Eternal Bohemian Bill
Opinion Interiors
Look to books for interiors inspiration
I’d like to look at some books for interiors inspiration, having had enough of Pinterest boards. Any recommendations? Amen! Look, the internet is a magical thing. I am forever ending up down rabbit holes online and on Instagram, where I come across images of fabulous rooms, people and places that I previously had no idea about. It’s a joy, actually, getting lost, clicking from profile to profile and discovering.
But I often find that the same images get shared and shared again. Horizons need to be broadened. Nothing can beat the joy of finding inspiration in physical objects such as books.
I love the hunt, tracking down old and obscure tomes that I have either read about or have been recommended to me. The best experience in terms of being open to inspiration must surely involve entering a second-hand bookshop (or browsing a good dealer’s website, although this is never as enjoyable) and seeing what takes one’s fancy.
I love leaving it up to the gods (or, more likely, dealers and shopkeepers) to place the right book in front of me. I’m always adding to my library. Below are three of my current favourites, which I’ve been constantly grabbing from my shelves and flicking through over the past few months. I hope they might inspire you to take a look too, at these in particular, perhaps, but also to begin your own journey of exploration.
Living in Vogue by Judy Brittain and Patrick Kinmonth (1985) is a legendary bible of style. Its blurb reads: “A house with true style perfectly complements its owner’s character and way of life.” This statement rather neatly sums up what I try to hammer home with this column. Forget trends, our homes should reflect our interests and passions — a simple notion, really.
The authors reveal places where style abounds — the homes of “architects, writers, cooks, gossips, painters and potters”. We’re talking the likes of Laura Ashley, Craigie Aitchison, Grace Coddington and David Hockney.
And golly, there is so much to love, from the late, hallowed dealer Christopher Gibbs’ romantic priory in Kent to the swimming pool at Faringdon House in Oxfordshire, its waterline marked by a pair of rare Elizabethan wyverns, to Aitchison’s perfectly plain, bright-pink fireplace in South Kensington. Snap up a copy immediately.
Living Well: The New York Times Book of Home Design and Decoration, edited by Carrie Donovan (1981), is about the myriad ways to — well — live well. It offers advice on living well in the kitchen; with art; in a garden; above a shop; and, of course, with abandon.
Inside, there is a terribly chic Parisian apartment — belonging to Paloma Picasso, its salon a hazy blur of ice-blue silk, white fluffy carpet, pale panelling and chrome — but there is also a camper-van interior comprising crochet cushions, a stained-glass window and even a small “wine cellar”. I love its cross-section of examples from the grand to the humble, all showing how much fun we can have, if we think outside the box.
How They Decorated: Inspiration from Great Women of the Twentieth Century by P Gaye Tapp (2017) gives readers an idea of how 16 tastemakers approached interior decoration. Divided into four sections including “fashionably chic” and “unconventional eye”, the book is illustrated with vintage photography and watercolour renderings, giving it a gloriously romantic feeling.
I’m all about Elsa Schiaparelli’s “shocking glamour” — her apartment on Paris’s Left Bank featured a diamond-quilted sofa (need, immediately) and a screen designed by one of my favourite artists and designers, Christian Bérard.
Turn to magazines, too: I long to find a well-priced collection of Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors, founded and edited by Joseph Holtzman and published between 1997 and 2004. The magazine eschewed conventional luxury, instead showcasing the unusual. Fred A Bernstein wrote in The New York Times that Holtzman “believed that an igloo, a prison cell or a child’s attic room (adorned with Farrah Fawcett posters) could be as compelling as a room by a famous designer”.
This idea is important. While I do find myself poring over and taking inspiration from rooms created by designers (some of which I have mentioned here), I enjoy being reminded that inspiration really can present itself anywhere, so please do not feel the need to limit yourself to books marketed as interior design tomes.
You might find yourself inspired by the description of a room in a novel; you may discover a brilliant colour combination in a book on gardening. My advice? Set aside an hour or so, make a pilgrimage to a good second-hand bookshop (before they all disappear, God forbid), get lost among the shelves and wait for inspiration to strike like lightning bolts.
If you have a question for Luke about design and stylish living, email him at lukeedward.hall@ft.com. Follow him on Instagram @lukeedwardhall
We love rustic second hand objects from furniture to pottery to tools that provide us with first hand emotions. It is sad to watch lovely designed red brick homes being destroyed for lego boxes with clad exterior …
On Kagaroo Island there is a lovely spot not too far from the Seal Bay called Vivonne Bay and the best place to enjoy their whiting burger … in this little general store of a gem I came across an amazing story about a certain photographer by similar French influenced name - Vivian.
One wonders if Vivian Maier would even bother to take any images of those legos spreading as duplexes in around urban Sydney and its suburbs in 2022. Maier photographed the urban human landscape over the course of three decades. Her preferred subjects were children, the poor, the marginalized, and the elderly, some of them aware of her and some not. The way Howell Avenues are going there soon will not be any trees or red roofs left in Sydney …
In a documentary ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ we hear her rather grand and slightly French voice - declaring: ‘Well I suppose nothing is meant to last for ever. We have to make room for other people. (As life) is a wheel. You get on, have to go to the end.’
With a twin-lens Rolleiflex camera held inconspicuously at hip-height, Maier captured fleeting moments and turned them into something extraordinary. One scowling lady fixes another’s wrinkled veil; a child with grimy cheeks and tear-filled eyes defiantly crosses her arms in front of a window display of draped gloves; a nun waits in the shadows; a prostrate inebriate cups his forehead; a young man rides an absurdly large horse under the El. Doorways, parking spots, bus stops, industrial neighborhoods, movie-theater box offices, city parks, suburban dead ends, train platforms, empty restaurant tables, storefronts, newspaper stands—she photographed the in-between, unexamined places.
