We’re pleased to present the
second in our three-part gift guide.
From a complete history of furniture to a behind-the-scenes look at some
very chic lives, these cover some of the most engaging aspects of interior
design. Please see the previous
post for great videos for design buffs, and please check in next week for gifts
that give back to the design community.
What: Stylish and
substantive lives, cataloged beautifully… “A Visual Life: Scrapbooks,
Collages, and Inspirations”
Interior
designer Charlotte Moss has spent years collecting as well as creating
scrapbooks—a pastime both meditative and instructive about her own ideas
regarding design and style. In this unique book, Moss brings together her own
scrapbooks along with those of notable women, both contemporary and historical,
whose flair for style inspires us, including interior designer Elsie de Wolfe
and society doyenne Gloria Vanderbilt—all never before published. Organized by theme—home, garden, travel, entertaining, and fashion—each chapter
includes examples of Moss’s signature style mingled with excerpts from the
scrapbooks of these great women.
Who: Designer,
starlet, socialite – mystery woman… “Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret and
Extraordinary Lives”
Florence
Broadhurst founded one of the most influential wallpaper studios of the
Twentieth Century. Her brightly-colored
geometric and nature-inspired oversized designs were all hand printed.
Technical advances made in her studio included printing onto metallic surfaces,
the development of a washable, vinyl-coating finish and a drying rack system
that allowed her wallpapers to be produced in large quantities. Her
wallpapers reportedly contained around 800 designs in eighty different colors.
In
addition to being a prolific and legendary designer, Broadhurst was a starlet,
a socialite… and the victim of a murder that remains a mystery 35 years later.
Where: Home office or corner
office… “Habitually Chic: Creativity
at Work”
Habitually Chic is author
Heather Clawson's wildly popular blog about the finer things in life—high
fashion, fine art, interior design, and arresting architecture. For Habitually
Chic: Creativity at Work, Ms. Clawson has narrowed her vision and using the good
will generated by her blog has found her way into the workspaces of the world's
foremost cultural generators. The studios, workshops, offices, and creative
sanctuaries of top designers, artists, editors, architects, and more are
captured and presented in detail.
When: From colonial to
contemporary… “The Encyclopedia of
Furniture”
It looks like it’s about 100
years old and some of the photos look like they were printed from slides, but
this is hands-down the greatest desk reference for furniture styles and
history. Not to judge a book by its cover but this one pretty much says it all:
“Covering: Every period and development to the present, the designers and makers,
the woods and other materials, the architecture and decoration.”
Why: Because there’s nothing
like the original… “The Decoration of Houses”
One of America’s most important novelists, Edith Wharton was
a refined, relentless chronicler of the Gilded Age and its social mores. Along
with close friends Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack London, she helped
define literature at the turn of the Twentieth Century, even as she wrote
classic nonfiction on travel, decorating and her own life. Her best known works
include The Age of Innocence
(which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921), The
House of Mirth and Ethan Frome.
The Decoration of Houses, her first book, is of special interest to
designers. House Beautiful
declared, “Edith Wharton laid down the rules for decorating in her first
book. The Decoration of Houses was the law of the land, and it led to
the birth of a new profession.”
Images and information
courtesy bn.com, except Who, When and Why (via previous posts); image for Who
via eviekemp.com.
