Nest Magazine

(...thanks very much to Ouno Design for most images and others can be found here and here...)

Nest Magazine died awhile back, in 2004, but it is one of my most important cultural reference points. I have been meaning to post about it forever and was reminded of this when I ran across these great photos on flickr from Ouno Design.

The reasons for my great love are many. I found this one delightful quote which partially sums up my feelings:

“I have a problem with corporate America,” he said. The Christmas 2003 issue (No. 23) contained a series of mysterious headlines — like “Lo, ink-clad Nest” — which turned out to be anagrams for “Kill Condé Nast,” Mr. Holtzman said. He had planned to put “Kill Condé Nast” on the cover in glow-in-the-dark ink, he said, but could not get the ink to look right."

- from here

Nest Magazine favoured hands-on artist collaboration, elaborate die-cuts, glosses, and avant-garde graphic design that was truly ten years ahead of its time (pattern-on-pattern, hard edged abstraction, and clashing color palettes when sleek white cold homogenized Wallpaper* minimalism was the order of the day), and most importantly, the magazine made it its mission to feature diverse and unique living spaces from the grandest estates to grandma's living room, with equal measure of enthusiasm and reverence. Editor Joseph Holtzman conceptually pushed interior decor far past the usual endless, brain numbing desire for luxury goods and luxury lifestyle that defines the industry in most cases. Nest was such a comfort and inspiration in that it illustrated an alternative, inclusive, and deconstructed version of what it means to personalize the world around you.


Here are a few links I dug up.

...archive of past issues with cover images...
...a promise I wish was fulfilled (but I won't hold it against them)...
...2004 NYT article...
...What Do I Know blog post...
...Ouno Design blog post...
...Joseph Holtzman's country home in New York Magazine...
...a book about the magazine which I flipped through in the library years ago but it just didn't feel the same...
...Nest as the Interior of Imagination...
...article from The Independent from 2000(!)...
...Ellen Lupton write-up from book Inside Design Now...
...2002 article, The Nesting Instinct...
...Home Alone essay in The Atlantic...
...little NYT review from 1998(!!)...
...in Architectural Record 2004...
...short interesting article in The New York Review of Magazines...

xxx