Eclectic Style in Interior Design [Hardcover]

Carol Meredith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1998

A beautiful, full-colored guide to designing or decorating the home by mixing styles, whether traditional or contemporary. "Eclectic Style" shows how designers combine modern furnishing with family heirlooms. Lush, color photographs accompany inspiring ideas on how to mix: old with new: traditional design with accents of contemporary furnishings new with old: contemporary with traditional accents and/or antiques collection of art, antiques, family heirlooms, or decorative objects international styles: East meets West and other cross-cultural combinations the signature element, one large piece, with other furniture

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carol Meredith writes about interior design and architecture for magazines, newspapers, and professional design firms. During her fifteen years in the field, she has served as managing editor for "Texas Homes magazine" and home and garden editor for "New England Living". Her articles have also appeared in "Design Times", "Boston" magazine, and the "Boston Globe". She is the author of the recent book, "Eclectic Style in Interior Design". Ms. Meredith lives in New Hampshire with her husband, David Reynolds, and stepdaughters Anne and Aleisha

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface: Looking at the rooms featured in "Eclectic Style", I am fascinated by the stories they tell. When design elements have been culled over the years from various styles and sources, an interior environment reads like the autobiography of the person who lives there. Every collected object, every angle, every corner is another page of the narrative. In your own home, an eclectic approach to design offers the same potential for revealing who you are. Where did you come from? What are the roots from which your life emerged? A colorful stack of patchwork quilts speaks eloquently of a great aunt who staunchly made the most of a little. An elegant Federal-era sofa and photographs of solemn forebears - men in stovepipe hats and women clad in lace and frills - remind another person of family roots in urban high society. In my own living room, my grandfather's handmade wooden toolbox, now polished and in a place of honor, calls to mind his humble, patient ways. Passed through generations, heirlooms such as these carry the spirit of those who have touched them along the way and help to tell the story of one's origins.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 3499 pages
• Publisher: Rockport Publishers; 1St Edition edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564964132
• ISBN-13: 978-1564964137
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 9.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,213,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great help for a 1920s duplex, September 5, 2000

By 

K. Larrabee "k_elle" (soCAL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eclectic Style in Interior Design (Hardcover)

This is a great read for anyone struggling with a living space that presents unique architectural challenges, spacing constraints, and ambition to create an artistic and aesthetically pleasing living area. I bought this book while redecorating my duplex, which was built in 1926. The book was quite helpful with such items as combining old furniture with new pieces, modern art with classic or traditional interiors, and gave me a general sense of balance in terms of color, space and form vs. function. Specific areas it helped me with was what to do with some rather large modern painting I had, what lamps to get with glass coffee tables, and color schemes in older living spaces. I would recommend this book for anyone wanting an individual, artsy living area that will allow for your love of antique, art, and unique individual pieces. There is not a lot of text, but the photos are terrific.

2.0 out of 5 stars for ultimillionaires and billionaires only, November 3, 2011

By 

carol irvin "carol irvin" (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eclectic Style in Interior Design (Hardcover)

this book was a huge disappointment. i've always mixed styles in my home and was eager to see someeone else's results. what i discovered were rooms with art works suitable for a top flight museum, vases straight out of a museum's oriental collection, paired with top of the line furniture, carpets and floors plus views of the ocean. if you can't make a room look like a mini museum with all of this, there is something wrong with you. all it needed as the finishing touch were secuity guards and alarms.

naturally i can't picture living in any of this. i feel as if i am looking at these rooms behind a velvet rope. these are rooms designed to be exhibited, not lived in. i can easily picture donald trump living in any of these rooms but not any regular person. this is eclectic only for someone who buys everything at sothby's through his agent.