House & Garden Book of Style: The Best of Contemporary Decorating [Hardcover]

Dominique Browning (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2001

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of House & Garden, this fully illustrated book presents important contemporary decorating trends in stunning homes.

From one-room makeovers to complete renovations, home-decorating projects are flourishing across the country. House & Garden Book of Style explores seven of today's most popular looks, including the rustic charm of Country Luxe, the urban sophistication of New International, and the cross-cultural eclecticism of Bohemian Chic. Interweaving the stories of homeowners and the insights of professional decorators, each chapter features full-color pictures of four to six residences that typify the style, and the do's and don'ts of getting a style right.

The first book from House & Garden in more than 15 years, this is an irresistible combination of inspiration, innovative ideas, and practical know-how.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dominique Browning and the editors of House & Garden magazine celebrate the 100th anniversary of their shelter publication with House & Garden Book of Style, featuring contemporary trends. The magazine has documented traditional design and charted the progress of the essential elements of style "form, color, line, proportion, scale, texture, pattern, and material." Grouped according to updated classics, new international, country luxe, minimalism, bohemian chic, grand tour, and midcentury modern, the trends explored here are splendidly illustrated by the 250 full-color photos covering the breadth of possibilities.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of House & Garden, this fully illustrated book presents important contemporary decorating trends in stunning homes.

From one-room makeovers to complete renovations, home-decorating projects are flourishing across the country. House & Garden Book of Style explores seven of today's most popular looks, including the rustic charm of Country Luxe, the urban sophistication of New International, and the cross-cultural eclecticism of Bohemian Chic. Interweaving the stories of homeowners and the insights of professional decorators, each chapter features full-color pictures of four to six residences that typify the style, and the do's and don'ts of getting a style right.

The first book from House & Garden in more than 15 years, this is an irresistible combination of inspiration, innovative ideas, and practical know-how.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter (October 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609609289
• ISBN-13: 978-0609609286
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,176,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dominique Browning is a writer, editor and consultant in the newspaper and magazine fields. She blogs at SlowLoveLife.com.

She has worked with and written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, O, the Oprah magazine, Departures, Food &Wine, Travel & Leisure, Body + Soul, Wired and On Topic, among others. She writes a monthly column about environmental issues for the Environmental Defense Fund website.

Until November 2007, Browning was the editor-in-chief of House & Garden, a magazine of 950,000 readers. Browning began her career in 1977 working at Savvy and American Photographer magazines. She also worked at Esquire, Texas Monthly, Newsweek, and Mirabella magazine before joining Conde Nast.

Browning is the author of three books: Around the House and In the Garden: a Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement; Paths of Desire: the Passion of a Suburban Gardener; and Slow Love: How I Lost my Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness. She has also authored several books under the House & Garden brand.

Browning is a classically trained pianist, and also performed with Wesleyan's Javanese Gamelan orchestra. She is the mother of two sons and lives in New York and Rhode Island.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A handsome volume from a classic magazine, August 26, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: House & Garden Book of Style: The Best of Contemporary Decorating (Hardcover)

Dominique Browning, editor of HOUSE & GARDEN magazine, has a triumph on her hands with "House & Garden Book of Style." HOUSE & GARDEN has long been the sophisticated cousin to the more accessible HOUSE BEAUTIFUL, and that chicness is in evidence here. The HOUSE & GARDEN cool austerity--sometimes sacrificing warmth for hard-edged style, but many times not--is amply displayed throughout.

The book covers a panoply of styles, from "Country Luxe" to "New International" to "Mid-Century Modern" and beyond. The shabby warmth of English-inspired rooms is covered, as is the prissier French look--but as HOUSE & GARDEN so often does, there is almost always a visual wrench thrown into the works to get your attention and make you rethink your assumptions about a particular genre. Perfectly making the point is the photograph on p. 25, which shows an 18th-century settee decorously covered in a taupe damask, above which hangs what appears to be a piece of Spirograph art made with screamingly bright primary oil paints. The effect is jarring--but it works.

The thinking which goes into the decoration of these rooms is explored just as deeply as the looks themselves. Although photographs take up most of the room--as they should, since this is a case when a picture telling a thousand words is not only desirable, but necessary for instructing the reader--the text is informative and enlightening. The end result is that these profoundly individual rooms make their own cases, and what beautiful cases they make.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars the effect is jarring - and it DOESN'T work, November 16, 2009

By 

Beatrice R. ""Avid reader"" (Coastal California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: House & Garden Book of Style: The Best of Contemporary Decorating (Hardcover)

I'm usually a fan of House and Garden and considered it a real treat to be able to pick this book up for a few dollars, but sadly, page after page was simply an exercise in sensory overload with room collections that were overdone and extreme. So to borrow a line from the previous reviewer, "the effect was jarring"...and while I favor traditional interiors, this book had very little that I could appreciate and even less that I could translate into something for my own home.