The Way Home: Reflections on American Beauty [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Bilhuber (Author), William Abranowicz (Photographer)

Book Description

Release date: September 20, 2011

Jeffrey Bilhuber offers a look into intimate rooms fitting for today.   Jeffrey Bilhuber, the decorator of choice for the creative elite-including fashion editors, designers, and musicians-presents his most recent projects, all of which exemplify the hallmarks of his inimitable style: flashpoints of inspiration from the past that embrace tradition while being rooted in the way we live today.    
Perhaps like no other contemporary decorator, Bilhuber has been a barometer of change, and this book marks a new, more relaxed evolution of his style. In this beautifully photographed book, Bilhuber shows that high style can (and should) encompass effortless comfort-interiors where families big or small can take pleasure in easy spaces that are brilliant amalgams of new and old.  Every house tells a charming story of the family that inhabits it, and each room expertly showcases Bilhuber’s signature touches-a novel use of color (from vibrant palettes to more muted ones) and consummate attention to detail, with every element of a room attended to. Featuring projects from around the country-from urban townhouses and lofts to oceanfront cottages and country estates-Bilhuber’s work appeals to a wide range of tastes as he encourages every reader to embrace their unique vision to create cozy spaces as deeply personal as they are practical.     
 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The famously theatrical Bilhuber can be arch and funny, but is always dead serious about design integrity." ~New York Magazine

"In this beautifully photographed book, Bilhuber shows that high style can—and should—encompass effortless comfort. Every house tells a charming story of the family that inhabits it, and each room expertly showcases Bilhuber’s signature touches—a novel use of color and consummate attention to detail, with every element of a room attended to. Featuring projects from around the country, Bilhuber’s work appeals to a wide range of tastes as he encourages every reader to embrace their unique vision to create cozy spaces as deeply personal as they are practical." ~Editor at Large

About the Author

Jeffrey Bilhuber founded his firm in 1984. Many of his clients are themselves trendsetters: Anna Wintour, Iman and David Bowie, Elsa Peretti, and Mariska Hargitay. His work has been published in more than fifty design books as well as every major national and international shelter magazine. William Abranowicz is a world-renowned photographer and artist whose work has appeared in every major shelter magazine.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (September 20, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847835731
• ISBN-13: 978-0847835737
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 1.2 x 11 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #344,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reflections on The Way Home September 24, 2011

By L. M. Keefer TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you believe that too much of decorating today is about "constructing domestic fictions about desired lifestyles" as designer Jeffrey Bilhuber does, you may appreciate his new book THE WAY HOME. It features 12 design projects from NYC townhouses to a Nantucket cottage to a Pennsylvania fieldstone home. Bilhuber's rooms get at what is missing in some design today: we are people with a past. Bilhuber views design as storytelling; our homes should be "narratives of self." He advocates for democratic interiors that reconcile "wildly disparate elements" such as "high and low, rare and common, handsome and homely across the spectrum of cultures and periods". If decorating occasionally loses its way, Bilhuber believes the way home is to listen carefully, as a designer, to the client--to hear the heartbeat of what we find meaningful and beautiful.

A word of caution: some of the rooms in this book may have too many "wildly disparate" and "homely" elements for the average reader. What do the rooms in this book look like? Original, soulful, moody, murky, atmospheric, visionary, impish, flashes of genius are some of the words that come to my mind. Handsome elements I loved in his rooms: corner banquettes, japanned furniture, tiger-print fabric, bullion-fringed sofas and coverlets, tufted chairs and headboards, skirted tables, a harlequin chair, cottage furniture, diverse floral prints, colorful tole sconces, painted floors, curtained doorways, glorious antiques and fetching Vermeer colors. I love the cover room which reaches into the past--you can picture Proust sitting in an orange chair brushing madeleine crumbs off his hands before he reaches for his tea cup. Yet the fresh colors and spirit are definitely 21st century; Henry James, Virginia Woolf and David Bowie could happily party in these rooms. There's a Bloomsbury Group bohemian vibe in some while others resemble interiors in Sargent's paintings complete with children.

The "disparate" and "homely" style elements which may be provocative and controversial in his rooms? An abundance of scattered pillows occasionally spilling onto floors, cheek-to-jowl furniture placement, clashing patterns and colors, minimal linkage and repetition for harmony, some dissonance and atonality in rooms, eensie-weensie art above large sofas, rooms which look like the morning after a party, hanging beads, a possible missing focal point, scale variation such as dainty tables paired with voluptuous sofas, mini-tchotchkes on the mantels such as herb jars?, some claustrophobic furniture arrangements, orphaned plants from the garden club's plant sale, and dishevelment which borders on some folks' idea of chaos. But isn't that home sometimes? For myself, I like Bilhuber's design best as created in his New York country home and wish that home were included in this book. Some rumple is divine. The photography by William Abranowicz capturing the handsome and homely elements in this book will make you catch your breath. It is luminous.

When artists take risks with classic design elements, as this book does, it provokes a polarity in reactions; you'll probably see an equal amount of one and two star as four and five star reviews with not many in between. I love the concept behind the book, even if some rooms are jarring for my taste. If you like irreverent design, this may be a 5 star book for you.

If this book is a bit renegade tugging us in the right direction away from perfect, static and occasionally soulless rooms featured in magazines and design books to a more rumpled, imperfect, welcoming comfort, then bravo! If it inspires us to look to our memories like a well-loved and well-stocked attic for what we find meaningful and lovely, and express it tangibly in our homes, it accomplishes its purpose. It should prompt lively debate in design circles as innovative art does. That's positive. Let the conversation begin. It may stretch the parameters of your design sensibility. You'll have to judge for yourself if the style inside is the way home for you. If it's not, you sense Bilhuber hopes it provokes you to find your own way home.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing September 25, 2011

By Beth Wilkinson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

It's been quite a dry spell in between decorating books that have nudged me to write a critic. This is an outstanding book. Mr. Bilhuber is a master of color and pattern, and it is so refreshing to see rooms that not only reflect the owner, but the designer as well. I am so tired of beige and predictable. This book has page after page of beautiful photography and inspiration. It is a new favorite.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Enormously creative and gives me leeway to mix it up a bit more. January 18, 2012

By Mary Ashby

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Bilhuber is unlike any other designer I'm familiar with. As I collect my own little design library, I particularly enjoyed his book The Way Home. I have not read any of his others. His use of color is especially intriguing, not a lot of beige rooms here! The color balance is key in all his rooms. The homes he uses to illustrate his principles here seem much more personal than those in other design books and, if you can't replicate his designs easily because details are so ideosyncratic to the owners, you can well imagine your own personal treasures in their place. My one real criticism is the number of rooms where floor treatments were rumpled to the point of representing a danger. No old ladies better visit his clients! This kind of thing just drives me wild ... like putting bowls of lemons in a bedroom, or the umpteenth sunburst mirror. A floor cloth strewn across a traffic area screams "for effect", not "a real person lives here." That being said, the photos of his own home are especially wonderful. You can't take in his rooms with one sweeping glance, you have to look deeply. And over and over again. Worth the Amazon price for sure. Mary Ashby