`Home is where the heart is.” It’s also where the memories are and where memories to be created reside.
In “House as a Mirror of Self” (Conari Press, $24.95), author Clare Cooper Marcus, a University of California Berkeley professor of architecture and landscape architecture, walks us through the many rooms of home we carry within ourselves.
While this is not a picture book, chock full of colorful, slick photos of settings created by architects and designers, it is a compilation of dozens of individual stories that tell of the emotional building blocks that go into the structure of our lives.
And, even though the author tells us this book is not about architecture or decorating styles, it gets to the heart of how we consciously and often unconsciously design our homes to mirror who we really are and who we’ve always wanted to be. It also reinforces just how much the memory of our childhood home stays with us.
Marcus not only shares the memories of others but some personal ones of her own, including her divorce and the feeling of a lost home. The stories are so personal that you’ll feel like you’re intruding even though you’ve been invited inside.
Sometimes Marcus’ case-study reporting style, including exercises at the end of some of the chapters, reminds you of the techniques used in many self-help books.
But it’s the eavesdropping into the lives of the people Marcus introduces us to that works. We prefer to get to know the people she writes about, on a first-name basis, and think how unlike us they are until we realize that bits and pieces of their story are building a familiar picture.
The author loses her storytelling punch when she feels the need to have medical professionals diagnose the problem. But forgive these lapses and immerse yourself into characters like Anita, a successful therapist who finds a soul connection at home; the author herself and her journey to reconnect and build a new home after her divorce; and Larry, the lawyer in San Francisco who has bonded so closely with his home that it’s more a person than a structure, and that he will only leave the house if he dies.
“Unlike many people who chose their work as a statement of who they are, Larry had chosen his house,” Marcus writes. “Despite the fact that 6,000 square feet was far more space than he needed and that the house has accrued in value from $100,000 in 1964 to $1.4 million in 1989, Larry needed the security of his familiar nest far more than he needed the money that he would receive from its sale.”
Marcus lets us become more aware of why we have chosen our homes and the things inside them.
“Unless we stop and consciously reflect upon it,” Marcus writes, “most of us are scarcely aware of how much our homes, as well as being functional settings for daily life, are containers for collections of memorabilia. Objects, pictures, furniture, posters, ornaments–all remind us of significant people, places, phases, experiences and values in our lives.”
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In the introduction to “Laura Ashley Color, Using Color to Decorate Your Home” (Harmony Books, $40), author Susan Berry declares: “People have become much more adventurous and knowledgeable since Laura Ashley was first in business, and color has emerged as the most important element in home design for the 1990s. This book will help you to understand color better, appreciate the subtleties of particular hues, and enhance your decorating skills in a variety of different ways.”
While other books on color have promised just as much, this one does deliver, and in a generous manner. And the colors covered are surprising.
When traditional Laura Ashley decoration is mentioned, most people have an image of a romantic country bedroom decorated with small floral prints. Ashley became known for a distinctive country look of blue-with-white-pattern wallpaper complemented by white-with-blue-pattern curtains.
However, this large-format, 208-page hardback, the latest in the popular Laura Ashley home-decorating series, focuses on the most recent trends for the ’90s, including the faded floral look of tones aged by the sun, taupe as the basis for a whole range of neutral colors, and the bright, rich colors of hot climates from India to the south of France.
It’s whatever works for you, and the book is especially helpful in explaining the psychology of color and how it can make you feel. There are 180 stunning, full-color photographs that help get the points across.
The book is practical and shows readers how small design details can change the appearance and feel of an entire room.
Chapters focus on shades of five main colors: neutrals/naturals, yellows, greens, blues and reds.
There are hundreds of useful tips on how to brighten any room in the house:
“Fresh and cheerful, light green is one of the easiest colors to live with. … It is one of the best colors to use as a foil for the rich tones of mahogany and other fine woods.”
There also are illustrated, step-by-step directions for projects such as crackle-glazing a lamp base or fabric-painting pillows.
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“Writers’ Houses” by Francesca Premoli-Droulers, with photography by Erica Lennard (The Vendome Press, $50), is a classy “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” in the literary world.
