By Joan Craig / Craig & Co
Joan Craig’s new Rizzoli New York book is built around a standard she applies to every project: the answer should be “irresistible and undeniable.” That means a solution so right that nobody can argue with it. She admits it usually takes a lot of trial and error to get there.
The Octopus Garden: A shell-beaded arch and gilded tentacle mural by MJ Atelier, created for the 2022 Kips Bay Palm Beach Show House. Photograph by Douglas Friedman.
Her firm practices architecture and interiors together. The interiors team sits in on the first architectural meeting, and a carpet or a family heirloom can set the direction for a whole house. The book follows that method through nine projects, including a 1929 city club, a Manhattan pied-à-terre, a Gold Coast penthouse duplex, and her family’s coastal barn.
The makers are what set it apart. Most projects are followed by short profiles of the people who built the parts. Remains Lighting restored a ballroom’s thirty-three beaded fixtures and had more than 60,000 glass beads made by hand in India—Toyine weaves to order, sometimes only 20 inches an hour. Drawings and process photographs fill these spreads.
A Gathering Place: The casual dining room at The Row, with banquette seating beneath a 90-foot mural by MJ Atelier. Photograph by William Abranowicz.
Poetry of the Grid: The dining room in the Goodman Studio chapter, where a ceiling of handblown glass discs hangs over steel-framed glass wine storage. Photograph by Trevor Tondro.
The project essays run about a page each, so the pace stays quick, and William Abranowicz’s photographs carry the rest. Craig, who wrote the book with Judith Nasatir, is a generous guide. If you want to know what makes for a good room, this book tells you. At $65 for 256 pages, it is an excellent buy for any designer, and for that matter, anyone who commissions one.
On Artistry: Architecture And Interiors
Joan Craig / Craig & Co / Rizzoli New York
Available through the Rizzoli Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.