Design inspiration

Long before plastic, the Japanese developed innovative ways to package goods using materials at hand: straw, bamboo, leaves, vines, paper. This peculiarly named book How to Wrap Five Eggs ($25) is a stunning gallery of everyday examples of this traditional Japanese packing, which has long disappeared. Photographed with studio black and white in the 1960s, each object is exquisite in its clever design. This thick book with two hundred examples is one that I return to often. The beauty never gets old. If you are at all partial to product design, or any type of presentation, this is a classic research source, a motherlode of how to think different. — KK