POINTED LEAF PRESS

HOUSES IN MY HEART
Carleton Varney:
An International Decorator’s Colorful Journey
By Carleton Varney

“Houses in My Heart is not so much an autobiography as an illustrated memoir,” writes Carleton Varney in the introduction to this lavish book, which celebrates the interior designer’s colorful career. From his days as a young designer at Dorothy Draper & Company Inc. to the culmination of such long-term and important projects as the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, Varney’s talents and professionalism have elicited the admiration of faithful clients.

List price: U.S. book price (hardcover) $95
228 pages
Over 300 Illustrations
ISBN: 0-977-78755-9

DRAWING FASHION
The Art of Kenneth Paul Block
By Susan Mulcahy
Foreword by Yves Saint Laurent
Introduction by Isaac Mizrahi

Kenneth Paul Block is one of the most influential fashion illustrators of the twentieth century. After graduating from Parsons School of Design, his first job was at the powerful Women’s Wear Daily in the 1950s, an association that lasted over thirty years and where Kenneth witnessed and recorded one of the most important periods in fashion history—the postwar shift as the exclusive world of couture transformed into prét-à-porter. Attending all the major fashion shows in Paris, London, and New York, Kenneth was the first one on the scene, drawing the latest style-setting clothes from such venerable houses as Balenciaga, Chanel, and Saint Laurent. He also documented the up and coming designers of the time, including Marc Jacobs, Perry Ellis, and Halston. He was well known in society, sketching Gloria Vanderbilt and the Duchess of Windsor. He reported on sensational parties in Palm Beach and New York attended by Babe Paley and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and created a unique archive of the era. Drawing Fashion: The Art of Kenneth Paul Block is the first monograph on the artist and brings together a lifetime of drawings, watercolors, and observations. Fashion illustration disappeared from publications as photography took over, giving added emphasis to this book as an important historical document. Drawing Fashion, designed by Shahid & Company, captures a critical moment in time when fashion, art, and commerce coincided.

List price: U.S. book price (hardcover) $95
216 pages
Over 200 Illustrations
ISBN: 0-9777875-4-0

BE DAZZLED!
Norman Hartnell
Sixty Years of Glamour and Fashion
By Michael Pick

Norman Hartnell (1901-1979) was a unique, British designer. By the mid 1930s, his meteoric rise to fame had made London a center of style that closely rivaled Paris. While Hartnell clients included members of the English upper class and the best-known stage and film actresses, it was his royal patronage that assured him a place in history. Hartnell’s famous White Wardrobe, designed for Queen Elizabeth and photographed by Cecil Beaton, changed the image of royalty forever. The Queen’s extraordinary Coronation dress as well as the sublime wedding gown created for Princess Margaret remains iconic to this day. Decades of achievement were rewarded with a Knighthood in 1977, making Sir Norman Hartnell the first fashion designer to be so honored. In Be Dazzled! Norman Hartnell, Sixty Years of Glamour and Fashion, the only illustrated monograph on this couturier, royal enthusiasts and style connoisseurs can examine Hartnell’s never before published drawings, vintage photographs, fabric samples, and personal scrapbooks.

List price: U.S. book price (hardcover) $95
216 pages
Over 200 Illustrations
ISBN: 0-9777875-4-0

ULTRAMODERN
Samuel Marx
Architect, Designer, Art Collector
By Liz O’Brien

Although Samuel Abraham Marx was born at the end of the nineteenth century, he had the eye of a modernist — as an architect, furniture designer, connoisseur, and collector. His vision was neither ostentatious nor grandiose, but subtle and quietly magnificent. Ultramodern Samuel Marx: Architect, Designer, Art Collector is the first monograph on this lesser-known but increasingly influential American designer. In more than 200 photographs, Marx expert and decorative arts dealer, Liz O’Brien, reveals many of his undiscovered projects, including houses that have been razed despite preservationist protests, as well as his range of furniture designs. Throughout his career, Marx was sought after for his ability to integrate art in well-heeled interiors. The private art collections of many of his wealthy clients have, in the last 40 years, been dispersed to major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Liz O'Brien is a decorative arts dealer specializing in modern design. Her interest in Marx began more than ten years ago when she first showed his furniture designs in her New York gallery, making some of his best pieces available to interior designers and collectors. O'Brien is now recognized as a leading Marx expert and has been instrumental in placing him as an important figure in the history of twentieth-century architecture and design.

