The April issue of the World of Interiors offers a profile of renowned Nigerian artist El Anatsui. Working with the detritus of modern culture, such as bottle caps, labels and tin lids, he creates fabulous wall hangings and sculptures. Wall hangings shimmer and undulate; they dazzle the viewer.

El Anatsui is keen on collaborative process in making art. He works with a team of artists who link the tiny pieces that comprise a wall hanging with copper wire following his design. When he sends work out on exhibit, there are no detailed instructions for installation. Because of this, exhibitors also contribute to the piece with their decisions about how to show them.

I was fortunate to hear him lecture several years ago at the Glenbow Museum and then see a retrospective of his work at the Royal Ontario Museum. The ROM has one of his works on permanent installation and I have gone back to view it again and was thrilled anew.

It is humbling to see what great works of art can be created from materials that we toss aside. I am an amateur artist who has access to a wide selection of art materials with which I produce pedestrian work.

You can find out more about El Anatsui and other contemporary African artists in Environment and Object: recent African art. The book examines the way African artists tackle environmental topics from plastic waste to the ravages of the oil industry in the Niger delta. Incredible works of art with an awful lot to say.

- Jane

I love surprises. Like when a new book offers something more than you’d expect by looking at the cover.

Swedish Antiques displays polished silver and tabletops, stately chairs and crystal on the cover. But the charm of this book is the fresh and modern rooms where many of the splendid pieces live. The book offers advice for designing with antiques that could be applied to any beautiful old furnishings.

Laserow and Berg offer a primer on the major historical periods of Swedish antiques from the renaissance through Gustavian and Empire eras. The focus of the interior design is integrating beautiful historical pieces into contemporary settings. For example:

• Arne Jacobsen’s Myran chairs are paired with Erik Dahlberg engravings

  beneath the dramatic sweep of a modern black-and-white staircase: “1950s Denmark and eighteenth-century Sweden in elegant accord.”

• The gracefully curved frame and rich carving of a Rococo chair contrasts with the crisp lines of a practical modern cabinet.

• A patinated pine table and a Swedish swivel chair are combined with an old

  step ladder used for a bookshelf to create a fresh home office space.

Swedish style is inherently modern, characterized by painted floors and fresh white walls which enhance natural light sources. To learn more about it, try searching “interior decoration Sweden” in the catalogue to find other wonderful books on the topic.

- Jane

On Easter Sunday I talked to my daughter who lives in the west end of Toronto near High Park. She was enjoying a beautiful day in her garden where tulips were up about 4 inches and hydrangeas showing buds. She had just hung a blown-glass hummingbird feeder, purchased for (we agreed amazing) $5. And she was singing the praises of her shed.

Built last year and tucked into the farthest corner of the garden, it now contains all the tools and pots for gardening. Bonus is the space freed up in the basement of a tiny house.

It’s not too soon to start thinking about the benefits of a wee perfect outbuilding for your backyard and I stumbled upon a recent title that is sure to inspire. The Versatile Shed: how to build, renovate and customize your bonus space, by Chris Gleason, shows how to plan and build a shed from the ground up. He also demonstrates the adaptability of the concept to meet many needs.

• A simple shed built out of chip board with plywood siding and covered with a corrugated tin roof houses the equipment of an ardent mountain biker and skier.
• A small batten-board structure complete with French doors on one end and deck and trellis on the side has been turned into a writer’s retreat.
• A shed with wood-shake roof, stained glass windows and purple trim is used as a recording studio.
• A deluxe gardener’s shed features a greenhouse attachment and is lit by transom windows. The owner has added a sink to facilitate wine making.

So many possibilities, so many cool designs.

- Jane

A bevy of new fiber art books from embroidery to knitting will soon grace library shelves, including three new volumes on quilting. Two I find to be rather straightforward and packed with information for the machine quilter: In the Studio with Angela Walters: Machine-Quilting Design Concepts and Beginner’s Guide to Free Motion Quilting by Natalia Bonner.

