chores, walks, and acts of kindness. Yet at the end he questions his own sanity and the integrity of his purpose. Has he perhaps grown too attached to his detachment?
I’m an American Jewish girl who was born knowing that I had been Japanese in my previous lifetime. After graduating with a degree in Japanese studies from Princeton University, I moved to Japan at 21 and became a well-known translator. One day the Geisha Mineko Iwasaki, the inspiration behind Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, asked me to co-author the story of her life. Published in 2002, Geisha, a Life became a bestseller. Writing Geisha awakened memories of my past life as a courtesan in fourteenth-century Kyoto. I began a deep study of reincarnation, which has led me to study the intersection of Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. Please look out for my forthcoming book, Reincarnation Karma.
Zen and Japanese Culture, the twentieth century's leading work on Zen Buddhism, completely changed my life when I read it at sixteen. This classic text, a profoundly simple introduction to Japanese art and philosophy, held the key to my young compulsion toward the transcendent aesthetic perfection of Japan and began to prepare me for understanding the world of the Geisha. It awakened the need within me to move to Japan to study Zen Buddhism in an authentic Zen Temple. Which I did.
Zen and Japanese Culture is a classic that has influenced generations of readers and played a major role in shaping conceptions of Zen's influence on Japanese traditional arts. In simple and poetic language, Daisetz Suzuki describes Zen and its historical evolution. He connects Zen to the philosophy of the samurai, and subtly portrays the relationship between Zen and swordsmanship, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese love of nature. Suzuki uses anecdotes, poetry, and illustrations of silk screens, calligraphy, and architecture. The book features an introduction by Richard Jaffe that acquaints readers with Suzuki's life and career and analyzes the book's…
I saw my first Godzilla movie when I was seven years old, and I immediately fell in love: what kid doesn’t want to be a giant radioactive monster with attitude? But unlike baseball cards, I never outgrew Godzilla and, over the decades, came to appreciate the cultural significance of one of the world’s most enduring film icons. In my writing on Godzilla, I explore my own fascination with monsters and contemplate why all societies, from the dawn of time to today, have compulsively created imaginary creatures that terrify them. The books on this list have helped me understand the human obsession with monsters, and I hope you will find them equally enlightening and enjoyable.
Who cannot love a serious but accessible book that obsesses about things like Pokémon, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Tamagotchi (those annoying and addictive “digital pets” that were a millennial fad)?
Anne Allison’s volume was a real eye-opener for me on the place of monsters in youth culture, as a form of play, and how monsters have been commercialized and globalized over the past half century. It is incredible that, in the early twenty-first century, American kids were more likely to embrace Pikachu and Godzilla than the archetypal monsters of Western culture like Dracula and Frankenstein. Allison helped me understand why Japanese monsters are now conquering the globe.
From sushi and karaoke to martial arts and technoware, the currency of made-in-Japan cultural goods has skyrocketed in the global marketplace during the past decade. The globalization of Japanese "cool" is led by youth products: video games, manga (comic books), anime (animation), and cute characters that have fostered kid crazes from Hong Kong to Canada. Examining the crossover traffic between Japan and the United States, Millennial Monsters explores the global popularity of Japanese youth goods today while it questions the make-up of the fantasies and the capitalistic conditions of the play involved. Arguing that part of the appeal of such…
As an adrenaline junky—years of kitesurfing, skydiving, bungee jumping, Zero Gravity training—I have a passion for thrills and adventure, coupled with the love for my soulmate, Virginia, since we were kids, I live what I write and write what I live. Of course, I filter it all through my vivid imagination to raise the stakes and pull you in.When I look for a great book, it’s tough to get my blood flowing, to get me excited, but these books are the nearest thing to the thrill of freefalling and having your first chute fail to open (been there, done that. Thank, God for the reserve chute!). These books are truly unique, putting you on the edge of your seat and leaving you wanting more.
This was the first book I read twice. It was groundbreaking back in the ’80s. A mixture of cultures, assassins, adventure, thrills, love, sex, and passion. A huge bestseller at the time. His detail of Japanese philosophy, fighting styles, honor, and code in a modern-day world is beyond captivating.
While he went on to a huge success with dozens of bestsellers, nothing topped this. It was a lifetime of daydreaming and research that he poured out onto the page.
I read it in two days on the beach under the sun and stars. Five days later, I read it again. I couldn’t get the story out of my head.
In this New York Times–bestselling thriller, a martial artist’s past returns to haunt him—in the form of a murderous ninja.
Raised in Japan by a British father and a Chinese mother, young Nicholas Linnear felt at home only in the dojo, where he gave himself over to mastering ninjutsu—the ancient art of the ninja. Over years of training, he ascended to the highest ranks imaginable—until a confrontation over the very meaning of ninjutsu changed his approach to martial arts forever, sending him on a journey that would take him across the globe.
Who hasn’t caught themselves staring at a shadow? I certainly have. I have always found shadows fascinating. They are both there and not there, present and absent, and this in-between, fleeting nature keeps me staring. Shadows open a space for contemplation, and the list presented here traces a range of responses to the enigma they represent. Transitory images that exist on a fleeting border between light and darkness, shadows seem to invite me to make sense of their vague and shifting outlines, leading to both the joy of imagination as well as to that unsettling but pleasurable feeling of the uncanny as I struggle to fill in their outlines.
I find this book's range amazing. This slim but engrossing volume reveals new and invigorating ways of “reading” shadow images as the author discusses topics as diverse as food, cosmetics, architecture, jade, and even toilets.
Tanizaki also tackles the sociological differences in shadow interpretation across cultural divides, lamenting the loss of a more traditional interest in the ambiguous shadow as darkness gives way to a Westernization of Japanese culture that brings illumination in its wake.
While I didn’t always agree with his conclusions, they were always interesting, and got me thinking about why I look at shadows the way I do.
An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings. The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.
I am a design-obsessed George Washington University (Washington, DC) professor, author, architect, interior designer, sketcher, modernist, city lover, traveler, and University of Michigan alumni who writes about topics on architecture and interior design for people of all ages and backgrounds. Everyone lives in the built environment, but not everyone understands it. For example, sketching is one of the best ways to understand a piece of furniture, interior, or building. You will never see the object the same way after you draw it! All of the books on this list are approachable, interesting, fun, and most importantly inspiring. Enjoy!
This small format hardback is a really enjoyable read, as it asks a lot of good questions about architecture that will really get you thinking and curious about the topics. Each question is answered quickly (in a sentence), and then in a longer format, but still very digestible. It’s a great gift for any architecture lover.
This entertaining and informative book explores the world of architecture through a series of 101 questions and answers that cover a wide range of issues on its practice and theory. There are historical questions, such as "Who was the first architect?" and "Are all churches architecture?" as well as ones that relate to contemporary activity, such as "Have computers changed architecture?" and "How small can a home get?." There are also many that are intriguing and irreverent, such as "Why do architects want to paint the world white?" and "Is Dubai a city?". For each of the questions there is…
