I love Lotta's Lifestyle book [ISBN4-07-238374-0]. I picked it up last year at our local Japanese bookstore. It is full of inspiration--photographs of her old studio in SF, glimpses of her personal sketch book, favorite recipes--basically if you love Lotta, you will love this book.
I love how her designs are so clean, simple and organic. And I like how you can always spot her work in a shop because her style is so, well, "Lotta" [for lack of a better word].
One of my favorite pages in the book is her product tag collection. I think I'm going to make a pin + board and start my own "shim + sons" tag collection. It will be interesting to see how those little pieces of paper evolve over the years. I'm already thinking of new tag designs, but first I better use up my current stack of labels + tags. Which means I better go make a few things to stick those tags on!
[P.S. I've been doing a bit of spring cleaning in my studio and have set aside a pile of Japanese craft books. They are either books that I've browsed through at the bookstore, brought home and never touched again or duplicate copies from Appah's trip to Japan. I'll be putting them up for sale sometime soon, along with some Japanese fabric. Stay tuned.]