House Beautiful Details (Great Style Series) [Hardcover]

Sally Clark (Author), Louis Oliver Gropp (Author, Editor), Margaret Kennedy (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Series: Great Style Series | Publication Date: April 1996

Any designer will tell you a successful room depends on accents that are well thought out. This book is brimming with ideas for using accessories to enrich and enliven every room of the house. How to arrange and group accessories on every type of surface is explored, and 130 rich color photos bring all these design lessons to vibrant life.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

House Beautiful takes the mystery out of selecting and displaying these accents by exploring the five simple guidelines of shape, scale, texture, color, and finish that are the major criteria in all professional design decisions: which pieces belong together, how many of them are enough or too much, what background is best for paintings, how to add drama to an arrangement.

Each page is brimming with ideas for enlivening every room with the beauty of nature, with favorite collectibles or serious collections, even with personal mementos and everyday items. More than one hundred rich color photographs of homes throughout the country bring all these design lessons to vibrant life. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

House Beautiful has reigned as America's leading decorating and style magazine in the United States for more than 100 years. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 141 pages
• Publisher: Hearst Books; 1st edition (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688125883
• ISBN-13: 978-0688125882
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,387,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Vignettes of Well-Furnished Interiors, July 24, 2008

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Classicdude (River City) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: House Beautiful Details (Great Style Series) (Hardcover)

These views, often showing a corner of a room or the area around a fireplace, are from the pages of HOUSE BEAUTIFUL magazine during the first half of the 1990s. For the most part, the high-quality color photos are not focused on details as much as they are vignettes showing an interesting part of the room. This can be frustrating for those wanting to see more of a room as well as those who would truly like to see close-up details. But those seriously interested in interiors will likely find notable touches to be savored. There is little text of any consequence and no index, but there is a listing of interior designers whose work appears in the book.

The rubbed, painted stripes of Thomas Jayne's Living Room walls is shown as is Sam Blount's showhouse Sitting Room with a panelled effect created with a wallpaper border. Sister Parish's former assistant Libby Cameron creates an homage to her idol with her own Living Room decorated with slipcovers, a quilt, a striped rug, and trompe l'oiel painted valances. Stephen Sills & James Huniford use a ladder to create a bookcase in a showhouse Living Room. One of Mario Buatta's most published showhouse Living Rooms is shown with a glorious giltwood mirror over the fireplace having invitations and postcards sticking out of the frame.

As with all of this series under the direction of then-editor Louis Oliver Gropp, the appeal of the book would probably be greater to those with sophisticated tastes of the traditional sort. But with prices ranging at this time to one cent to one dollar, one might consider ordering a stack for host/hostess gifts.