To celebrate its 10-year anniversary, Cabana magazine’s newish Anthology is a great way to bring its eclectic sensibility home. It’s also a great way to get your hands on the hard-to-find earlier magazine issues which can sell upwards of $295 a pop, on eBay.
The prized Italian magazine Cabana is dedicated to the principle of gemütlich, a German term referring to an intimate, comfortable feeling.
“That word summons this vision,” says Cabana’s editor-in-chief, Martina Mondadori. “Not only big and grand rooms, but that corner, that detail, that object that makes a room feel unique and yet personal.”
Highlights from issues over the past decade come beautiful bound in a highly collectible Cabana Anthology, published by Vendome. The biannual Cabana is a prized tome with textiles for covers.
Outside, you might have a deco print from the Schumacher archives; inside, beautiful interiors, one prettier than the next.
The book shows a collection of rooms that makes spaces feel unexpectedly human and livable; with rooms made to contain lives. And that is just the point: the book, like the magazine, is like a work of art.
Perfect beauty with a subversive contextlessness – that shows the importance of creating feeling through layer upon layer.
It’s about completely transforming rooms, however difficult the space, making them livable, while at the same time shockingly beautiful.
You’ll find many lessons in mixing antique and contemporary objects from gilded decorative panels, antique decanters, ikat cushions by Rifat Ozbek. The assortment is “somewhere between a Middle Eastern bazaar and a cabinet of curiosities,” Mondadori says. “These are ultimately the elements that can make a house truly unique and inspiring.”
The house Mondadori was raised in was created Renzo Mongiardino, a man who employed lush romanticism, arcane classical references, and a blurring of eras to liberate the wildly rich in the 1970s and 1980s from the tyranny of perfect provenance, and escape their tasteful salons filled with stiff family heirlooms.
The book is about valuing ambiance above so-called authenticity. It’s about depth of knowledge and a leap of imagination.
There are house tours from Milan, Lisbon, Bologna, Rome to Palermo, Colorado, Tangier, Moscow, Florence, Tangier, Sevres and many more..
The paper on each page changes throughout the book, from matte to glossy, thick to thin – engaging all our senses, from touch to feel, see…
It’s an international design book that’s a treasure to have, and to hold, each image worthy of a frame.
Cabana Anthology from Vendome Press, $90.05 on Amazon.com