List price: $95.00
216 pages
Over 200 Illustrations
Fall 2007
ISBN: 0-9777875-2-4

DECORATING IS FUN!
How to be Your Own Decorator
By Dorothy Draper
Introduction by Carleton Varney

After being out of print for more than sixty years, Decorating Is Fun! is finally being reissued with its original illustrations. Amazingly, the book which was originally published in 1939 on the eve of World War II, is still practical, amusing, and inspirational. Draper's earnest enthusiasm feels fresh and contemporary. She believed that though there were troubles in the world, oneÕs home should be a refuge, a cheerful place for entertaining one's friends and a colorful and comfortable shelter from the storm. Decorating Is Fun! is also a serious book about decorating that does not take itself too seriously. In her heyday, Dorothy Draper (1889-1969) was the most famous decorator in America. She had a monthly column in Good Housekeeping magazine and decorated luxury residences and hotels like the Hampshire House in New York and the Greenbrier in West Virginia, along with restaurants, nightclubs, houses, apartment buildings, and airplanes.

List price: $35.00
274 pages
Over 20 Illustrations
Spring 2007
ISBN: 0-9777875-1-6

THE HIGH STYLE OF DOROTHY DRAPER
By Donald Albrecht

Dorothy Draper's bold, trendsetting designs defined American interior style from 1920 to 1950 and continue to influence designers today. A quintessential New Yorker, her work also found popularity throughout the United States and abroad, earning her contracts in California, Chicago, Brazil and more. From May 2 to August 27, 2006 her famous personality and career will be documented through The High Style of Dorothy Draper, a catalog and exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. Never-before-seen photographs, designs, artwork and ephemera have been provided from the collection of Dorothy Draper & Company, Inc., The Carleton Varney Design Group. The catalog, written by Donald Albrecht, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York, examines six of her most influential projects: New YorkÕs Carlyle apartment hotel and Hampshire House apartment hotel; the Arrowhead Springs Hotel and Spa in San Bernardino, California; the Camellia House Supper Club of the Drake Hotel in Chicago; the Greenbrier Resort of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; and the interior of the Convair 880 jet airplane.

List price: $29.95
96 pages
Over 100 illustrations
Spring 2006
ISBN: 0-97276661-9-7

IN THE PINK
Dorothy Draper
America's Most Fabulous Decorator
By Carleton Varney

Has there ever been an American decorator as famous as Dorothy Draper? Like Martha Stewart, Draper was an inspirational teacher whose how-to books and Good Housekeeping columns provided middle-class housewives with affordable ideas for making their homes more functional and comfortable. Thanks to her originality as a stylist and her daring as a businesswoman, she became one of the most respected career women in the United States. She shocked the design world in 1937 when she decorated the thirty-seven-story Hampshire House apartment hotel on Central Park South in New York City, delivering a project that became indicative of her signature touch-"baroque fantasy." In the Pink: Dorothy Draper, AmericaÕs Most Fabulous Decorator, by Carleton Varney, lavishly illustrates for the first time Draper's most important projects. From the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia and Quitandinha in Brazil to her important fabrics for F. Schumacher & Co. and her automobile and airplane interiors of the 1950s, Draper continues to influence designers today. Varney, who is uniquely positioned as the author of this book, joined Dorothy Draper, Inc. in 1960, when he was twenty-nine years old. Forty-two years later, he continues to keep her legend alive.

List price: $95.00
216 pages
Over 200 photographs
Spring 2006
ISBN: 0-9727661-8-9

EARTHLING
By Warren Neidich

Internationally renowned artist Warren Neidich combines photography and performance art in Earthling, an eerie and humorous book of photographs based on his most recent body of work. Featuring an introduction by the well-known critic Barry Schwabsky and an interview with globetrotting curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Earthling offers insight into Neidich's original artwork. Often taken in cafes and using newspapers and magazines altered by the artist, these photographs are taken straight from today's headlines.

