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- Verified Buyer
Great item.I'm usually a fan of House and Garden and considered it a real treat to be able to pick this book up for a few dollars, but sadly, page after page was simply an exercise in sensory overload with room collections that were overdone and extreme. So to borrow a line from the previous reviewer, "the effect was jarring"...and while I favor traditional interiors, this book had very little that I could appreciate and even less that I could translate into something for my own home.Dominique Browning, editor of HOUSE & GARDEN magazine, has a triumph on her hands with "House & Garden Book of Style." HOUSE & GARDEN has long been the sophisticated cousin to the more accessible HOUSE BEAUTIFUL, and that chicness is in evidence here. The HOUSE & GARDEN cool austerity--sometimes sacrificing warmth for hard-edged style, but many times not--is amply displayed throughout.The book covers a panoply of styles, from "Country Luxe" to "New International" to "Mid-Century Modern" and beyond. The shabby warmth of English-inspired rooms is covered, as is the prissier French look--but as HOUSE & GARDEN so often does, there is almost always a visual wrench thrown into the works to get your attention and make you rethink your assumptions about a particular genre. Perfectly making the point is the photograph on p. 25, which shows an 18th-century settee decorously covered in a taupe damask, above which hangs what appears to be a piece of Spirograph art made with screamingly bright primary oil paints. The effect is jarring--but it works.The thinking which goes into the decoration of these rooms is explored just as deeply as the looks themselves. Although photographs take up most of the room--as they should, since this is a case when a picture telling a thousand words is not only desirable, but necessary for instructing the reader--the text is informative and enlightening. The end result is that these profoundly individual rooms make their own cases, and what beautiful cases they make.Brilliant interior design book. Loved it and I paid 1p for it. Marvellous!The House and Garden BOOK of STYLE is very interesting with great detail and lots off great photographs.
