Book List of the Week

Friendships with Designers and Writers and Artists: Cleto Munari’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter March 20, 2012

Cleto Munari

Product designer Cleto Munari: Cleto Munari Design Associati (Vicenza, Italy)

Cleto Munari is a designer and design impresario whose work has an especially close connection with the words of writers. In a recent series of limited-edition tables he produced for his first furnishings collection, he incorporated the language of poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Mark Strand—lines of their poetry as well as their drawings are etched into glass tabletops.

“Man and Camel,” glass and aluminum table (2009) by Mark Strand, produced by Cleto Munari

For another project—a set of unique fountain pens—he asked well-known designers to come up with pen designs inspired by five different Nobel Prize-winning writers. Japanese architect Totyo Ito was paired with with Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz; Italian architect and product designer Alessandro Mendini with American writer Toni Morrison; Spanish architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca with Canadian-born novelist Saul Bellow; Portuguese author José Saramago with Portugal’s most prominent architect, Alvaro Siza Vieira; and Munari himself with Nigerian author Wole Soyinka. Highlighting the handwritten meditations on “the pen” that he received from each writer and also the concept sketches produced by each of the designers, Munari published a small, elegant book, The Book of Five Pens, commemorating the collaboration process.

This intimate connection with writers, many of whom he counts as friends, is an important aspect of the book list Munari sent to Designers & Books. He includes the novel Miramar by Naguib Mahfouz, saying, “My meeting with Mahfouz was one of the most moving and memorable events in my life, and Miramar was there, stuck in my head like a flickering diamond.” Commenting on Saul Bellow’s Herzog, he writes, “The beauty of the novel lies in this dissection of Herzog’s mind,” and he goes on to say about meeting the author, “I understood something of his character through the light in his eyes.” Munari notes that Man and Nature, “the first book of Wole Soyinka’s poems ever published in Italy and was written for me. When Soyinka decided to dedicate these poetical fragments to me, I understood what simplicity and clarity of thought mean.”

Munari with architects Carlo Scarpa and Ettore Sottsass

Involvement in close partnerships with creative luminaries in design, literature, and art has been part of Munari’s way of working since his early days in Vicenza, Italy. In the 1970s Munari began friendships as well as working relationships that would last for decades with three Italian design masters—Carlo Scarpa, Alessandro Mendini, and Ettore Sottsass. Collaborating with these three, and also other designers, including the architects Robert Venturi and Michael Graves, his studio has produced sterling silver flatware, glassware, wristwatches, jewelry, and other functional items, many of which are represented in the collections of museums worldwide.

His dedication to the pursuit of ambitious design “adventures,” as Munari calls them, reflect a conviction he says comes from another book on his Designers & Books list, Diderot’s Pensées Philosophiques: that “passions and ideal desires . . . represent the real essence of life.”

View Cleto Munari’s Profile View Cleto Munari’s Book List

comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

Order the book.

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

Order the book.

Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Order the book.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

Order the book.

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

Order the book.