The Reading Room
The Reading Room
The books behind the reference: where the language of antique-led interiors was written, and where to read it for yourself.
A point of view has a bibliography. These are the books and journals the rest of the site leans on: a working list, not a complete one, and one that will grow.
Foundations
The Decoration of Houses. The book that argued for architecture, proportion and restraint over upholstered excess, the root of the whole tradition.
The House in Good Taste. The early manifesto of light, comfort and the banishing of Victorian clutter, by the woman often called the first professional decorator.
An Illustrated History of Interior Decoration. A scholar's sweep from Pompeii to the nineteenth century: the long background to why old rooms feel as they do.
The English country house
The Inspiration of the Past & English Interiors 1790-1848. The Country Life historian who documented, more carefully than anyone, how English rooms were actually arranged and lived in.
John Fowler: The Invention of the Country-House Style. The making of the faded-grandeur look, through the man who codified it.
Nancy Lancaster: English Country House Style. Fowler's great client and collaborator, and the taste that ran through Colefax & Fowler.
Mlinaric on Decorating. The reticent, scholarly approach of one of the great decorators of historic houses.
The Italian imagination
Roomscapes: The Decorative Architecture of Renzo Mongiardino. The master of theatrical, hand-crafted historicism: the teacher behind Studio Peregalli, and the way into the Italian line.
The Invention of the Past. Rooms built from architectural memory, patina and craft, made to feel centuries old.
Grand Tour: The Worldly Projects of Studio Peregalli. The later survey, ranging across continents and periods.
The dealer's eye, the collector's room
The Private House. Part memoir, part philosophy of the room: among the most quietly influential design books of its generation.
Timeless Interiors & Living with Light. The case for original surface, patina and the dialogue between antique and contemporary.
Jacques Grange: Interiors. The range of the French decorator, who moves between periods without strain.
An Affair with a House. The American collected room, assembled over time, explained by one of its masters.
The Finest Rooms in America. A design historian's reading of the country's best interiors, with antique literacy throughout.
Journals & magazines
The World of Interiors. The closest thing in print to this site's sensibility: atmosphere, antiques and rooms that look collected rather than decorated.
Cabana. The maximal, pattern-rich, European counterpoint: lusher than anything else here, and a useful corrective to too much plainness.
The Magazine ANTIQUES. The long-running American journal of the decorative arts; scholarship rather than lifestyle.
Back to the rooms.
The reading is the background; the edit is the practice. Return to the designers, or to the principles that decide who belongs.