The Origins of Things: Sketches, Models, Prototypes

Rating:
Summary: a mixed blessing
Review: Can a book be deeply flawed and still be worth having? The Origin of Things delights and disappoints with every page. The book consists of a collection of design objects across the years, along with the sketches and related items used to achieve their final design, and the images are fascinating. The lowly paperclip gets the same treatment as the Frank Lloyd Wright vase, giving it the warhol treatment and reveal its beauty. The text, however, fails. It's often hasty and incomplete, or obtuse, or dry. The result is a tease that makes you hunger for more, or mystifies leaving you alone to look at the drawings and results. Often one sense a thrilling story behind the design process-- such as with Wim Gilles scooterette project, in which he fought to do a personal project to build a lightweight folding scooter/moped that got to final prototype then was killed preproduction-- but the story doesn't shine through. Not bad, but unsatisfying.

However, I've really enjoyed the book, no matter how disappointed I've been with an incomplete story, because it *is* so neat to look at beautiful, well crafted objects and their creation artifacts: the prototype kettle made of two pans soldered together, the x-rays that informed a silverware set, the raw and elegant drawings that became Lloyd Wright's vases.

Decide for yourself.