Christmas At Designers Homes Across America

Book Description :

Almost 400 color images treat readers to dazzling holiday visions that leading designers have realized in their own homes--scenes usually reserved for family and friends. Be inspired by their decorating strategies and hands-on ingenuity while gleaning insider tips for preserving trees--both fresh and artificial--and caring for ornaments. Get the scoop on unusual color schemes and centerpieces. See how one designer used crushed red and silver ball ornaments as a light-catching base for glass vials of flowers, and a laundry-room tree whimsically decorated with miniature clothing-item ornaments. This treasure trove showcases one-of-a-kind holiday ideas from some of the nation's most talented interior designers, who share not only their aesthetic tastes but also family holiday rituals and favorite Christmas traditions.

Book Description :

Nothing reminds us of the good things in life—family, friendship, food, and good cheer—more than Christmas. With stunning images and illuminating text, award-winning photographer Peter Guttman offers a dazzling overview of the wintry landscapes, traditions, ceremonies, spectacles, and pastimes of the holiday season throughout the United States. Delve into the landscapes and streetscapes of Christmas in America and you can almost smell the frosted scent of snow-covered pines, of chestnuts roasting, and of family meals being shared. In the East, we find the spirit of the season in a cozy Vermont country inn, or an “army of elves” in a Philadelphia parade, or the sweeping grace of the sugar plum fairies in the Nutcracker Suite. In our heartland, we dogsled through a crystal wilderness in Minnesota, discover blazing bonfires in Louisiana, and explore regal plantations aglow in Mississippi. The snowy cliffs of the Grand Canyon, steam trains weaving high amongst the Rockies, the textured pueblos of New Mexico, the almost heavenly night sky of Utah’s Monument Valley, and the indescribable glazed beauty of Yosemite reflect the West. With these vistas, and more, Peter Guttman captures what is so magical about us and our land. Like the holiday season itself, Christmas in America is a treasure.

Book Description :

"What would Christmas be without lights, color, greenery, and glitter? Join leading professional designers on a tour of well-appointed private residences dressed in their festive best. The one-of-a-kind decorating schemes are a study in the art of using scale, shape, and color to play up the house's best features and create a look that's pulled together. Here are fresh design ideas for indoor and outdoor scenes, whether it's a glamorous staircase, pristine tree, perfectly wrapped piles of presents, or a simple, well-placed evergreen wreath. Representing a range of geographic locations and decorating philosophies, the designers share their tips, tricks, and traditions for celebrating the season in style, and in every room of the house."--Publisher's website.

Book Description :

A room-by-room journey through some of the most luxurious and glamorous homes in America Dallas-based interior designer Jan Showers returns to the concept ï¬?rst introduced in her bestselling book, Glamorous Rooms. Jan takes the reader through luxurious private residences across the United States room by room. This book invites readers into 20 never-before-photographed homes, in some of America’s most idyllic locales, including a glamorous New York apartment, a London townhouse in Belgravia, an architecturally signiï¬?cant house in Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, a historic residence in Austin, a country estate, a stunning home on Buffalo Bayou in Houston, a duplex apartment at The Mansion Residence in Dallas, and many more.

Book Description :

Painting your home yourself can be faster, more affordable and even easier than hiring professionals—but only if you get it right the first time. Painting Do-It-Yourself For Dummies, helps you do just that with easy-to-follow, step-by-step procedures for giving your, floors, walls, and ceilings the extreme makeover of your dreams. More than 500 photos and illustrations show you exactly how to perform each step of each procedure the right way and avoid drips, smudges, and ugly surfaces. You'll find out how to choose the best paint for the job, figure out how much paint you'll need, and use rollers, brushes, and other painting tools with skill and precision. Before you know it, you'll have the confidence and ability to tackle any household painting project with ease. You'll discover how to: Select the proper tools and materials for each painting job Choose colors that will work for you—now and for years to come Prepare your room and the surface for painting Make necessary wall and ceiling repairs before painting Brush up on painting basics Create faux finishes with shapes and patterns Use glazes to dazzling effect Bring out the beauty of wood trim, windows and doors Finesse furniture, frames, and other household items Complete with a handy list of dos and don'ts for perfecting your painting skills, Painting Do-It-Yourself for Dummies, gives you the guidance, tips, and information you need to get a professional-level outcome every time.

