Book Description
No country inspires as much fascination as Italy, and no region in Italy inspires as much adoration as Tuscanyâfor its interior design, art and architecture, fashion, artisans and crafts, food and wine. In Dreaming of Tuscany you'll experience the essence of a place that dreams are made of, ensuring you'll get the most out of your experience. Sharing her recommendations of favorite insider places and word-of-mouth gems, best-selling lifestyle author Barbara Milo Ohrbach acts as a guide to food markets, exquisite shops, overflowing antiques markets, not to mention cooking courses, outdoor painting classes, ancient palazzos and small museums. And you can live like a Tuscan once you return home, with this book providing sources for everything from luscious bed linens to peppery olive oil. Dreaming of Tuscany is illustrated with three hundred sumptuous images by photographer Simon Upton. Don't dream of visiting Tuscany without first reading this book.
Customer Reviews:
Discovering Tuscany.......2007-10-12
This is a lovely "coffee table" book.
I found the information to be extremely general - book does not contain information that cannot be obtained in any take along travel guide such as Foders, Blue Guide, Cadogan, Rough Guide, etc. In addition, this book is NOT a good reference for individuals who travel on a budget. Most accommodations & ristorantes fall into the 4 star range; expensive.
This book is the perfect book for the pretentious American tourist.
Dreaming of Tuscany.......2007-06-07
As a frequent traveler to Tuscany, I find this book one of the best. It reflects the romantic and unique part of the world known as Tuscany. Wonderful coffee table book, resource for Tuscany and reading for rainy days.
Dreaming of Tuscany.......2007-01-15
Since my daughter and I are going to be in Tuscany in the spring, I found the book to be a great resource for the area. I'm looking forward to seeing things firsthand...but so glad that Ms. Ohrbach has done the groundwork for us...a much more efficient use of our limited time there!
Book Description
The Tuscan house, whether a simple homestead or expansive villa, has become one of the most sought-after living environments. Its design is virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages, when landowners in the golden hills of Tuscany built country retreats with gardens, porticoes, and loggias. The landowners often drew upon the natural resources of the region-and it is these materials that give the Tuscan house its unique character. Tuscan Elements brings to life the colors, textures, and aesthetics of the Tuscan house-the magnificent stone and marble work; the hardwoods like chestnut, oak, and elm; earthy terra-cotta and brick; and the all-important water feature, used in ponds, fountains, and pools. This unique, visual sourcebook deconstructs the typical Tuscan home and examines its basic components in dazzling detail, from the tiled roof and floor, thick stone exterior walls, and vine-covered loggia to the exposed wooden beams, luminous frescoes, and the sunny courtyard garden with an ancient well or exquisite swimming pool. Filled with extraordinary photos by world-famous interiors photographer Simon McBride, Tuscan Elements emphasizes living life well with a home that nurtures and comforts, accentuates the importance of family and friends, and entertains with good food and drink. For anyone interested in infusing their present home and garden with a little bit of Tuscany, here is a delightful source of never- ending inspiration.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book.......2007-05-06
This book is filled to the top with great quality pictures. Wonderful inspiration for me and our new home which we are doing a Tuscan Theme. Will make a good coffee table book as well :)
Too Primitive!.......2006-07-11
The disigns elements were too rustic for my taste. I was looking for more of a casual elegence.
Ótimo livro sobre casa toscanas.......2006-03-17
Recomendo esse livro para quem, como eu, pretende construir no estilo toscano. Claro está que não se encontra mais tijolos de 300 anos, porém, pode-se ter completa idéia de como é o ar de uma propriedade toscana. Ótimas fotos e boas dicas.
Tuscan Elements.......2005-08-19
This is the best book of its kind that I have seen on basic Tuscan home design elements. Concise descriptions, beautiful photgraphy. I would heartily recommend this book.
Tuscan Style.......2004-12-24
I normally don't buy tabletop table books because I don't feel that they represent a value or add much to my understanding of a subject. Tabletop books full of incredible pictures just do not fully capture my imagination or attention. Consequently, most tabletop books get a cursory flipping through before I put them down.
