Chris Buchanan LIFESTYLE
Believe it or not: but there is an association for curtain makers and allied products. I would imagine by “allied products” they would mean the fellows who twist the little brass hooks that the curtains hang on. Why on earth am I telling you this? Well the Curtain Makers and Allied Workers’ Association is one of the 2E500-plus entries listed in the 2001 edition of Marcia Margolius’s SA Dcor and Design: The Complete Buyers’ Guide and, judging by that entry, it’s about as comprehensive a buyers’ guide covering this industry as you will come across. Four years ago Margolius confidently stood before an audience of about 150 at the Home Fabrics showroom in Midrand and launched her first edition of the Buyers’ Guide. It was good in that it offered the consumer access to suppliers of products and services in interior design, much like any buyers’ guide would do in any industry. It pissed the professionals off a bit though – after all, as interior designers it was their job to provide the information to their clients rather than their clients sourcing it for themselves. Margolius took notice and has developed the book into a valuable reference document for the entire industry, including the professional interior designer, student, consumer and supplier.
The categories are split in alphabetical order, covering accessories to window treatments, with everything from office furniture to outdoor living in-between. Each category has a short preface in the form of general advice offered when dealing with that particular sector, which is where my first criticism of the book lies. Understanding the need to sell as many pages of advertising as possible for maximum revenue, I still believe advice should be objective and left untainted by a particular supplier insisting that any helpful hints will be useless without their product being involved. Margolius is established well enough in the industry to draw on professional expertise in any field of dcor or design. And while we’re trashing the advertisers, there really should be some kind of quality control in terms of graphic aesthetic. The design integrity and reproductive quality of the book are marred in too many instances by inferior and gaudy advertising pages. The aesthetics, however, do not detract from the absolute detail in the category listings. Each entry has a physical address, postal address, contact telephone numbers, Web contacts and a description of products or services offered. There is fairly good coverage of all the country’s regions, although I would fancy you would find a lot more in the Eastern Cape and the Free State with a bit of legwork. Regions also need to be more clearly defined in the listings, as I often found myself browsing KwaZulu-Natal without realising I had left Gauteng.
An absolute joy is the indexing of this book. Entries can be sourced by region, by product, by service and by name, as well as simply paging directly from the contents, and it refreshingly steers clear of the patronising introduction of “How to use this Buyers’ Guide” that most books of this nature seem to consider necessary. If you’re involved in this industry, if you’re shopping around for dcor or design services, or if design holds any interest for you, then this book is a must. Unfortunately it is a bit of an anachronism. I think the hard cover-cum- coffee table format for a listing is inappropriate for this century. The 2001 Marcia Margolius SA Dcor and Design Complete Buyer’s Guide should be a CD-ROM.