Coffee table book
A coffee table book is a large, usually hard-covered book for display on a table. It is often non-fiction with pages of photographs and illustrations, captions, and small blocks of text. The idea of a book intended for display more than reading was mentioned by Michel de Montaigne in his 1581 essay [1] and Laurence Sterne in his 1759 novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.[2] In the late 1940s, publisher Albert Skira and a few others began producing large folio and quarto format art books, illustrated with tipped-in color plates. David Brower is sometimes credited with inventing the modern coffee table book.[3][4][5]
The "Exhibit Format" series of books combined nature photography and writings, with a page size big enough to carry a given image's dynamic. Madonna's 1992 book Sex remains the most searched for out-of-print coffee table book.[6]
References
change- ↑ "Essays by Michel de Montaigne". Oregonstate.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-10-08. Retrieved 2014-03-28.
- ↑ "The novels of Laurence Sterne (Volume 1)" (PDF). 1873. Retrieved 2014-03-28.
- ↑ Chilvers, Ian and John Glaves-Smith (2015) A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191792229 https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100510260 (accessed 25 August 2019)
- ↑ Dufrêne, Bernadette (2002) L'édition d'art des années 1950-1970 : des promesses non tenues ?, Communication et langages. No. 134, 4 ème trimestre 22-38 pp. [Dufrêne, Bernadette (2002). The Art Edition of the 1950s and 1970s: Unfulfilled Promises? Communication and Languages, 134(4): 22-38.]
- ↑ Corisande Evesque. Albert Skira et ses livres d’art (1948-1973). Histoire. 2015. ffdumas-01256888. PDF: https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-01256888/document (accessed 25 August 2019)
- ↑ Flood, Alison (30 August 2011). "Madonna's Sex most sought after out-of-print book". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