However, `Tuscan Elements' is more than a book of pretty pictures and it is worth more than just a cursory flipping through. The author, Alexandra Black, has organized her effort to capture the elements of Tuscany. The four elements are stone, wood, earth, and water. These four elements are expressed in the homes, furniture, terracotta, and ponds, respectively, of Tuscany. To stand alongside the pictures of these four elements, Ms. Black takes the time to build a supporting story from a historical and literary point of view. Quoting D.H. Lawrence and Pliny the Younger, the story of how these elements have been woven into the ebb and flow of Tuscan life since before the Roman Empire emerges with an impressive clarity and vividness.
As a lover of Tuscany I am drawn to images of Tuscany and its way of life. The seductive beauty of the Tuscan landscape and the romance of the Tuscan lifestyle as expressed in the prose and images of this tabletop book is the stuff of dreams. This tabletop book provided me the fodder for those dreams and never once disappointed me.
Average customer rating:
- NOT FOR WEEKEND GARDENERS
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Gardens of Tuscany
Rizzoli
Manufacturer: Rizzoli
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0847812286
Release Date: 1990-08-15 |
Customer Reviews:
NOT FOR WEEKEND GARDENERS.......2001-06-16
This magnificent book takes the reader/viewer on a magical trip to the majestic gardens of Tuscany. Divided into three distinct sections: Siena, Lucca and Florence, this is definitely not a book for getting "how to" tips on gardening in the U.S.A. These so-called gardens are perfect for imagination day dreams or movie settings. These are not your marigold and petunia gardens. Instead you will be transported to another time and another place where semi-circular pools, hillside terraces, lime and ilez shade trees, sunflower fields and espaliered vines share space with secret gardens of peach, olive and magnolia trees underplanted with crocuses, daffodills, irises, lilies and roses or box-edged flower gardens, bowling greens and fountains.
Each wonderful photograph is fully explained as to where it is and how it relates to the buildings which share the acreage and to the families who own the villas.
Not one of those cumbersome, oversized books, it is easily held and easily read. Historian, Sir Harold Acton, has written a lovely introduction and one feature that I found fascinating was a listing of the public gardens in the book, since most of the Tuscan gardens are, naturally, private. Recommended.
Book Description
This lyrical portrait of an antique Italian villa with its charming caretaker, olive groves, and vineyards is filled with hilarious garden misadventures, witty sketches of eccentric fellow gardeners, and sensuous studies of Tuscan daily life. Entertaining for its garden side trips, its generous information about Mediterranean plants, Italian garden history and lore, A Garden in Lucca is, at its heart, a compelling journey of self-discovery that shares with readers the joys and challenges of creating a personal paradise on earth.
Customer Reviews:
Massachusetts 'Yankee' in Italian Paradise.......2002-03-04
In A Garden In Lucca, Paul Gervais presents a delightful account of his transition into life in the most beautiful part of Italy. Moving from ignorance to expertise in the field of gardening, Mr. Gervais makes the reader a partner in his acquisition of new skills and knowledge.
The book also deals with the high and low drama of a possible sale of Mr. Gervais's 'Italian Paradise' as well as personal elements of the author's life. Even readers unfamiliar with the Latin names for plant species come to feel the passion Mr. Gervais has brought to his new life.
The book is a great read.
Bona fide.......2002-01-14
You might get the idea at first glance that this is yet another Provence/Tuscany retreat memoir complete with wide-eyed cross-cultural mishaps, boring renovations and banal recepies, but look again; This writer is bona fide, as he's lived near the old city of Lucca for nearly twenty years where he now cultivates the extensive gardens of his Renaissance hunting lodge. Missing here is the breathhless, shallow enchantment with all that's new and foreign, further tainted by a patronizing scrutiny of the locals and their quaint, imagined, cuteness. He doesen't bother us with the butcher, baker and the candlestick maker, or any shephed who happens to pass through his olive groves; he's gone beyond the obvious and facile here. His friends are those with whom he shares a passion for gardening. These characters come from all walks of life: they might be landed aristocrats or simple folks with a patch of ground, but they're all vibrantly portrayed, with enormous wit and affection. This is a book that lasts, with its generous mix of passion, irony and wonder, and its depths linger in my memory.