It is the third quilting book that really caught my eye. 

All My Thanks and Love to Quilts by Keiko Goke is a joy to look through: bright and cheerful, with a great colour sense and a playful imagination.  Keiko decided early on to embrace an independent and individualistic approach to her creations.  Trained as a graphic designer, she found while searching for a job in Tokyo that it was not what she wanted to do.  A chance encounter with a pile of quilting magazines and simple quilted cushions set her on a much different path. 

She is self taught as a quilter and perhaps, as a result of this, freer in her approach to her craft.  Her life revolves around a simple lifestyle, filled with sensitive observations and an execution of craft that echoes the gifts she feels she has received through the practice of quilting.  

She shares a story of how she gathered indigo fabric scraps destined to be burned from Ayano Chiba’s trash box and used those scraps in quilts.  Here was the tie between the centuries old craft of indigo dyeing and a modern interpretation of quilting. The quilts where Keiko used Ayano Chiba’s scraps stand as a testament to the expertise of both women.  Keiko’s quilts are very painterly: a masterful link between craft and art.

 It could not get any better.

~Candace

I love to recommend new interior design books to friends who enjoy them. Three of my friends have very different styles and consequently get recommendations for different books. Every now and again, a new book comes in that has a lot to offer anyone interested in design, no matter what their style preference is. A Living Space by Kit Kemp is a new title that does just that.

Kemp has an unusual resume. She is an interior designer who, together with her husband, owns a chain of hotels in London and New York. Her design work for these hotels has received international acclaim. The book features rooms from these hotels as well as their homes.

Kemp has an outstanding flair for colour and pattern mix. She creates rooms that are lively and inviting for the large-scale hotel settings as well as domestic interiors. Her spaces feature customized furnishings, many commissioned art works and fabric from collections she has designed for two companies.

She shares her sources of inspiration which are often textiles and objects collected while traveling.

“My aim as a designer,” she says, “Is to make surroundings a joyful thing – to bring in elements of intrigue and curiosity that create a sense of adventure and fun.”

It is one of the freshest new interior design books I’ve seen.

- Jane

Since painting the entire interior of my house white over a weekend this summer (don't ask!), I have been searching for ideas to add visual interest to the empty wall space. As I have been thinking about using pattern somehow, maybe in the form of wallpaper or a stencil, I was thrilled to come across this new addition to the library’s collection: 2000 Pattern Combinations: A Step-By-Step Guide for Graphic, Textile and Craft Designers by Jane Callender.

It is a wonderful book of patterning fundamentals and samples, perfect for those who enjoy adding their own touch to design elements in any form. The pattern basics and combinations she has included can be used in practically any application from embroidery and ceramics to engraving and stenciling.

We have many other pattern sourcebooks throughout the library collection which can be found by searching for keywords like Repetitive Patterns or Pattern Books. If you want even more try the phrase Decoration and Ornament Themes, Motives. You will come across literally thousands of images from different cultures and historical periods. In particular, the series Dover pictorial archive and Dover electronic clip art (includes CD-ROM with images) cover an incredible array of copyright-free images, designs, and patterns ready for manipulation.

But that doesn’t begin to cover all the possibilities. We have many books on specific topics, such as wallpaper or Mehndi, which could also be great for pattern inspiration (see Wallpapers: An International History and Illustrated Survey or Henna Sourcebook for example).

Happy patterning!

–Chelsea

Today's blog comes from David Ramsay, Central Library staff:

OK, spring is coming, but it's not quite here yet. What better time for crafts? And, if what you make is useful, gives new life to old stuff and keeps it out of the landfill, that’s a bonus.

In Recycled Home, Rebecca Proctor helps us escape our weather whines and make us productive. She demonstrates how to make something useful out of material we probably already have or can pick up for a song.

