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Rating: 
Summary: Pierre Chareau is a Treasure
Review: Pierre Chareau is a book that is well worth the price, if only for its extensive and beautiful coverage of the deservedly famous Maison de Verre (House of Glass), which the designer created in 1932 in Paris. The design was something of a departure for Chareau, who had been primarily a designer of imaginative Art Deco furniture and interior fixtures. The Maison de Verre was an extensive remodel of an existing house in Paris in a High Modernist style, with clearly expressed structural members (steel columns and beams) carefully differentiated from partitions and non-load-bearing members. It has extensive glass block walls which create a wonderful glow of light throughout the structure. It also has an open plan which recalls the flowing, plastic use of space preferred by most of the best modernists of the Bauhaus and championed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The book also shows the wide variety of Art Deco furniture designs produced by Chareau, as well as buildings and interiors which he either designed or collaborated upon with architects. The excellent photographs and high quality of the printed reproductions make this one of the best books on modernist or Deco designers I have ever seen.
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