The medium-well tempered garden book............2002-01-13
Paul Gervais is not Mathew Spender, nor is he Peter Mayle, nor is he Frances Mayes. Spender is an artist with a flair for description who fills his book about the life of an Englishman in Italy with all sorts of charming anecdotes about his Italian neighbors. Mayle may have initiated the recent round of books on the life of the well-heeled foreigner who moves to a sunnier and "older" part of Europe and rebuilds an "older" more archaic home and/or garden and in the process discovers the eccentric neighbors. Mayes has done an execllent job of continuing the writing and rebuilding trend with her books about the restoration of an older home she bought and inhabits part of the year in the Tuscan hills in-between-bouts as a tv cook or whatever it is she does back in SF to pay the bills (her books may bring in some revenue).
As a former addict of "This Old House" on public tv, and one who has struggled with the restoration of an antebellum home in the states (i.e. an old farm house my father owned--I was his "helper"), I occasionally read books about the restoration of big old houses and gardens and enjoy them because I am NOT doing the work. Reading about the travails of others as the struggle to build new lives in strange places is a comfortable arm chair pursuit. Occasionally, these authors become so famous they have to move away, though some of them return.
Paul Gervais' book is a sort-of "good read" although the serious gardener won't learn anything about gardening from it. If you're looking for inspiration about house restoration you would do better to watch "This Old House" on public tv. If you've never read Mayle or Mayes you will probably enjoy these writers a bit more. I laughed so hard when I read Mayle's first book that I cried and that experience is not to be missed by those who need a reading "lift" although by now most of the world has already read about Mayle's life in Provence.
In his book on life in Lucca, Gervais spends a bit of time discussing the work he and his partner Gil pursued restoring the house, the dependencies, and the grounds if their home, the Villa Massei in Massa Macinaia, a small town in the province of Lucca, Italy. He assumes a familiarity with Italy, Lucca, Italian architecture, gardens, history, etc. If you have a background adequate enough to follow what he is discussing, you may find the book inadequate, if not, you may become bored or lost or both. He seems to have written the book for his friends and acquaintenances who are already familiar with his sitution. The tone of the text is newsy -- as if he has penned a letter to the folks back home informing them about how things are progressing. I would have enjoyed Gervais' book a bit more if he had included some photographs, particularly of those gardens he visits that fall into the categor of "famous and private" and are off the beaten track.
Disappointing.......2001-07-28
I read A Garden in Lucca just after finishing Spanish Lessons--a similar, but more interesting book by Derek Lambert. Paul Gervais writes in a style that merely skims the surface, never getting to the heart of either gardening or life in Tuscany. Garden descriptions are wordy with details that don't give any indication of the effect created. I also was disappointed that Gervais seemed to name-drop (and live) extensively in the ex-patriot community, rarely giving any insight into Tuscan life or culture. By contrast, Spanish Lessons, a novel about an English family's move to Spain, was so alive with insight into the experience of assimilating into a small town in Spain. Perhaps a true gardener would have found this book more interesting.
Expectations unmet.......2001-06-13
I was disappointed in A Garden in Lucca. The book was advertised as the process of education of an amateur gardener after he bought a house with 60 acres of land in Italy. In the prologue we learn that the restored garden was so fine, the author had been asked to allow it to be included in a garden tour. Tantalizing. How did he get from a novice beginning to such glory?
Other than a few paragraphs here and there and chapters at the end of the book which described the garden tour as well as parts of the garden photographed for a lecture, the garden is rarely described at all. Instead, we hear a lot about the author's friends and how important they are, the impressive gardens he visits (more name dropping than descriptive) and the lengthy account of a sale of the house to an impressively wealthy family that never happened. When I finished reading, I was so hungry to read about real gardening by a real gardener, that I immediately reached for my collection of old out of print Beverley Nichols books. Ah! Satisfaction at last!
