Nancy Lancaster: English Country House Style
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • Excellent read
  • Nancy Lancaster:English County House Style
  • A classic tale of high style
  • United States to Great Britain: Shared Style
  • Adrift in the Cozy, Comfortable, Tasteful English Tradition!
Nancy Lancaster: English Country House Style
Martin Wood
Manufacturer: Frances Lincoln
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

GeneralGeneral | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Garden DesignGarden Design | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0711224293

Book Description

This book examines Nancy's contribution to the arts of interior decoration and garden design by chronicling her own homes and gardens. These are Mirador, a Virginian country house, etc.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Excellent read.......2007-06-27

I truly enjoyed this book. The pictures were excellent quality and representative of the text. For the professional decorator or a person interested in house decoration it is funny and informative. I highly recommend this book.

3 out of 5 stars Nancy Lancaster:English County House Style.......2007-02-09

Book was not what I expected. Book was recommended by a decorator who said Nancy Lancaster was her inspiration so I was expecting more decorating and less biography-like book. It does make an excellent coffee table presentation!!

5 out of 5 stars A classic tale of high style.......2007-01-18

This book is sumptuous and entertaining. Martin Wood weaves a fascinating story of the founder of English County House Style. If you love biography, decorating, and history along with beautiful photographs, renderings, and paintings of exquisitely decorated rooms, this book will fit the bill! A lavish feast for sight and soul.

5 out of 5 stars United States to Great Britain: Shared Style.......2006-08-30

This book takes the reader from the style of America in the early years of the 20th century to the life she created in Britain. Many aspects of style were shared in the two countries, but many are unique to each. It is interesting how Nancy Lancaster blended the two worlds into a grand country style that was appreciated by both. Her childhood home in Virginia was her inspiration throughout her life and helped set the style she was so well known for.

5 out of 5 stars Adrift in the Cozy, Comfortable, Tasteful English Tradition!.......2006-04-10

Martin Wood is an excellent biographer and chronicler of style and in this richly illustrated monograph on Nancy Lancaster he makes use of his own credentials as a garden designer and interior designer to praise the virtues of a lady few of us know.

Nancy Lancaster gained her reputation as a gardener and designer of gardens whose only clear rival has been Gertrude Jekyll. But Martin Wood increases her stature by naming her the creator of the English country house style. His writing style is fluid, humorous, tender and informative, giving all the biographical data about Lancaster's heritage, youth, and life in a manner that makes what seems to be a picture essay become a page-turner novel!

Lancaster devoted herself to recreating the English Country atmosphere, though she was a born and bred American. Her own various homes as well as those of people who engaged her expertise demonstrate how even the most modest dwelling can breed the charm of the English Country house. Her gardens are like dream sequences out of Arthur Rackham and her taste in balancing room space with the gracious furniture and window treatments and light is impeccable. The Book is filled with some very lush photography that takes the time to scrutinize her concepts as well as pleasure the eye over her accomplishments. This is far more than a design book. This is a book about a life and how it extended into creating a personal world of quiet dignity and beauty. Grady Harp, April 06
The American Songbag
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • Bedrock of American folk singing
  • Literature? Folk Song Anthology? Both!
  • Sucking Cider Through A Straw
  • ...a grain of salt
  • A Treasure
The American Songbag
Carl Sandburg
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Folk & EthnicFolk & Ethnic | Songbooks | Theory, Composition & Performance | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 015605650X

Book Description

Sandburg was not only a poet but also a noted collector and performer of american folk music. This anthology contains words and music to 290 songs that people have sung in the making of americanca. New Introduction by Garrison Keillor; Prefatory Notes by the Author; Index.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Bedrock of American folk singing .......2006-08-02

Back in the early 1960s when I was a high schooler getting into music, I took this book out of the library and took this book out of the library, and took this book out of the library.

People trying to find great folk songs with both wit and wonder and laughter, heart ache and beauty probably have been doing this since Sandburg published this book in the 1920s. Being so familiar with this book, back in the day, and still today, I can identify different folk singers who have a repertoire of traditional songs by the ones who like myself studied this book and learned to play its songs, and those who had learned from the Lomax Collections, though in all the big Lomax books, there were credits to the inspiration and work Sanburg put into this book, as well as songs taken from this book.