And admit it, aren’t we all curious about the domestic environments once inhabited by the great international writers of our time? The author, a journalist who has been editor in chief of both Italian Vogue and Casa Vogue, and acclaimed photographer Erica Lennard take us on a tour of the dwellings of 20 great literary icons. The architectural range is a diverse one, from W.B. Yeats’ Thoor Ballylee, a medieval stone tower in Ireland’s County Galway, to the Cubist Modernism of the extraordinary light-filled house that Italian novelist Alberto Moravia built in the early 1970s along the Mediterranean shore one hour south of Rome.
Though this is an elegant book, some of the text is deliciously gossipy. For example, regarding Ernest Hemingway’s Key West, Fla., home, the author tells us that second wife Pauline Pfeiffer believed the dilapidated wreck the newly married Hemingways bought had a curse on it because it was so somber and in need of repair. Determined to make her marriage work, she turned it into a surprisingly serene, masculine, spare retreat for her husband, filled with his books and trophies of the hunt. To please him, Pfeiffer even had a huge salt-water swimming pool constructed, the first of its kind in the Keys. But Hemingway saw the pool as a lure to keep him at home and tossed a penny into the water: “You may as well take my last penny too,” he said.
The photos are intimate, as if one were peering into a window from parted garden fronds. Some are deeply moody, almost as if some part of the soul of the writer still lingers there, as in Rungstedlung, the ancestral manor house in Denmark to which Isak Dinesen, Baroness von Blixen, returned in the 1930s after the failure of her coffee plantation in Africa.
Other homes project different qualities, such as the grandiloquent interior Mark Twain’s Hartford, Conn., gingerbread mansion, which he filled with dark, heavy, opulent furniture and a great deal of decoration. But we learn a secret; while this grand palace was what Mark Twain presented to the world as his home, he would shut himself up in an octagonal-shaped cabin high on a hillside, removed from the distractions of loved ones, where he wrote such great classics as “Huckleberry Finn.”
Among other writers’ residences this book visits are those of poets Dylan Thomas, Jean Cocteau and Gabriele D’Annunzio, and novelists Lawrence Durrell and William Faulkner.
This is an extraordinary book, filled with rich insights and lavish illustrations, a must for the person who is conscious of the links between literature, culture and the art of living.
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“The Feng Shui Kit, The Chinese Way to Health, Wealth and Happiness at Home and at Work” by Man-Ho Kwok with Joanne O’Brien (Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc., $29.95) is a kit to develop the spiritual side of interior and exterior design and decorating.
It contains everything you need to know to practice the art of perfect placement, which is how the 3,000-year-old Chinese art of feng shui (pronounced fung shway) is defined.
The kit includes a specially designed compass and a ruler, which are supposed to help the user discover lucky and unlucky directions, forces and colors for every living situation. The accompanying 112-page book contains full instructions (which will have to be carefully read to absorb the subtleties of this esoteric art).
Drawing upon the wisdom of one of the fully qualified feng shui masters living in the West, Man-Ho Kwok, the text reveals the best position for anything, such as a bed or desk, and the formulas for deciding upon the location and positioning of your new home.
For centuries, the Chinese have used this ancient system to create harmonious surroundings to bring them happiness and prosperity, and now it’s available to us all.
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“Warren MacKenzie, An American Potter” by David Lewis (Kodansha International, $45) is a large-format, 192-page paperback with photographs by Peter Lee. Although a paperback, the quality of Lee’s photos of MacKenzie’s work is superb, intimate and detailed.
This is a rare opportunity to look into the world of contemporary ceramics and into the pottery of one of America’s greatest living potters and his ability to imbue pieces with a quality that makes it something to gaze upon forever without tiring.
MacKenzie should be of special interest to local artists, for he was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 1940s. He became an inspiration for a whole generation of craftspeople because his approach was not the search for the perfect pot but an exploration of the task at hand. Rather than sit on museum shelves, he intended his pottery to be used in everyday ways: cooking and serving food; drinking tea, coffee and wine; storing grains, lentils, rice, beans, herbs and mushrooms; and holding flowers and grasses.