Book Description
Tuscany Artists Gardens presents thirty gardens designed and created by some of the most renowned contemporary artists in the world today, all of whom have settled in Tuscany, and all of whom have applied their artistic sensitivities to their surroundings in unusual and distinctive ways. Their gardens take many different forms, from
Customer Reviews:
Never leaves my nightstand!.......2007-03-25
First, The artists in this book are of considerable note and respect beyond the fairly limited, tendy and often cash-driven art world of the US.
Second, it is neither an DIY nor an Italophile book.
This is a sumptuous book of inspiration for gardens and work. It is the extension to the creative self into the spaces beyond a defined artistic space. Suddenly the garden is bursting with opportunity for expressive recombining of materials to surprise and delight. The images invite you to think of the fallen branches, the rusty hinges, the shoody, eroding bricks in a new way. They then metaphorocally challenge one to throw those drab and safe curb appeal books to the wind, follow your intuition and create your own world within this one.
I adore this book. If it is not next to me when I sleep, it is with me in my studio... within it's own creative carden.
Tuscany Artist Gardens.......2006-02-17
Great photography. Great as a coffee table book, but not so great for detailed information on garden elements(plants, pottery...)shown in the photos along with scupltures.
It lacked the details I was looking for as a professional landscape designer.
A Terrific Picture Book, Light on Content.......2005-12-22
If you are thinking that TUSCANY ARTISTS GARDENS will provide a lot of insights into how artists create gardens, then this book will not satisfy. If, however, you are looking for a peek into some beautiful gardens in magical Tuscany with some interesting conversations with basically unknown artists who happen to live in Tuscany, then this wonderfully illustrated portfolio will provide ideas and treasures of Italian gardening.
Mariella Sgaravatti visited and interviewed thirty artists who have taken up residence in Tuscany, converted some wonderful old houses, and have created garden spaces for inspiration and reflections. The gardens range from grand to intimate and most incorporate some artwork in the garden itself. Most people know that the majority of artists' studios are places not to inspire anyone but the painter or sculptor, but seeing their homes and gardens is a different matter. While this book will not provide much in the way of artists' lives, it does share some parts of beautiful Tuscany that otherwise might not be available to the traveler. Grady Harp, December 05
Customer Reviews:
La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany.......2005-05-15
This is an excellent book. It bodes one well to have read Iris Origo's autobiography to help understand much of the background of La Foce, although Benedetta Origo does an excellent job of providing background, too. The combination of the estate's background, color photographs and sketches by the authors makes this book an excellent buy, especially if one is interested in Italian gardens and their development. Maps, too, have been included to give one a sense of location. Beautifully done.
A Garden In All Its Glory.......2001-11-19
La Foce is an attractive Tuscan villa which is presented here in text and pictures. The text offers a picture of one family's history, including interesting archival photographs and drawings. What makes this book truly spectacular, however, are Morna Livingston's photographs, presented in a beautiful layout and printed on a silky white paper which heightens the luminesence of the incredible Tuscan colors. In more than one hundred photographs Livingiston captures the villa's gardens in every light and season. There are stunning images of the broader landscape and fascinating details of both the architecture and the plants. For those who have wondered just what the attraction of Tuscany is, you will find the answer here. For those who already know, this will serve as a reminder.
Average customer rating:
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VENZANO
Stephanie Donaldson
Manufacturer: Trafalgar Square Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 157076204X |
Book Description
An intimate portrait of a Tuscan garden that captures not only the breathtaking beauty of its 10,000 scented plants, but also the rhythms of its seasons. With its lush photography and gracious, informative text, this book will be welcomed equally by gardeners and Italophiles. 120 color photos.
A Garden Book Club Main Selection
Customer Reviews:
Serene gardens.......2003-02-11
An extrodinary book about a fantastic garden place. It's been said that some travelers go to Italy to see Italian art and history, while other travel to see Italians and Italian life. This book gives a glimpse into a fantastic rural garden and life built by the owners of Venzano. It is a serene garden, and this book captures well its intense images. You have to travel there yourself to sense the other delights--fragrances, winds, and twilight dinners on the terrace. Examine this book if you want to sense the rural life in the lovely Tuscan hills.
Average customer rating:
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Gardens of Tuscany, the (Country)
Bencini Clarke
Manufacturer: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0297830449 |
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