Sanburg wasn't a folklorist, but a poet and someone who liked to sing these songs and play the guitar. He includes a few songs that aren't folk by any description like the very funny "Horse Named Bill" written by a friend of Sandburg's named Sinclair Lewis whom you might heard of!

The legions of folkies who once had only this book and the Lomax collections have spewed forth generations of serious scholars of folk music in this country and the world. Specialized monographs can be found on Kentucky fiddling or the musics of Mali, on down picking banjo, and Black song before the blues. With the specialization that has developed over the decades, few would even attempt to write one book and call it the American Songbag.

Especially if you like to sing and play, this book will take you back to an easier time, with some good songs. You will be surprised at how many of them you know the tune to, even if you can't read the music!

5 out of 5 stars Literature? Folk Song Anthology? Both!.......2003-09-09

An absolute classic of American arts and letters, the "Songbag" has been cited by traditional musicians including Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. It's a primary source of American cultural heritage.

5 out of 5 stars Sucking Cider Through A Straw.......2003-01-02

Compiled with difficulty and a lot of elbow grease during the years when American master Carl Sandburg was also writing Rootabaga Stories, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and poetry volume Slabs Of The Sunburnt West, The American Songbag is one of the many valuable gifts Sandburg produced for the American people. A collection of 290 "songs, ballads, and ditties," each entry consists of the extended lyrics and "complete harmonizations or piano accompaniments."

These folk songs are grouped under loose headings such as 'Dreams And Portraits,' 'Pioneer Memories,' 'The Big Brutal City,' 'Picnic and Hayrack Follies, Close Harmony, and Darn Fool Ditties,' 'The Great Open Spaces,' 'Hobo Songs,' and 'Tarnished Love Tales And Revolutionary Antiques,' and 'Mexican Border Songs' among others.

Many, understandably, have a British origin - 'The Foggy Dew,' 'Barbara Allen,' 'As I Was Walkin' Down Wexford Street,' 'Pretty Polly,' and 'The House Carpenter' - while the origin of others, like 'The E-RI-E,' 'The Ballad Of De Boll Weevil,' and 'The Buffalo Skinners' seem to be distinctly American. 'Turkey In The Straw,' however, like "When The Curtains Of Night Are Pinned Back,' is a "classical American rural tune," and "as American as Andrew Jackson, Johnny Appleseed, and Corn-on-the-Cob." Sandburg provides a brief introduction to each song, many of which are informative, while others are humorous and so idiosyncratic that each only muddies the waters of clarity if taken at face value. American music lovers may believe that 'Shenandoah' is a wholly American creation, but Sandburg sensibly suggests that the original may have referred to the name of a foreign ship or an Indian chief, rather than to 'the Historic Virginia valley.' 'She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain" was adapted by mountaineers from the "old-time negro spiritual" 'When The Chariot Comes.' 'The John B. Sails' has its origin in the West Indies. Sandburg seems to be underscoring the fact that most songs, like most people, come from somewhere else; origins are often hazy and partially a result of wishful thinking.

Musicians, educators, and youth leaders should have special interest in this book, which is as pure a piece of Americana as Duncan Emrich's Folklore On The American Land. The American Songbag will also thrill lovers of Americana and those searching for a legitimate, productive, and useful avenue into our country's history. Highly recommended for all audiences.

2 out of 5 stars ...a grain of salt.......2001-07-21

I purchased this book partly [because of what others ere saying.] The lyrics of the obscure selections from American popular music are of some value but the arrangements of the music and the tune transcriptions are terrible. This is not a book to buy if you are looking for music.

