5 cool coffee table books that not everyone will have
Published Sun 19 April
A coffee table book makes a perfect housewarming gift or a little something for yourself to dress up your living room and adding a bit of your personality. The great thing about them is that you can mix and match and switch out to create different stacks. Pair them with candles, vases, decorative pieces and plants for an interesting table. We’ve gathered some of the best coffee table books that will make great gifts for someone – including yourself.
Tokyo Style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki, £58.99, amazon.co.uk
The inimitable interior style of early 2000s Tokyo is captured perfectly in this hardback reissue of Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s classic book. These aren’t polished homes styled to within an inch of their lives; these are real houses with clutter and empty drinks bottles and unmade beds on tatami mat flooring. Unusually compelling, there is a slight voyeurism to poring through this book, but also heaps of inspiration for an undone home that is almost unheard of in the post-Instagram modern world.
20th Century Alcohol & Tobacco Ads by Taschen, £25, taschen.com
German publisher Taschen has a slew of covetable books on all types of subjects, that are meticulously curated to be pretty stacked on a coffee table while also providing something educational and visually stimulating. This book looks back on the glamorous, fascinating world of 100 years of alcohol and tobacco advertising.
The Council House by Hoxton Mini Press, £15.35, amazon.co.uk
A book focusing on the beauty of council houses - which might sound like an oxymoron - but there are actually a lot of architecturally interesting buildings in London. Let’s not forget that the Barbican buildings were originally built as social housing. With historical information about each building and beautifully printed photographs detailing the striking, often brutalist details of these places, this is a great gift for an architecture lover, Londoner or design obsessive.
Sofia Coppola Archive by Mack publishing, £55, amazon.co.uk
Film director Sofia Coppola is known for her dreamy, hazy, aesthetic-driven movies that explore a host of themes with many centred on girlhood, womanhood, and often moral ambiguity. Her films include Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides and more that are all featured in this volume with behind-the-scenes photography, notes, scribbles, drawings and notes from Sofia herself. This is such a good colour that adds a striking bubblegum pink to offset a neutral room with something fun.
Saul Leiter: The Centennial Retrospective, £42.37, amazon.co.uk
Criminally underrated street photographer Saul Leiter was active throughout his life taking photos and drawing, with his most notable works spanning through the 1940s and 50s. Photographing everyday life in New York, Leiter’s photos are intimate and quiet; a face seen through a shop window or reflected in a car mirror, people shuffling through the streets distorted by rain or snow. Later, for high fashion magazines and advertisements. The portraits and street scenes are evocative and engaging, a delight to flick through with a chic grey cover featuring a typical Leiteresque snap.