Empire Stylebook Of Interior Design

Now for the first time in an inexpensive paperback edition: the "bible" of First Empire style in interior decor, one of the most important and influential sourcebooks in the history of French design, reprinted from the rare 1812 edition, and essential reading for interior designers, architects, and architectural and social historians.

From ancient Greece to Frank Lloyd Wright, studiola to smoking rooms, chimney boards to cocktail cabinets, and papier-mâché to tubular steel, the Encyclopedia of Interior Design provides a history of interior decoration and design from ancient times to the present day. It includes more than 500 illustrated entries covering a variety of subjects ranging from the work of the foremost designers, to the origins and function of principal rooms and furnishing types, as well as surveys of interior design by period and nationality all prepared by an international team of experts in the field. Entries on individuals include a biography, a chronological list of principal works or career summary, a primary and secondary bibliography, and a signed critical essay of 800 to 1500 words on the individual's work in interior design. The style and topic entries contain an identifying headnote, a guide to main collections, a list of secondary sources, and a signed critical essay.

Publisher Description

Interiors of Empire uses the methods of design history and material culture studies to analyze the domestic and public interiors of the British and local middle class during the heyday of the British Raj. It contrasts that space within contemporary discourse with analysis of historical evidence, the varying uses of such space, and relevant social practices. Through detailed discussion of these texts, spaces, objects, and practices, this study locates the domestic interiors and public spaces of the empire in the history of the British colonization of India. The book discusses the imagined barrier of the domestic against the local environment, the intrusions of the local and the effects of this on the British in India, and assesses the westernization of domestic and public spaces of the empire.

Delivers the inside story on 6,000 years of personal and public space. John Pile acknowledges that interior design is a field with unclear boundaries, in which construction, architecture, the arts and crafts, technology and product design all overlap.

Hundreds of excellent photographs, drawings and floor plans depict landscaping, interior and exterior decor. Text includes a wealth of information on how a house is built, with expert advice on walls, floors, ceilings, windows, balconies, fireplaces, plumbing, decorative hardware, paints, even architects' fees. Special portfolio of 60 houses in varied styles.

Most people recognize at a glance the extraordinarily graceful proportions of classical-style buildings such as London's Syon House and Athenaeum Club and the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. Few, however, appreciate the underlying geometrical principles that lend these buildings their elegant unity of expression. Form and Design in Classic Architecture explains in simple, direct terms — and with numerous photographic plates and line illustrations — the ways in which the relationship of exterior and interior elements creates that unity and sense of completeness. Dozens of edifices by Inigo Jones, the Adam Brothers, Sir Christopher Wren, and other renowned architects appear here, in images accompanied by detailed analyses. The author presents a chapter-by-chapter view of buildings in a variety of shapes, with separate treatments of vestibules, corridors, domed and vaulted ceilings, pavilions, loggias, interior and exterior staircases, porticoes, and colonnades. The informative, readable text and handsome illustrations — as well as the sheer beauty of the buildings themselves — make this volume appealing, not only to architects and architectural historians but also to anyone with even a casual interest in architecture and design.