Book Description :

History is brought to life in many historic houses, especially at Christmas time, when special decorations help to welcome the social season and visiting guests. In this revised second edition, learn history and local customs through engaging text and over 420 color photos. Costumed guides interpret Christmas traditions in some of the thirty specially decorated houses that are featured from across America. Both magnificent estates and simple residences offer a variety of styles, tastes, and ideas to inspire your own celebrations. See preserved buildings with illuminated gardens, inviting dining halls, and stunning interiors. Enjoy the many efforts on display here that help to make the Christmas season a magical time of sharing, caring, and gratitude.

Book Description :

Globe and Mail National BestsellerEveryone should have a beautiful home. Quite simply, life is better when you live in a space you love, and giving people that joy is always gratifying. Internationally renowned interior designer Brian Gluckstein believes that elegant personal style can be achieved in any home. Brian Gluckstein: The Art of Home features a distinguished collection of homes that are at once luxurious, chic and livable. From a stylish New York apartment and a tailored beach house to a timeless Aspen chalet and a refined country estate, these stunningly designed homes reveal that a well-considered space is essential to both traditional and contemporary aesthetics. The beautifully photographed interiors are complemented with riveting anecdotes, inspiring quotes and style statements to reflect the importance of comfort and personal expression through form, function and decor.A carefully curated room can also feature a combination of statement pieces to create a successful living space. Ideal for anyone who loves design, Brian Gluckstein: Art of Home proves that luxury is about enjoying everyday things in a beautiful way.

Book Description :

A home of one’s own has always been a cornerstone of the American dream, fulfilling like nothing else the desire for comfort, financial security, independence, and with a little luck, even a touch of distinctive character, or even beauty. But what we have come to regard as almost a national birthright has recently begun to elude more and more prospective homebuyers. Where housing is concerned, affordable and well-crafted rarely exist together. Or do they? For years, founding editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine and noted architecture and design critic Karrie Jacobs had been confronting this question both professionally and personally. Finally, she decided to see for herself whether it was possible to build the home of her own dreams for a reasonable sum. The Perfect $100,000 House is the story of that quest, a search that takes her from a two-week crash course in housebuilding in Vermont to a road trip of some 14,000 miles. In the course of her journey Jacobs encounters a group of intrepid and visionary architects and builders working to revolutionize the way Americans thinks about homes, about construction techniques, and about the very idea of community. By her trip’s end Jacobs, has not only had a practical and sobering education in the economics, aesthetics, and politics of homebuilding, but has been spurred to challenge her own deeply held beliefs about what constitutes an ideal home. The Perfect $100,000 House is a compelling and inspiring demonstration that we can live in homes that are sensible, modest, and beautiful.

Book Description :

A valuable resource for design professionals and historians, this book chronicles the evolution of modern interior design in the United States throughout the 1930s. With more than 200 images and detailed descriptions, design historian Marilyn F. Friedman presents more than eighty interiors by forty-five designers, including Donald Deskey, Paul T. Frankl, Percival Goodman, Frederick Kiesler, William Lescaze, William Muschenheim Tommi Parzinger, Gilbert Rohde, Eugene Schoen, Kem Weber, set designers Cedric Gibbons and Joseph Urban, and industrial designers Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Teague, and Russel Wright. The book also highlights the work of women modernists who are practically unknown today, including Virginia Conner, Freda Diamond, Eleanor Le Maire, and Madame Majeska. Interiors cover the economic spectrum, from those created for wealthy patrons who embraced the modernist aesthetic, including Walter Annenberg, George Vanderbilt III, William Paley, and Abby Rockefeller Milton, to those designed with affordability in mind, including private commissions, as well as furniture and model rooms for manufacturers, design associations, and museum exhibitions. The book also profiles in detail entire model homes that highlighted new concepts in design and construction, such as Norman Bel Geddes¿ House of Tomorrow for Ladies¿ Home Journal, Macy¿s ¿Forward House,¿ Frederick Kiesler¿s ¿Space House¿ for the Modernage showroom, Eleanor Le Maire¿s ¿House of Planes¿ for Abraham & Straus, and the model houses at the 1933 and 1939 world¿s fairs held in Chicago and New York, respectively. The trajectory of American modern design during the 1930s was not linear. In rejecting the revivalism that had defined American design during the nineteenth century, the designers covered in this book forged something new-an American movement defined by simplicity, practicality, and comfort that embraced experimentation and variation in materials and style. An important survey of the early development of modern interiors in America, year by year.

