The English Room [Hardcover]

Chippy Irvine (Author), Keith Irvine (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2001

The English Room takes you on a room-by-room exploration of the English home, contrasting town with country life, rooms designed for pleasure with those for more practical needs, and rooms meant to receive visitors with those that are private retreats. Country cottages and London flats, drawing rooms and kitchens all conjure up the essence of English life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Chippy Irvine is Features Editor at Design Times, has contributed numerous articles to The World of Interiors, Harper's Bazaar and many other lifestyle magazines, and has written several books including The Town House, Remarkable Residences and Second Homes, so he's extremely well qualified to undertake this study of the 'English' home decoration style. The book is divided into two main sections, town and country, and within each there are individual chapters on the different rooms of the house, exploring their role and look. Irvine supplies a wealth of historical detail on architecture, building and period style and custom alongside the practical plans and suggestions for best use of space and colour. Town and city styles are contrasted in a room-by-room tour, and the styles of key designers and decorators are compared in a broad overall look at just what it is that makes the quintessential English style. The rooms described are in both public and private houses, affording a privileged view of properties where considerable time, money and expertise have been spent on design and layout. While it is not perhaps the definitive guide to recreating a period room, it does give many insights into the problems that might be encountered and some interesting and innovative solutions. There is a comprehensive index, a useful list of properties to visit and a selection of courses that might be of interest. The bibliography is impressive and details of relevant associations like the Historic Houses Association and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings are also listed. With outstanding specially commissioned photographs by Christopher Simon Sykes, this is an accessible and attractive book that should prove interesting to both the professional interior designer and to the enthusiastic homeowner wishing to impose a distinctive stamp on their property. (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Chippy Irvine is a contributing editor for Art & Antiques and the author of nine books, including two for Bulfinch. Her husband, Keith Irvine, is an eminent interior designer with the renowned New York design firm, Irvine Fleming.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch; 1 edition (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082122705X
• ISBN-13: 978-0821227053
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 9.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,475,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sumptuous overview of English decorative style, August 26, 2002

By 

Catherine S. Vodrey (East Liverpool, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The English Room (Hardcover)

Chippy Irvine's "The English Room" is a sumptuous overview of English decorative style. She is a stunningly effective teacher, deftly combining in very little space English decorative history, English furniture and architectural styles, and the uniquely warm English touch with fabrics, floor coverings, and drapery. The text is a miniature but very thorough education, and a delightful stroll through centuries of English history.

The photographs are something to behold. Photographer Christopher Simon Sykes has presented a panoply of different takes on classically English style with a sober, all-seeing eye. Nothing is prettied up--even a romantic candlelit dining room is presented in a straightforward manner--so that we are left to make up our own minds without Sykes' style being the thing we notice first about the pictures.

Everything the frustrated Anglophile/decorator could want is contained within these pages. Irvine neatly divides the book in two--City (think Rex Harrison's home in the 1964 film version of "My Fair Lady") and Country (think Emma Thompson's place in either "Howards End" or "Sense & Sensibility"). Within these areas, she covers front halls, bedrooms, dining rooms, kitchens, and even bathrooms. How great-looking can a bathroom be? Well, the most beautiful bathroom I think I have ever seen in my life is featured on p. 171. It may also be one of the most beautiful ROOMS I've ever seen, featuring as it does tall, divided-light mirrors which appear to be windows; a plain white tub surrounded with black, grey-streaked marble; pilasters and pediments a-plenty, but all covered with a restrained chalk white; dentil molding and paneled doors; and a perfectly handsome paneled toilet which would be perfectly at home in a living room in a lesser home. Oh, yes, and let's don't forget the curvaceous bronze and crystal chandelier. It sounds over the top, but it is perfectly composed, a lovely cameo of a room. It ably embodies the idea that good design is never wasted, no matter how unimportant the room or how poorly it is sited. Chippy Irvine continues to make that point, and many others, throughout the pages of this delightful and handsome book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars don't judge this book by its cover, March 19, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The English Room (Hardcover)

I, too, thought this book would be the penultimate guide to English style. That would only be true however, if one believes English style to be unrelentingly grim, grim, grim. All the photographs (and there were fewer than one might have wished) were of dark interiors and unwelcoming, depressing rooms. Maybe Chippy Irvine could have just explored her husband Keith's work. This book does not represent English style at all, to my mind, despite its misleading cover. Glad I didn't pay full price for it.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Did not like the book., July 31, 2003

By 

Derya (ÿSTANBUL Turkey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The English Room (Hardcover)

This book has nothing common with the classical English style if you are looking for it. It has dark, gloomy and boring room photographs. But, it has a useful information in the introduction part as it explains the history and challenges in English decoration style from early periods until now.