5 out of 5 stars A Treasure.......1999-12-15

Sandburg's American Songbag is a national treasure. I suppose the words and music of these 280 songs, ballads, and ditties that people have sung forever could be found elsewhere, but where? This important work, which breathes life back into some of the most memorable old songs, was originally published in 1927.
English Country (Architecture and Design Library)
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • The Best...
  • this is truley English
  • A Must Have Book
  • Mouthwatering
  • an excellent reference on english country style
English Country (Architecture and Design Library)
Julie Fowler
Manufacturer: Friedman/Fairfax Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

GeneralGeneral | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
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Decoration & OrnamentDecoration & Ornament | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1567993788

Amazon.com

Suffused with warm honey tones, age-darkened woods, blue-and-white patterns, floral-print fabrics, and lots of fresh flowers, the rooms in this lovely book exude the elegant "crumble-down look" that is the hallmark of English country style. In four short but fairly informative chapters, the volume surveys exteriors and gardens, general living spaces, kitchens and dining rooms, and bedrooms and bathrooms. The actual text is extremely brief (just a page or so in each chapter summing up basic characteristics of each type of room or area), but extended captions for the attractive photos discuss all the specifics, many of which can easily be extrapolated to provide ideas for the reader's own home. --Amy Handy

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars The Best..........2006-08-18

This is my favorite little book which captures the beauty and comfort of English style. The pictures are wonderful! I refer to this often...more often than any other design book. It is an inspiration to me.

5 out of 5 stars this is truley English.......2003-02-22

Have you seen the remains of the day? Do you love pastel colors, a relaxed atmosphere, antiques and softly printed fabrics? Then this is a book you might like. The choice of pictures is excellent and even after 6 years I still keep looking into this book. Every page is illustrated and the photos are sooo lovely. It is mostly about fabrics and colors though. If you are interested in HOW to decorate I recommend "decorating with antiques", which explains the structure of a well balanced room and furniture better. Nonetheless, this book will make you contemptuos of other people's homes. I hope you are not arrogant.....

5 out of 5 stars A Must Have Book.......2003-01-23

A wonderful book. I constantly refer back to it, more than any other of it's type. Beautiful pictures and text.

5 out of 5 stars Mouthwatering.......2000-04-22

I received this wonderful book as a gift and highly recommend it to those who, like me, love the comfortable, slightly rough but homey feel of a cottage. This has inspired many projects as well as many farther-off dreams for our own home. It's great to look through again and again!

5 out of 5 stars an excellent reference on english country style.......1999-08-04

This book is a wonderful rererence book for anyone who wants to decorate their homes in English Country Style. Beautiful photos of everything from charming thatched roof cottages to grand country seats, all with descriptions that could be used to decorate your own home.
Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • No house arrangements in here!
  • Uncommon
Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians
Jean Ritchie , Ron Pen , and Alan Lomax
Manufacturer: University Press of Kentucky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0813109272

Book Description

Jean Ritchie is the best known and most respected singer of traditional ballads in the United States. The youngest daughter of one of the most famous American ballad-singing families, the Ritchie family of Perry County, Kentucky, Jean still carries on her family's legacy as a singer of folk songs and traditional ballads. It has been nearly thirty years since she originally published Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians, and the music found here tells the story of the “Singing Ritchie Family” at a time when railroads, coal mines, and hillbilly radio were making their first incursions into the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

Built upon a foundation of balladry inherited from old-world Scotland, the family's repertoire was certainly eclectic but not haphazard. The Child ballads, lyric folksongs, play party or frolic songs, Old Regular Baptist lined hymns, Native American ballads, “hant” songs, and carols brought together in this collection were assembled by family members who actively sought out fragments of tunes and completed them by adding or embellishing verses and melodies.

This new edition has faithfully retained all seventy-seven line scores of the songs and added four new ones, Loving Hannah, Lovin' Henry, Her Mantle So Green, and The Reckless and Rambling Boy. The original headnotes and photographs tell the history of the song as well as how it became a part of the family's life. Chords are indicated for accompaniment; however, music notation and the printed word can only present a reasonable facsimile of any actual song. Jean's singing is simply the best guide to how the song should be sung, so a new audiography and videography have been added to this edition.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars No house arrangements in here!.......2002-07-27

I love this book because it preserves the rough edges that the music of everday people has. If JR learned the verse to a song that didn't rhyme, she didn't "fix" it. The melodies are often asymmetrical, the ballads often have odd twists to their stories, and the emotion is just pure.