Book Description :

Explore the soul of Maine in some three dozen of its most original, authentic, and evocative houses For several years, acclaimed photographer Maura McEvoy and art director Basha Burwell traveled the length and breadth of Maine in search of houses that capture the state's singular character. These are not designer houses; they are homes created by the people who live in them, from artists to writers to fishermen, distinctive for their ingenuity, originality, and fierce individuality. Many are unchanged, inhabited by generations of the same family; some are ingenious conversions. As Kathleen Hackett observes in her eloquant text, these are homes that have a kind of visual wealth that money can't buy, homes that define the very spirit of Maine.

Book Description :

'How We Live' is an intimate photographic journal of designers' and artists' homes and work spaces from around the world, including Mumbai, Beirut, Marrakech, Reykjavik, Mexico City, and Amsterdam, amongst others. American photographer Marcia Prentice travelled to each of the international cities to experience and present 'the soul' of a diverse selection of domestic spaces, revealing the unique spirit of each creative environment. The book includes homes shown in the context of both the pristine, more-established design cities as well as urban locales where economic disadvantage and strife impacts daily life. Each of the 18 featured homeowners provide a glimpse into their private, interior world to show us how the design and atmosphere created in one's own home can be the ultimate artistic canvas. AUTHOR: Marcia Prentice is an American photographer whose style captures the intersection of emotion and design in the home. Her photography has been featured in such publications as Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair Italia, and Casa International (Beijing). SELLING POINTS: * A lavishly illustrated travel journal or interior design book from interior photographer, Marcia Prentice, featuring 18 different international cities and homes * A look inside the private, domestic spaces of creative thinkers from around the world * A distinctive sourcebook for 'of-the-moment,' non-opulent global style and personalized interior design 250 colour

Book Description :

Storybook style, fairy tale, Disneyesque, Hansel and Gretel-these are all synonyms for what is surely the most delightful residential style of the twentieth century. With their romantic evocation of faraway lands and eras, storybook homes were created by architects and builders with a flair for theater, a love of fine craftsmanship, and above all a sense of humour-attributes that make them especially endearing to the jaded modern eye. The storybook style was born on the backlots of Hollywood in the 1920s, where brilliant set designers first learned to evoke the exotic architecture of medieval Europe and the Middle East. Movie-going Americans became fascinated with these settings, and architects and builders were quick to capitalise on this enthusiasm. The whimsical style soon spread from coast to coast, and the unforgettable results are portrayed here.

Book Description :

Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel was one of the most influential and ground-breaking fashion designers of the twentieth century. This beautifully illustrated biography tells her remarkable story in a unique and accessible way, examining how the homes and landscapes of her life relate to her work. From her childhood at the convent at Aubazine to her boutique and apartment on Rue Cambon in Paris and her villa, La Pausa, on the French Riveria, Chanel’s style was inspired and influenced by her environment. Emerging at a time that allowed women to be more independent, she designed clothes that let them be free. As she found fame, love and success, she used the memories of her past, and the way that she lived, to forge her own independence. Featuring designs, drawings, archive imagery and contemporary photography, Living with Coco Chanel provides a fascinating insight into Chanel’s life, work and legacy.

Book Description :

"For twelve years, David Monn's magical way of seeing the world has been available only to a privileged group of clients through his event‑planning firm in New York City. A state dinner at the White House, openings of the Tiffany flagship store and the Fontainebleau Hotel, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala, countless large‑scale birthdays and weddings and other celebrations--every lucky guest knows that there is no party like a Monn party. Building on one telling detail of a client's life--for a bride, it might be a favorite candy; for Frank Gehry, it might be cardboard--Monn creates a few unforgettable, carefully choreographed hours using scent, sound, sight, touch, and taste to create what he calls "one simple truth." It has to be "shared, lived, and felt" by everyone there. In this volume Monn introduces us to the people and places that have inspired him and taught him "to see"; he draws from his personal archive of 20,000 event photographs to show us how he puts his ideas to work; and he lets us into the private world of his spectacular Manhattan loft--which has never been published before"--

Book Description :

Through hundreds of inspiring photos and engaging text, the author describes what gives traditional homes their enduring appeal, and illustrates the creative work of builders who are forging the movement toward building new homes that capture old-home sensibility.

