Details, details. Minutiae is a big deal in several newly released decorating and design books. Here’s a look at them, plus one extra-special book we included at the end. Its message is a detail often lost to life’s busy moments.
Classic and classy
You can’t judge a book by its cover. The new title “Classic Decorative Details” (Rizzoli, $45), makes a fine case in point.
What looks like another hoity-toity decorating book (the cover jacket screams “YOU’VE GOT TO BE RICH” with a close-up room shot drenched in marble, crystal, gilded mirror and red/gold damask drapery) is actually a handy-albeit spiffy-manual on how to pull off a moneyed, classic traditional look in your own humble abode.
Author Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, the 36-year-old daughter of the 11th Duke of Marlborough and an interior designer by profession, proves herself to be anything but the classic royal snob.
Through detail photographs, meaningful text and her ready acknowledgment that the average person can’t afford Old Masters paintings and precious antiques, Spencer-Churchill deciphers classic traditionalism and brings it into the doable realm for the average reader of average (or slightly above average) means.
She shows the key components of this formal decorating style and then tells how to assemble them and keep the look looking good (many of the sections include “Care and Repair” information).
There are sections on pictures and mirrors, collections of all sorts (ceramics, glass, silver and books are among them), decorative furniture, fabrics, bathrooms, kitchens and indoors and outdoors.
What we liked best: Spencer-Churchill is not aloof. She offers budget-conscious shopping tips that include sending readers to art schools for affordable art and to antique warehouses for decorative wooden items like moldings and curtain poles that were stripped from old buildings.
And, she doesn’t assume that we know more than we really do. She explains the difference between water-, oil- and powder-gilded frames. She advises on the best hanging technique for large tapestries. She stops the neatniks among us from removing the dark brown or greenish patina that builds up on bronze statues but “adds character and value to the piece.”
All in all, “Classic” is a classy book that does not intimidate.
Ethnic styles
Two other books bent on details: “Maison: French Country Style” and “Cottage: English Country Style” (Bulfinch Press, $16.95 each).
Written by British journalist Elizabeth Hilliard and photographed by John Miller, these petite books (they measure just 7 inches wide by a little more than 8 inches tall) are the first two volumes in a series on classic ethnic styles. That series is titled The Library of Interior Detail.
If you’re expecting these to be helpful decorating books, you’d be disappointed. These are sourcebooks and picture books that document Hilliard’s exploration of the French and English countryside.
A heady introduction starts each one and is the only real text. What follows are colorful, picture-filled chapters zooming in on specific architectural details and rooms found in French maisons and English cottages.
In “Maison,” there are chapters devoted entirely to doors; floors, stairs and windows; kitchens. In “Cottage,” chapters include halls, stairs and floors; paint; furniture; the fireplace.
Hilliard takes readers to the kitchen of British writer Peter Mayle in the Luberon district of Provence and to the breakfast table of British textile designer Georgina Cardew in the heart of the English countryside.
These books are wonderful for armchair travelers who might never get to see the inside of authentic European country homes or for those looking to augment the reference end of their home decorating library.
Hello, dolly
Minutiae takes on new meaning in a book on doll houses.
Penned by Faith Eaton, a noted collector and restorer of dolls and their environments, “The Ultimate Dolls’ House Book” (Dorling Kindersley Publishing, $24.95) establishes that these cute little fantasy worlds are nothing of the sort.
They’re “historical documents,” as Eaton notes, of period homes and other places.
Eaton guides readers through a time travel in this book, with stops in more than 35 homes and other everyday places (a schoolroom, general store) dating from the 1600s to present day.
Included: A Dutch Cabinet House, circa 1730-50, which meticulously records the lavish lifestyle of the wealthy Sara and Jacob Ploos van Amstel, down to an ornate gilded mirror in the nursery and Japanese screen in a third floor linen room; a German Milliner’s Shop, circa 1900, that was imported by F.A.O. Schwarz of New York; and even a 1970s English Modern House designed and made by Christopher Cole, a doctor-turned-doll-house-maker.
What we liked best: Photographs are blown-up more than adequately; the reader can actually trace a wallpaper design and make out expressions on dolls’ faces. Especially helpful are nuggets of information that are attached to the blown-up photos, in diagram-form.
For the lover of history and dolls, this book is a gem.
Somewhere in pet heaven
New Orleans folk artist George Rodrigue has something special for anyone and everyone caught up with Blue Dog fever: “Blue Dog,” the book (Viking Studio Books, $45).
A lot cheaper than his original Blue Dog paintings, which are collected by the likes of Hillary Rodham Clinton and have fetched six-figure sums, and a lot more meaningful than the Absolut vodka ads, which feature the cobalt-colored pup, the book is a tribute to the real Blue Dog: Tiffany.
Part spaniel, part terrier, Tiffany was Rodrigue’s longtime pet. She died in 1980. Rodrigue, noted for his Cajun-theme paintings, started brushing images of beloved Tiffany onto his canvas in 1984. Sometime around 1990, his bright blue, yellow-eyed rendition of Tiffany turned into a pop phenomenon.
The book, which is co-written by New Yorker Lawrence Freundlich, is a mystic tale that deals with death and loss and spiritual peace. It includes 50 full-color illustrations by Rodrigue and an innovative cobalt-colored slipcover that lets Blue Dog’s yellow eyes peer through.
But it’s the story that captivates here.
Tiffany, caught somewhere between life and death, tries to guide her owner to spiritual peace by suddenly, and startlingly, appearing in Rodrigue’s paintings-in landscapes, with reclining nudes, standing hauntingly behind an alligator.
Love conquers all-even death-is the message. The spirit lives.
It’s a message we all need to hear. The fact that it’s a detail, packaged in the thick of a colorful, quirky art book, makes it even more worthwhile.
