Marc Newson wraps up the America’s Cup
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
In the hands of industrial and yacht designer Marc Newson and publisher Taschen, a book charting the history of the America’s Cup, the oldest international sports contest in the world, has become a sailcloth-bound, cleat-fastened tome with its own plinth.
The title, which features a custom-made Louis Vuitton closure, comes in two editions, one including a sleek carbon-fibre stand. It was this freedom to think creatively that drew Newson to the project. “The sail wraps around the book and is held in place by a metallic cleat,” he explains. The plinth is made in the same carbon fibre used by sailing-boat manufacturers.
If you want to geek out on tonnage, displacement, sail square footage or the event’s history of illustrious sponsors (Rolex, Prada and, now, Louis Vuitton), then this book will delight you. But there is also plenty for the casual reader who has never spliced a mainbrace. There’s the tale of William Henn, who in 1886 raced with his wife Susan, the first woman to crew an America’s Cup challenger, along with their dogs and a pet monkey, Peggy, on a boat decked out with fireplaces, leopard-skin rugs and pot plants. It also tells the story of the “Auld Mug”, the imposing silver trophy made by Garrard, the oldest sports trophy still in use, which remained with the victors, the New York Yacht Club, for more than 130 years. When Australian magnate Alan Bond won the Cup in 1983, he was so anxious that he had been given a replica that he flew home via London to have it authenticated by Garrard (it was real). A protester took a sledgehammer to it in 1997. Now, it travels under guard in its own Louis Vuitton trunk.
But Newson is particularly proud of the plinth. “It weighs nothing,” he says. “You could lift it with one hand and throw it across a room.” It goes without saying that such behaviour is discouraged with the Auld Mug itself.
America’s Cup: Marc Newson Art Edition is published by Taschen in a limited edition of 175, with a bookstand, at £12,500. The collector’s edition, in an edition of 825, is £2,500
Comments