If you're looking for a book of songs for the camp-fire, this may not be it. If you're looking for the real songs of Appalachia, look no further.

3 out of 5 stars Uncommon.......2000-06-07

As an amateur singer of folksongs, country, and "oldies", I was looking for a book with familiar tunes and lyrics. Although I only recognized a few of Ms. Ritchie's songs, I found the histories of each song very interesting. I took a chance and purchased the book, not sure of what I was getting. What I got was a nice read about the history of song, and a new interest in a person who obviously has a passion!
When We Were Good: The Folk Revival
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • Cantwell stares into the well.....
  • How did music become "FOLK" music?
  • Thick, thick prose masks a compelling story
When We Were Good: The Folk Revival
Robert S. Cantwell
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

GeneralGeneral | Ethnic & International | Musical Genres | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0674951328

Book Description

When We Were Good traces the many and varied cultural influences on the folk revival of the sixties from early nineteenth-century blackface minstrelsy; the Jewish entertainment and political cultures of New York in the 1930s; the Almanac singers and the wartime crises of the 1940s; the watershed record album Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music; and finally to the cold-war reactionism of the 1950s. This drove the folk-song movement, just as Pete Seeger and the Weavers were putting "On Top of Old Smokey" and "Goodnight, Irene" on the Hit Parade, into a children's underground of schools, summer camps, and colleges, planting the seeds of the folk revival to come. The book is not so much a history as a study of the cultural process itself, what the author calls the dreamwork of history.

Cantwell shows how a body of music once enlisted on behalf of the labor movement, antifascism, New Deal recovery efforts, and many other progressive causes of the 1930s was refashioned as an instrument of self-discovery, even as it found a new politics and cultural style in the peace, civil rights, and beat movements. In Washington Square and the Newport Folk Festival, on college campuses and in concert halls across the country, the folk revival gave voice to the generational tidal wave of postwar youth, going back to the basics and trying to be very, very good.

In this capacious analysis of the ideologies, traditions, and personalities that created an extraordinary moment in American popular culture, Cantwell explores the idea of folk at the deepest level. Taking up some of the more obdurate problems in cultural studies--racial identity, art and politics, regional allegiances, class differences--he shows how the folk revival was a search for authentic democracy, with compelling lessons for our own time.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Cantwell stares into the well............2005-02-01

Cantwell's insights are extremely valuable in the on-going evaluation of this area of America's cultural expression. Informed opinions are the best we can do in the study of the artifacts of the human experience in America. Cantwell's ideas have come to permeate,and dominate, the criticism of this long overlooked and misunderstood area of American music. His essay on Harry Smith is a revelation.

4 out of 5 stars How did music become "FOLK" music?.......2002-06-12

Cantwell is an academician but sometimes even scholars can put together a fascinating book. The music we call "Folk" music more or less surfaced in the folk revival of the late 50s and early 60s but what was its prehistory and how did "Folk" music come to be what it is perceived to be today? In a music inherently archival and conservative, why is it generally aligned with the left end of the political spectrum when it gets political? Why is a solo singer with a guitar a "folk" musician but a solo piano player not?

Cantwell traces the music and events that led to the Folk Revival from the first commercialization of non-academic music (minstrel shows, for example) through its contacts with Broadway and concert singing (Paul Robeson, John Jacob Niles, etc.) through and its affiliation with communists, campers, beatniks and folklorists. The writing is dense and Cantwell doesn't always provide clear enough landmarks to help you follow his arguments, but his conception of the complexities that lay behind the folk revival is remarkable.

