Peter Koepke

An insider's guide to the world's largest archive of patterns and textiles, the source of inspiration for the globe's top designers
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Koepke is the owner and director of the Design Library, located in Hudson Valley, New York, and London. He joined the company in 1990, after fifteen years as a collector and dealer, during which time he created seminal art collections for museums, universities, corporations, and individuals throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Peter now travels extensively in search of coveted collections to expand the Design Library’s archives.

ABOUT THE BOOK
An insider's guide to the world's largest archive of patterns and textiles, the source of inspiration for the globe's top designers.

Every season, designers from fashion, home furnishings, textiles, graphic arts, and paper-product industries seek inspiration from patterns to bring their collections to life. Many of these designers - including Beacon Hill, Boden, Calvin Klein, Clinique, Colefax & Fowler, Lululemon, Nike, Oscar de la Renta, Pottery Barn, and Target - look to the Design Library, the world's largest archive of surface design. This one-of-a-kind book, drawn from the Design Library’s archive, is an exclusive and ultimate sourcebook of pattern and ornament.
 
ABOUT PHAIDON
Phaidon is the premier global publisher of the creative arts with over 1,500 titles in print. We work with the world's most influential artists, chefs, writers and thinkers to produce innovative books on art, photography, design, architecture, fashion, food and travel, and illustrated books for children. Phaidon is headquartered in London and New York City.
 
Patterns: Inside the Design Library delves into the archives of the Design Library, the world's largest archive of patterns and textiles. Described by the Wall Street Journal as "the fashion and decorating worlds' best-kept secret", the Design Library is an exclusive source of inspiration for some of the biggest brands in fashion and design. Now for the first time, this one-of-a-kind book exclusively reveals the inner workings of an extraordinary collection of more than seven million antique, vintage and contemporary patterns.

Housed in an 11,000-square-foot loft in a reconverted 1907 fabric mill in New York State’s Hudson Valley, the Design Library is a mecca for designers of fashion, home furnishings, textiles, graphic arts and the paper product industries. Spanning three centuries with patterns dating from the 1750s to the late 20th century, the collection is also truly international: Beyond the many examples from Europe and the United States there are thousands from South Asia, Africa, China, Japan, Central Asia, Indonesia, and Central and South America.

Although most are anonymous, the collection includes original vintage patterns by Frank Lloyd Wright, Raoul Dufy, and Sonia Delaunay, as well as vibrant graphics used by Yves Saint Laurent in the late 1970s.
 
Fully illustrated with beautiful, never-before-seen patterns from the Design Library’s collection, Patterns opens with an introduction to the library, covering the history, diversity, and breadth of the collection, the team that work there and their relationship with the fashion and lifestyle industries. The second section of the book is a visual celebration of the collection, organised by an A-Z of descriptive terms ranging from abstract, bling, and chaos to skins, underwater, and zigzag. The stunning full-colour patterns, selected by the Design Library team to fit each ‘brief’, will delight and inspire readers.
 
The Design Library offers unparalleled access to the design culture of the past – unlike museum collections this one can be touched, borrowed and used - and the final part of the book explores its collaborations with major fashion and lifestyle brands, from Nike to Calvin Klein and Boden to Colefax & Fowler. Each is illustrated with a case study of a design inspired by a pattern from the archive that demonstrates the diversity of the collection and its unique ability to inspire.
 
Fashion designer Natacha Ramsay-Levi, formally Nicolas Ghesquière’s Head of Design at Balenciaga, sums up the appeal of the archive: "The Design Library is a secret. That's why it's so inspiring. It is rare, intimate and chic." Patterns: Inside the Design Library is an essential read for everyone who appreciates beauty, decorative design and the power of patterns and ornament.