Retro: A Guide to the Mid-20th Century Design Revival
Mid Century Modern, or Retro, has eclipsed in popular terms the two other great styles of the 20th century, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Yet, the supporting literature is still largely collector and value based. Retro, now a way of life, really needs an sensible, accessible, stimulating and wide-ranging handbook, a proper grown up style guide. This is it. -- Paul Atterbury BBC Antiques Roadshow It is a curious irony that the mid-20th century, an era when designers and artists on all fronts strove to bring us tomorrow's world today, is now the trigger for nostalgic reverie and frenzied competition among collectors and dealers. Alert to the paradox whereby once cutting-edge artefacts have morphed into a new kind of antique, Adrian Franklin offers a visually captivating and incisively observed tour through this lost future -- Simon Reynolds author of Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past