3 out of 5 stars Thick, thick prose masks a compelling story.......2001-08-10

I approached this book with high hopes, and found myself sorely disappointed. It had gotten such great press when it came out -- with big write-ups in the "New York Times" and elsewhere -- but frankly, I found the style and grammar so convoluted that I could hardly understand it. Cantwell's overly-academic prose is so dense and thicketed that halfway through I realized I had absolutely no idea what his book was about. Something about the American folk revival... but what exactly was he trying to say? Cantwell, a former '60s folkie who teaches American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, applies a nearly impenetrable acadamese to his history(?)/analysis(?)/deconstruction(?) of the folk revival, but seems unable to rise above the terminology and crowded syntax he's adopted. His writing has a piled-on, house-of-cards style, full of incredible run-on sentences and needless verbal transpositions that make practically every sentence, paragraph and chapter difficult to follow. In short: arrrrrrgh!!! The most frustrating aspect is the boggling lack of narrative skills: Cantwell sets out to tell stories and convey experiences, but inevitably gets balled up in unreasonably convoluted, digressive rhetoric. Maybe I'm just a big dummy and can't understand all that smart-feller, egghead stuff... or maybe this guy needs a more forceful editor.
Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture (Music in American Life)
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • Contemporary Interpretations of Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture (Music in American Life)
Patricia R. Schroeder
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Country & FolkCountry & Folk | Composers & Musicians | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0252029151

Book Description

Suddenly Robert Johnson is everywhere. Though the Mississippi bluesman died young and recorded only twenty-nine songs, the legacy, legend, and lore surrounding him continue to grow. Focusing on these developments, Patricia R. Schroeder's Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture breaks new ground in Johnson scholarship, going beyond simple or speculative biography to explore him in his larger role as a contemporary cultural icon.

Part literary analysis, part cultural criticism, and part biographical study, Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture shows the Robert Johnson of today to be less a two-dimensional character fixed by the few known facts of his life than a dynamic and contested set of ideas.

Represented in novels, in plays, and even on a postage stamp, he provides inspiration for "highbrow" cultural artifacts--such as poems--as well as Hollywood movies and T-shirts. Schroeder's detailed and scholarly analysis directly engages key images and stories about Johnson (such as the Faustian crossroads exchange of his soul for guitar virtuosity), navigating the many competing interpretations that swirl around him to reveal the cultural purposes these stories and their tellers serve.

Unprecedented in both range and depth, Schroeder's work is a fascinating examination of the relationships among Johnson's life, its subsequent portrayals, and the cultural forces that drove these representations. With penetrating insights into both Johnson and the society that perpetuates him, Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture is essential reading for cultural critics and blues fans alike.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars Contemporary Interpretations of Robert Johnson.......2006-02-14

Robert Johnson (1911? -- 1938)recorded only 29 songs during his brief life and was little-known when he died. In the 1960s, a release of his songs attracted great attention from British rockers and from young Americans, and a subsequent release of "The Complete Robert Johnson," including alternate takes, went platinum. With his haunting voice and astonishing guitar technique, and with the legends that have come to surround his life, the memory of Robert Johnson has evolved from early Delta blues singer to cultural icon. Johnson's photo appeared upon a commemorative United States postage stamp in 1994, with, notoriously, the cigarette dangling from his lip in the original photograph removed.

Patricia Schroeder's book "Robert Johnson: Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture" (2004) explores the mystique that surrounds Robert Johnson and shows the widely divergent interpretations his life and music continue to evoke. Patricia Schroeder is professor of English at Ursinus College where she teaches courses in the blues in American literature, African American literature, and American literature and drama. Her book is part of an outstanding series of scholarly studies title "Music in American life" which explore a wide range of musical forms and figures, from blues to classical and much else, and their impact in the United States.

The great virtue of Professor Schroeder's work is that it shows how much there is to be learned from serious study of the blues in general and Robert Johnson in particular. Her work is informed, and teaches a great deal about, postmodern critical theory. She shows how a figure such as Johnson has been transformed in American culture from a Delta bluesman -- a living person -- to a symbol and, finally, to an icon or myth separate from and bearing little resemblance to the original flesh and blood man. The ways in which Robert Johnson has been mythologized reflect the preoccupations of the mythmakers who
turn to Johnson more than they help in the understanding of Johnson himself. Thus, in the 1960s, Johnson was discovered as a romantic, authentic figure who spurned commercialism, and wandered through the Delta and elsewhere in pursuit of himself and of his art. Later visions of Johnson have seen him as reflecting the spirit of American pluralism and diversity, as the symbol of an inclusive American community, as exemplifying the spirit of the blues, as a victim of the racial injustice pervading the deep South in the 1930s, as the voice of individualism, and as much else.