List price: $50
84 pages
Full color images
September 2005
ISBN: 0-9727661-7-0

BRUSH
By Daniel Rozensztroch and Shiri Slavin

What began with a small set of unique hand-made brushes found by French design editor, Daniel Rozensztroch and writer and collector Shiri Slavin quickly escalated into an obsession. The result is a visual compendium of over 200 color photographs of the seemingly endless variations of this useful, common tool-the brush.

List price: $29.95
256 pages
Over 200 illustrations
November 2005
ISBN: 0-9727661-5-4
French and English editions

CLASS ACT
William Haines
Legendary Hollywood Decorator
By Peter Schifando and Jean H. Mathison

William Haines came to Hollywood after winning a new talent contest in 1922. He appeared in over twenty films as a leading man to many of Hollywood's famous stars, including Joan Crawford, Marion Davies and Constance Bennett. As Haines' film career dwindled, his self-taught decorating skills flourished. Many of his co-stars became his first clients and later he designed the homes of the film industry elite including movie mogul Jack Warner and director George Cukor. Longtime assistant to Haines, Jean H. Mathison and Peter Schifando have opened the William Haines Inc. archive to bring together this unique collection of over 300 some never before published photographs and drawings of Haines' classic furniture designs and his most important projects.

List price: $95.00
228 pages
Over 300 illustrations
October/November 2005
ISBN: 0-9727661-4-6

THE COMPLETE KAGAN
Vladimir Kagan
A Lifetime of Avant-Garde Design
By Vladimir Kagan

Drawing from over sixty years of personal and professional archives, award-winning and internationally-known furniture designer Vladimir Kagan writes an autobiography that mirrors the development of twentieth century design. Comfort, practicality, and what he calls "fiscal reality" were the hallmarks of his beautiful, often modular, and always organic pieces that have in the last decade had a major renaissance. This is the first complete compendium of Kagan's life and work, and includes many never before published before sketches and documents.

List price: $65.00
272 pages
Over 400 illustrations
Fall 2004
ISBN: 0-9727661-2-X

MOKO JUMBIES
The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad
A Photographic Essay of the Stilt-Walkers of Trinidad and Tobago
Photographs by Stefan Falke
Preface by Geoffrey Holder; Introduction by Earl Lovelace

Seventeen years ago, Glen "Dragon" de Souza founded the Keylemanjahro School of Arts and Culture on the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean. The school's mission was to revive the almost forgotten West African tradition of the Moko Jumbie or "stilt-walker," and adopt it into the annual Carnival celebration. Not only would it restore a centuries-old tribal custom that had been squashed by colonialism and slavery, but also de Souza dreamed it would keep underprivileged children from street-life and drugs. Today, more than one hundred Moko Jumbies-boys and girls starting from the age of four years old-practice at the Keylemanjahro School. Internationally recognized photographer Stefan Falke spent six years documenting these "dancing spirits" of Trinidad. With rare power, he captures the vivid costumes and haunting beauty of the Moko Jumbie dances in over 200 dazzling color photographs. Moko Jumbies: The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad celebrates the success of this spectacular movement that has not only enriched the lives of its participants and all the people who live and visit Trinidad, but also the enduring culture of the island itself.

List price: $65.00
216 pages
Over 200 photographs
Fall 2004
ISBN: 0-9727661-3-8

OVER THE TOP
Helena Rubinstein: Extraordinary Style
Beauty, Art, Fashion, and Design
By Suzanne Slesin

This lavishly illustrated volume traces the public and private lives of Helena Rubinstein—one of the most extravagant stylemakers of the last century, a pioneer of the cosmetics industry who was also celebrated for the daring of her art collecting, her decorating, and her personal couture. The meticulously researched text includes 16 essays by renowned experts in the fields of art and interior design.

216 pages
Over 400 illustrations
Publication date:
October 28, 2003
Trim size: 12" x 11"
ISBN: 0-9727661-0-3