Knoll Textiles, 1945-2010 Hardcover – Illustrated, August 31, 2011

This well researched book travels through the timeline of one of America's leading 20th century creative firms. Thank you for recounting this historical evolution for posterity.

I'm an artist, married to an award-winning graphic designer. This book is both beautiful and amazing, as the NY Times Sunday Book Review attested to in their Feb 26 review. In fact, I read their review first...then the 1 star here, so I went to the famous Strand in NYC to check it before buying as the 1 star put me off. The 1 star reviewer pretty much missed the boat as to the overall concept of the book...it is cutting edge, matte finish pages, with imagery that looks like it is the real thing instead of a picture of the real thing. One can find the NY Times review on line. As to "smell", I imagine it was shrunk-wrap quickly after printing...most hardcover books are not, art monographs can be - being sealed in plastic would cause any smell, which I did not notice myself. To continue the inanity...not sure how it tastes, but I didn't buy it to smell or eat it, but as reference.

I looked forward to getting this book as I have Knoll furniture covered in their fabrics. When the book arrived I was dismayed that Knoll would put its name on such a poor quality product. No doubt the content is thoroughly research but it is over shadowed by the flaws in the printing. First of all the book smelled so terrible I couldn't even take it out of the box. Even today two months later it has an unpleasant odor. The quality of the paper itself is poor which doesn't lend itself to reproducing even reasonable photos of their fabulous fabrics. Then to top it off the edge printing has been cut off in the trimming. Needless to say I am extremely disappointed.