Reading the text for each photograph gives the reader the sense of sitting through lectures in interior design theory, all in the comfort of your own home!
What a treat! What a treasure! And what a resource!
Our goal here is not to critique the design or reasoning the designers used to create their space. Some of it is questionable.
Our goal is to introduce you to this resource of design that should be on the shelves or coffee tables in the home of any lover of interior design and Designer Show Houses.
Over 250 professionally decorated rooms are presented in the 224 pages and 513 color photographs of this book, written by Tina Skinner, Melissa Cardona, and Nancy Ottino. The book is published by Schiffer Books of Surrey, England.
Included are views from the Vassar Show House, Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts, Charleston Symphony Orchestra League Showhouse, and many others.
Occasional typos are unfortunate but not distracting.
Designer showhouses are a wonderful opportunity for professional and design resources to show off their talent to the community. Designers, this one time in the year, can create a space that reflects their own taste, not cater to the whim of an uneducated or uncultured client. The designer can decorate a room, to a theme or around a setting or collection, with no thought that the space actually has to be lived in.
The photos in the book are all professonal. The color is, in some cases, distracted from the description in the text. The brief text accompanying each photo gives the designer's rationale for the space and explains the unique features of the rooms, materials used, and the origin of some special pieces used.
This book serves as an excellent point of inspiration for homeowners. Many of the interiors are "over the top" with voluminous silk and tasseled bed hangings, imported carrera marble countertops in a 1000 square foot kitchen, imported, custom-designed Swarovski crystal chandeliers, or treasured French, English, or Italian antiques. But every photo has some idea that can be applied to even the most modest of homes.
Arrangement of accessories, color combinations, placement of furniture in a room, and creative flowing traffic patterns through use of color, are applicable to many homes.
It's interesting to see how design expectations change from year to year. What seemed fantastic one year quickly becomes passé.
The directory at the back of the book] is a great resource for Showhouses across the United States. Websites are noted so that the reader can get more information on the dates and locations of Designer Show Houses in their area.
This book includes Show Houses from 1999 to 2003. The authors promise a follow-up. I can hardly wait!