I got an email from Amazon this morning suggesting I purchase a book that I might be interested in. Indeed I am.

https://amzn.eu/d/9m4HR5M

Some of Issye Miyake’s obituaries, but by no mean all, mention 21_21 Design Sight, the experimental gallery which he established in a small lightweight building designed by Tadao Ando in the heart of Roppongi, the most fashionable part of Tokyo. I remember being incredibly impressed by the adventurousness of its programme, the fluidity of its boundaries between art, craft and fashion – what it classifies as ‘everyday life – at a time when experiential exhibitions were much less common than they have since become. If I had had more space in my The Art Museum in Modern Times, I maybe should have included it for pioneering the cross-fertilisation of design ideas, of which Miyake was a, now much lamented, master.

There’s a very nice interview with Chris Dyson in BD today, assuming it’s not behind a paywall (I managed to read it). I knew that he had worked with Jim Stirling (Stirling’s office attracted a lot of historically minded architects, not least, Léon Krier), but not that he had been trained by Isi Metzstein in Glasgow. As is clear from.the interview, there is no-one more knowledgeable about Spitalfields and its urban environment and he has also been a great supporter of artists, hosting exhibitions in his gallery in Princelet Street which I hope might one day be re-established:-

https://www.bdonline.co.uk/buildings/interview-chris-dyson-listen-to-what-the-site-and-place-have-to-say/5118652.article

A big day for me today with the appearance through the morning post of an advance copy of my book about John Wonnacott. One never knows quite how a book will look in the flesh so-to-speak, on paper – good paper, slightly parchment-like – rather than on screen.

The design is by two designers, Luke Hall and Jason Wolfe, based in Walthamstow and they have done a really beautiful job of it, using two fonts, one Starling, a classical font designed by William Starling Burgess in 1904, and the other Quadrant Mono, which is like a typewriter font and gives a liveliness and immediacy to John’s many emails which I reproduce. Printed in Estonia.

It’s not a big book. I wrote it with a great deal of help from John in the early stages of lockdown as a way of documenting his long career, which has been so much less visible since Agnew’s shut up shop. I hope it will enable people to rediscover the great variety and strength of his work.

You can order it online via https://www.lundhumphries.com/products/john-wonnacott or https://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Wonnacott-Charles-Saumarez-Smith/dp/1848225911:-