Book Description :

Who, exactly, is a haute bohemian? Leave it to the discriminating, gimlet eye of photographer Miguel Flores-Vianna, who enjoys an international, cult-like following. He has journeyed through four continents to capture an extraordinary group of fashion designers, landscape architects, artists and art historians, potters, and interior designers, where they live--country cottages, beach bungalows, canal-side lofts, and East Village apartments, as well as assorted estancias, ch teaux, and palazzi. Some of these spaces are grand, others are modest, but all are original, stylish, charming, and above all authentic, in the sense that they reflect their owners' care and taste. His work is introduced by Amy Astley, editor of AD.

Book Description :

In English Decoration, the acclaimed London-based architectural and interior designer Ben Pentreath presents a survey of the best of the English style. “English decoration is making a bit of a comeback these days, and Ben Pentreath is partly to thank—not just because he’s finessed the young Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s Kensington Palace flat.” Architectural Digest Eighteen homes, many of which have never been previously photographed, provide the source material for architectural and interior designer Ben Pentreath’s wide-ranging investigation of the classic English look. The houses include Ben’s homes in London and West Dorset, alongside those of Earls and artists, writers and architects, book designers and gardeners. The book is arranged room by room and Entrance Halls, Living Rooms, Kitchens and Dining Rooms, Bedrooms, and Bathrooms are each considered in turn, together with simple Rooms of Utility and spectacular Rooms of Display. The book begins with an essay on the English style in decoration and ends with an essential style directory, helping you to achieve the look wherever you live.

Book Description :

The first book to focus on the solo residential work of the visionary interior decorator Stephen Sills. Simultaneously classical and modern, Stephen Sills’s design work is a dialogue between past and present. Filled with luxurious fabrics, furnishings from across centuries, and unusual finishes, his work is polished, seemingly effortless, and quietly rich, with a muted color palette that serves as a brilliant foil for modern art. In this striking, meditative volume, the follow-up to his best-selling book Dwellings, Sills presents sixteen breathtaking homes, gorgeously photographed by the legendary François Halard, in locations as varied as a penthouse on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, a modern Aspen retreat, an estate on the North Shore of Long Island, and his own country house in Bedford, New York (dubbed the "chicest house in America" by Karl Lagerfeld). Common to them all is a sense of atmosphere, point of view, and soul—the sense of a master craftsman at work.

Book Description :

Here is Christmas decorating, history, architecture, and interior design wrapped in one sparkling package. Three-hundred and sixty-three gorgeous, inspiring images provide leisurely looks at historic house interiors magically decorated for Christmas. Begin with the Foreword by Christopher Radko, famed re-creator of vintage Christmas ornaments. Tour historic holiday homes from Filoli to Colonial Williamsburg, and look inside San Antonio's most beautiful house--the Spanish Governor's Palace. Marvel that a typical ranch-style house was home to two future US presidents, a first lady, and two governors. Visit the honeymoon home of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Enjoy the modest dwelling of Canadian WW I flying ace Billy Bishop, and tour the "castle" of Model A creator Edsel Ford. Some houses' Christmas décorations are period correct; others are joyfully au courant.

Book Description :

Following on the huge success of "Down South: Homes and Interiors in South Africa", writer Paul Duncan (former editor of Condé Nast House & Garden) and world-acclaimed photographer Fritz von der Schulenburg have again teamed up to produce a second book -- again bringing together a diverse and fascinating selection of South African homes all around the country, from high-flyer city homes on the Highveld to enviable Plettenberg Bay beach houses and Cape Dutch homesteads in Cape Town and the Winelands. This is a sumptuously illustrated book featuring many homes never seen before in print: celebrated historical homes include Groote Schuur, Stellenberg and Morgenster; there are modern architectural classics from Johann Slee and Andrew Makin; top game lodges, including the newly opened Samara in the Great Karoo and the Waters at Royal Malewane in the bushveld, world-class decorating from Graham Viney, Boyd Ferguson and Tessa Proudfoot. This is the book every homemaker will want to have at hand for inspiration and an ideal gift for anyone interested in 21st-century South African design and lifestyles.