The New Antiquarians —Book design, cover art, and image sourcing for an ephemera-inspired hardcover book on the next generation of antique collectors.

The New Antiquarians features twenty-two young connoisseurs whose spirited interiors exemplify unorthodox approaches to living with history. The book is an exuberant entry point into the world of antiques, highlighting one-of-a-kind collections and the single-minded collectors whose stories suggest compelling new ways of living with the past.
I worked with the writer, art historian and curator Michael Diaz-Griffith, and the team at Monacelli and Phaidon to craft the full visual world for the book, with special attention paid towards creating an object that felt appropriately historic—without leaning too far into pastiche. The book design had to be thematically consistent enough to link together such a disparate set of interior styles, while still leaving room for each subject’s unique perspective to hold appropriate space.
The result was an eclectic typographic and compositional system that spoke to 19th Century book design, balanced out by an approach to color and illustration that varied from chapter to chapter; each collector in the book was paired with a carefully curated archival spot illustration, border, and palette that reflected their particular visual idiosyncrasies and interests.
The book jacket and case further riff on the border motif established for chapter headings, with the former utilizing a reworked, public domain, Aubrey Beardsley illustration illustration from 1884 to create a cover scene that evokes a stage or a window, while the latter takes the frame concept to its logical, slightly absurdist, extreme for the interior embossed hardcover.
Published June 2023. Hardcover, 292 × 241 mm ( 11.5 × 9.5 in), 272 pages. Book photography by Brian W Ferry and case study photography by Fujio Emura. Print production by Cantina.