Thus, after a brief chapter in which she gives a biographical summary of the Johnson's life, emphasizing competing versions and contradictory accounts at key points, Professor Schroeder offers in successive chapters, accounts of how Robert Johnson has been portrayed in contemporary novels, dramas, film documentaries, and poetry. It is an impressive account of a body of literature, most of which had been unknown to me, and it shows well how Johnson's life has been used in the service of a wide variety of viewpoints on American culture. Professor Schroeder discusses this literature fully, ably and well. I was most impressed, of all the material she discusses, with a 1996 poem by Susan Noguere titled "Whirling Round the Sun" in which the poet discusses eloquently her response to Johnson's music. Professor Schroeder quotes the poem in full (p.161) and expounds it nicely. Proressor Schroeder also discusses how Johnson has fared in cyberspace with an exploration of the many threads devoted to Johnson and an analysis of the comments that his music and life inspire over the Web.

I found that there was too much emphasis in the book on postmoderistic theory. Professor Schroeder shows that this theory can be put to good use in understanding Johnson, or any important cultural figure, but she overdoes it. The book is jargon-filled, and the relativism and skepticism to which postmodernism leads seems to me unnecessary to her discussion of Johnson and the myths he has inspired. In addition, there is too little focus in the book on Johnson's music and lyrics themselves. Johnson's music will always be the strongest reasons for his appeal -- as is the case with any musician or performer. There are times, particularly when she discusses Johnson on the Internet, that Professor Schroeder gets bogged down in jargon and in a second or third-level realm of analysis and almost forgets explaining her subject -- Robert Johnson in contemporary American culture.

Those interested in this book will also enjoy a recent scholarly study by Elijah Wald, "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues." (2004) Wald is also aware of the mythmaking surrounding this great blues artist, but he is not as enamored with postmodernistic theory as is Professor Schroeder. Wald thinks we can form some reasonably accurate ideas about Robert Johnson the man and what he hoped to do with his music. I found his account for the most part convincing. Wald also offers more in the way of musical and literary analysis of Johnson's songs than does Professor Schroeder.

I am pleased that Johnson's music and the blues are receiving sustained and insightul critical attention in Professor Schroeder's book, in Wald's book, and elsewhere. Readers with a serious interest in Robert Johnson and the blues will enjoy Professor Schroeder's study.

Robin Friedman
Victoria: Romantic Country Style: Creating the English Country Look in Your Home
Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • Not particularly useful
  • Romantic Country Style: Creating the English Country Look in
Victoria: Romantic Country Style: Creating the English Country Look in Your Home

Manufacturer: Hearst
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

GeneralGeneral | Interior Design | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
StyleStyle | Interior Design | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
DecoratingDecorating | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
GeneralGeneral | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
StyleStyle | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 068816904X

Amazon.com

Luscious photographs and extremely practical decorating advice combine to make this volume both a delight to behold and an excellent resource for anyone looking to emulate the English-cottage look at home. Solid information on basic stylistic elements and on choosing colors and fabrics lays the groundwork for a room-by-room survey of lovely spaces. From entryways and family living spaces to bedrooms, bathrooms, home offices, and outdoor living areas, the text, the photos, and the captions offer wonderful verbal and visual advice on why these rooms work so well and how you can adapt them to work for you. A series of marvelous double-page spreads entitled "Get the Look" feature detailed photos grouped thematically to showcase such concepts as displaying collections, disguising storage, or setting an outdoor table. This is a good primer on cottage-style decorating, and even if you're already familiar with a lot of the basics, you'll still find inspiration in these pages. --Amy Handy

Book Description

Two hundred photographs and inspiring ideas for using color, texture, materials, and furnishings show the way. Go beyond the quintessential chintz and florals: think about maximizing light with everything from a big bay window to sheer curtains. Try brick or stone floorings for that warm, traditional look. Transform a hallway with painted floorboards and a rag rug. That’s the essence of beautiful country style.

