Look of the Century

What's amazing, after looking through Michael Tambini's The Look of the Century, is how similar many things are at the two finials of this 100-year period. Clearly, those items most influenced by technology have changed greatly. The 1900 Graphophone, which played a cylinder, looks nothing like the Denon Stacking System D-90, which plays a CD. But design of the century has been marked by modernism, so Jean Puiforcat's 1928 tea service isn't unimaginably far from the Alessi tea set of 55 years later. Nor are watches or vases or chairs or fountain pens. But what's most interesting about this book published by DK Publishing in Association with the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian,is to watch the (sometimes cyclical) development over time. BOMC alternate.