Publishers Birkhäuser are offering Dezeen readers the chance to win five copies of  Limited Edition - Prototypes, One-Offs and Design Art Furniture by Sophie Lovell.

The 255 page, hardback book includes work by the Campana brothers, Marc Newson, Maarten Baas, Tom Dixon, Studio Job and Zaha Hadid, alongside projects from lesser known practitioners.

Drawing on more than 40 interviews with designers, manufacturers, gallerists, auctioneers and critics, Lovell examines the phenomenon of limited edition design. Divided into five chapters, the book focuses on the motivations for designers, dealers and collectors, the idea that process can be come more important than product, the luxury implied by individuality and the influence of auction houses.

This competition has now closed.

The five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published at the bottom of this page and in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter.

Here's some more information from the publishers:

--

Sophie Lovell

Limited edition
Prototypes, One-Offs and Design Art

Limited Edition is the new phenomenon in furniture design. The demand for unique pieces is steadily increasing. With prototypes, one-offs and limited product lines, designers are making furniture objects outside of, and parallel to, the industrial manufacturing system. Furniture prototypes have always been an element of the industrial design process, but now they are being brought from the workshops and presented to the public as embodiments of one of the most exciting creative fields of our age.

In the global village with its standardized commodities, exclusive one-offs with an artisanal flavor are turning into coveted objects. The limited furniture series so manage to satisfy the collector’s appetite with objects where the boundary between furniture and art dissolve.

Limited Edition follows this new direction in furniture design and uncovers its background in meticulous investigative essays based on the author’s ongoing interviews with key designers, gallerists, auctioneers and manufacturers. With a rich selection of images it presents the very best from this new area as well as new and behind the scenes images from some of its leading protagonists.

Through design prototypes, limited editions and design-as-art objects, Limited Edition documents a new phenomenon in contemporary furniture design. It is a book about designers who are making furniture objects outside of, and parallel to, the industrial manufacturing system.

Limited Edition is illustrated with a rich selection of works that reflect the very best of this new area as well as new and behind the scenes images from some of its leading protagonists, including: Gaetano Pesce, Marc Newson, Maarten Baas, Tom Dixon, Studio Job, Zaha Hadid and Johanna Grawunder, together with an equally fascinating collection of newcomers and comparative unknowns. It gives us an intriguing insight into their latest work as well as their thoughts about the current state their profession.

From over 40 interviews with key designers, manufacturers, gallerists, auctioneers and critics, the author Sophie Lovell has catalogued and compiled a unique and timely overview of one of the most exciting creative fields of our age. Limited Edition is beautifully packaged in a custom-layout and typography specially designed by the Australian graphic design team Rinzen.

The book is divided into five main sections: the first chapter, Prototypes, deals with an approach where furniture concepts take precedence over furniture products and the workshop becomes a laboratory for experimental expression. In our increasingly standardised global village, the touch of individuality is starting to become precious again. Both designers and consumers want unique and longer-lasting products with a story.

One-Offs deals with the luxury of individuality; this is a realm where terms such as ‘luxury’ and ‘value’ go beyond expensive materials and a particular company logo. New ways of working means new categories of products, new ways of selling them and new words to discuss them with.

Edition X examines the motivations for designers, dealers and collectors behind the limited edition phenomenon and includes statements from designers such as Maarten Baas, Philip Michael Wolfson and Jurgen Bey as well as key figures in the scene such as gallerist David Gill, auctioneer Alexander Payne and Rolf Fehlbaum, CEO of Vitra. There has been a shift in responsibility for encouraging innovation in design.

Manufacturers, it seems, are no longer calling the shots when it comes to experimentation. It is an international design gallerist elite, that are now The New Patrons of progress. This chapter looks at the activities and includes statements from key individuals such as Murray Moss (Moss) in New York, Pearl Lam (Contrasts) in Shanghai and Didier Krzentowski (Kreo) in Paris, amongst others.

The final chapter deals with design and the world of Auctions and Attitudes. Since works from contemporary stars such as Marc Newson, Zaha Hadid and the Campana brothers started hitting six or even seven figures, more and more auctions are devoted to pieces by contemporary designers. The auction houses are responding to the design boom with new strategies: they are occupying the traditional territories of gallerists and agents. Here key figures from Philips de Pury & Company, Sotheby’s, Wright and Freeman’s amongst others give their views on the design-art market and its future.

About the Author
Born in London and a graduate of Chelsea College of Art & Design, Sophie Lovell moved to Berlin in 1994. Since then, her close, active involvement in the city’s burgeoning creative scene as artist, designer, writer, art director and consultant, as well as experience as long-term contributing editor to the international lifestyle magazine Wallpaper*, have placed her in a unique position to be able to observe and experience the growing shift in the nature of the creative process within the market at first hand. She has edited a number of commercially successful books addressing this subject.

Sophie Lovell
Limited edition
Prototypes, One-Offs and Design Art Furniture
255 pages. 380 colour illustrations
 20 x 26 cm.
Hardcover
 GB £39.90
ISBN-13: 978-3-7643-8895-9.
English
© 2009, Birkhäuser

Congratulations to the winners! Johannes Tsopanides in Germany, Jenni Baxter in Australia, Paul McClelland in USA, and Aaron Norman and Corinna Warm in the UK all won copies of Limited Edition by Sophie Lovell.

Didn’t win? Buy this book and others at the Dezeenbooks store
(in association with amazon.co.uk)