Based on the principle that decorating doesn't have to be time-consuming or expensive, this book is an invaluable guide to creating simple yet elegant schemes and offers inspirational images and practical ideas, whether readers want to redecorate a whole house or simply sheer up a tired living room. 200 full-color photographs and 12 four-color artworks.
Mary Gilliatt (born 1935) is the author of some 43 books, almost all of them on various aspects of interior decoration though her Dictionary of Architecture and Interior Design (Watson Guptil, 2004) does, of course, appertain to architecture as much as decorating and her 'Fabulous Food and Friends (Pen & Sword/Remember When, 2008) is a memoir based around lunch and dinner parties given in the 1960s and 70s.
A couple of years ago, she went into a furnishings store on Madison Avenue and saw to her amazement her first book 'English Style' (Bodley Head/Viking, 1967) displayed on a plinth. Proudly admitting that she was the author she received the riposte from the owners that they thought she had died years ago. Notwithstanding she is still working as an interior designer and consultant as well as writing and working on her new blog: 'Lifestyle with Mary Gilliatt'.
She had the first TV decorating series in the UK for ITV in 1979, called 'Home and Design'. And interestingly, over a decade later, the first TV decorating series in the US, for PBS called 'Decorating with Mary Gilliatt. She remarks that it was extremely hard, at that time, to get TV companies to agree that the public would be interested in the subject, but look at the plethora of such programs now. "It does not do', she remarks ruefully, 'to be first'. She also tried unsuccessfully in the 1990s to persuade publishers to include DVDs with decorating books, again to no avail. But again look what is happening now with publishers like Pearson etc. So in her case, at least, plus ca change is not the same thing.