There are so many things we hold onto, just in case. Do you have any fabric stored away, just waiting for a project, or maybe a seldom used piece of clothing or bedding? Are scraps of wood taking up valuable work space? The author shows a variety of ways to exploit these materials. This is a repurposing/upcycling book that shows how to change one old thing into something new and better without too much trouble or expense.

You can learn how to recover old oven mitts, build a wall cabinet, a bird house or a wheeled crate. There are instructions for sewing Roman blinds, making an egg cosy and adding colour to old china. Your home will start looking country fresh in no time at all.

It helps if you can sew. The wood projects are simpler. All told, there are both outdoor and indoor projects (for every room in the house) geared for every member of the family. The length of time needed to do the projects varies from 15 minutes to a weekend, with many of them clocking in at about 2 hours time.

By the time you’ve finished a few of these, spring will be here.

- Dave

Those of you who are smitten with the fabulous house, lifestyle and intrigues of Downton Abbey will enjoy a new addition to our collection. The Edwardian Country House provides “an intimate portrait of an opulent age”.

In the opening chapter you learn that the courting of American heiresses by English peers was common practice. “Courting” is a word too gentle for what amounted to an arranged marriage that exchanged wealth for title.

Although servants were well paid (and certainly well fed) by the standards of the day, changes in appreciation of social status – among other reasons – made for fewer workers who were willing to go into service. The author looks at the technological advances that allowed owners to make do without an army of servants. Developments like electric lights, refrigeration, washing machines and telephones had a huge impact on the running of these large homes.

Photos illustrate lovely interiors and gardens and reveal extremes of style and comfort. You see the cozy, inviting garden room at Nymans layered in oriental carpets, tapestries and cushions. At the other end of the spectrum is the fabulous carved-marble Indian Hall at Elveden, called the coldest room in the country.

Next up for me is a book recommended by a staff friend: Cobwebs and Cream Teas, a memoir about life in the National Trust House of Febrigg Hall. I think I might be dwelling in the past.

- Jane

Today's blog comes from David Ramsay, Central Library staff:

Are you renovating an old house? I mean older than 1980 – much older. This might include removing the tasteful broadloom to reveal authentic flooring, be it oak, fir or linoleum, or stripping the velour wallpaper. Would you like to see what interiors from bygone eras looked like?

You can find books of old European or American interiors, but if you are restoring an Alberta house, local examples would certainly be more helpful.

An Edmonton author, Johanne Yakula, has come to the rescue. She has had plenty of experience with her own restoration business and 1912 home, as well as lecturing and blogging on the topic.

In Historical Interiors of Alberta-A Guide to Restoring and Decorating Your Heritage Home, she covers a lot of design ground, going back to the era before Alberta even became a province. Chapters include Victorian, Edwardian, Arts and Crafts, and Modernist eras. Each chapter presents a sample house from a variety of locations both large and small and gives the history of owners and changes and details of different rooms. You can learn how various design components, such as paint colour, wood trim, window covering, lighting and flooring, were treated at the time. The author also shows how you can add to or modify areas and still stay true to the era’s identity. Illustrations from the era and the present are included.

Finally there is a section to help you plan your own renovation (no excuses now!) This book is a good resource for house restorers, or those curious about local design history.

- Dave

How many of us find shapes in the world around us? Faces in mountains and fantastical creatures in clouds are there, if you look with the eye of a child. Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals by Carla Sonheim appeals to the inner child.  The author takes her inner child to the streets and finds inspiration for magical creatures from a variety of different sources such as a hand of ginger or a segment of cracked pavement. 

This book serves as inspiration to never leave home without your sketchbook or your camera.  Busy as we all are, there are moments of inspiration to be snatched from the everyday.

I find books published by Quarry Books to be slightly quirky, highly imaginative and real mind openers.  They’re great for those looking for a way to enjoy their creativity as well as the artist looking to expand their imagination.  They would appeal to everyone who keeps a journal.

This series of books are worth looking through. Like in the earlier blog post “The Art of Urban Sketching” this little tome offers an element of freedom for the inner child.

Well done!

–Candace