Customer Reviews

Ethnic Interiors

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How do I love this book? Let me count the ways:

* 14 different ethnic themes are featured, categorized by continent and subcategorized by culture. These themes are: Cowboy, Native American, Mexican, Nordic, Celtic, Tyrolean, Mediterranean, Eastern Eropean, North African, Tribal, Gold Coast, Japanese, Indian, and Asiatic. Each theme is distinct, yet similar in the feeling of comfort and ease evoked in the featured rooms.

* Text describing regional features and differences,as well as full description of the interiors illustrated.

* Many richly colored photos with natural lighting. The light sources are sunlight, candlelight, and a few well placed ambient lowlights. Rooms that are naturally dark are not brightened by harsh studio lighting. The rooms are allowed to speak for themselves. Sunlight filters in at odd angles, leaving darkened corners and letting shadows fall where they will.

* The homes are all livable, believable. There are no sterile showroom model home interiors featured here. Each room looks as though the occupant just stepped out for a moment and will soon return.

* All these styles are easily achievable for almost anyone. Though undoubtedly some of the decorative elements are cherished antiques or expensive imports, the focus seems to be on the use of color, texture, random easily obtained materials, and imagination to produce very comfortable personalized results. The furniture is worn and aged, but cozy. Woodwork is dented and faded, but cared for and functional.

This book was exactly what I've been looking for, a simple and unfussy, well-illustrated book on ethnic design featuring real homes with real decor. The size of the book may be smallish, but it makes incredible use of it's spacial limitations. The inspiration found within the covers of this book is infinite. I highly recommend it.

This book is filled with the most wonderful photographs of so many different regions- Americas, Europe, Africa and the Far East. Along with 14 major deisign themes. Not only do the photos give the feel of the region but thay offer very valuable visual design elements. This is a concept driving book. I thoroughly enjoy this book every time I pick it up- I have owned it for a few years and continue to use it as a reference and inspiration. There is also a great directory for sources in the back. Designers will love this book as well as shelter book collectors- it's beautiful!

I finally got my own copy of Ethnic Interiors, after checking it out of the library countless times. This was previously a library book that was "withdrawn" and now it's happily in my own library.

My copy does not say "Decorating with natural materials" and I was looking for real ethnic interiors. So I found that this book was really by designers, trying to interpret their idea of ethnic interiors. This was not what I wanted. Also the layout of the book is odd - the full page photos are not of interiors so much as more like style pages, and the actual photos of interiors, which are of designers' homes, are fairly small so that I considered getting out my magnifying glass in order to see the details. There is a lot of writing and I began to wonder who she thought she was writing for.
The other odd thing is that these homes were seemingly all in the United States. Write an ethnic book from the comfort of your own country.....
So, it did not work for what I needed -- real visual resources.