Customer Reviews:

2 out of 5 stars Not particularly useful.......2007-01-03

Book broken into sections: Hearth, Sheds, Outdoor, Living, etc. Limited usefulness

5 out of 5 stars Romantic Country Style: Creating the English Country Look in.......2000-03-31

I love this book. I have followed every Victoria magazine and book since day one. I immediately made it my goal to be featured on the pages of Victoria Magazine. My dream came true June 92, and was the cover story. This book if full of wonderful decorating ideas, fabulous photographs and always gentle writing to put you in the mood, to sit quietly, sip a cup-o-tea and imagine yourself on the pages that are appealing to your sensual pleasure. I have always love decorating, and my own book on victorian chic style will be coming out this Fall. Again, thankyou Victoria Magazine for yet another inspirational and exquisite publication. Keep them coming.
Pop Modernism: Noise and the Reinvention of the Everyday
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Pop Modernism: Noise and the Reinvention of the Everyday
    Juan A. Suarez
    Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

    History & CriticismHistory & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books | Criticism | General | Regional | Themes | Women in Art
    GeneralGeneral | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
    GeneralGeneral | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
    GeneralGeneral | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
    History & CriticismHistory & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
    Popular CulturePopular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
    20th Century20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books
    PostmodernismPostmodernism | Movements & Periods | History & Criticism | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
    ASIN: 0252073924

    Book Description

    Drawing on a wide range of materials, including experimental movies, pop songs, photographs, and well-known poems and paintings, Pop Modernism shows that experimental art in the early twentieth century was centrally concerned with the reinvention of everyday life. In a series of clearly written, provocative, and groundbreaking essays, Juan A. Suárez demonstrates how modernist writers and artists reworked pop images and sounds, old-fashioned and factory-made objects, city spaces, and the languages and styles of queers and ethnic “others.”

    Pop Modernism examines the popular roots of modernism in the United States. Along the way, Suárez reinterprets many of modernism’s major figures and argues for the centrality of relatively marginal ones, such as Vachel Lindsay, Charles Henri Ford, Helen Levitt, and James Agee. Chapter discussions include Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s film Manhatta (1921), exploring its debt to modernist film criticism and discourses on the popular; the work of surrealist Joseph Cornell as an exploration of “object automatism” (the latencies and histories buried in objects and mass cultural artifacts); and how the interest in the culture industry was gradually replaced, from the late 1930s onward, with a fascination with folk and amateur art.

    Pop Modernism reconnects the modernist reinvention of everyday life and contemporary artistic practice. What is at stake is not just an antiquarian impulse to rescue forgotten past moments and works, but a desire to establish an archeology of our present art, culture, and activism.
    English Country Style
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      English Country Style
      Mary Gilliatt
      Manufacturer: Little, Brown
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Hardcover
      ASIN: B000GVFSZK
      Black Riders
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        Black Riders
        Jerome J. McGann
        Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

        GeneralGeneral | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
        Schools, Periods & StylesSchools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books | Abstract Expressionism | Ancient & Classical | Art Deco | Art Nouveau | Baroque | Byzantine | Constructivism | Contemporary Art | Cubism | Dadaism | Expressionism | Fauvism | Folk Art | Futurism | German Expressionism | Gothic | Impressionism | Mannerism | Medieval | Modern | Neoclassical | Pop | Post-Impressionism | Pre-Raphaelite | Prehistoric & Primitive | Realism | Renaissance | Rococo | Romanesque | Romantic | Surrealism
        GeneralGeneral | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | History & Criticism | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        20th Century20th Century | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        GeneralGeneral | Criticism & Theory | History & Criticism | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        ModernismModernism | Movements & Periods | History & Criticism | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        British & IrishBritish & Irish | Single Authors | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        CriticismCriticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
        ASIN: 0691015449

        Book Description

        "English literature," Yeats once noted, "has all but completely shaped itself in the printing press." Finding this true particularly of modernist writing, Jerome McGann demonstrates the extraordinary degree to which modernist styles are related to graphic and typographic design, to printed letters--"black riders" on a blank page--that create language for the eye. He sketches the relation of modernist writing to key developments in book design, beginning with the nineteenth-century renaissance of printing, and demonstrates the continued interest of postmodern writers in the "visible language" of modernism. McGann then offers a philosophical investigation into the relation of knowledge and truth to this kind of imaginative writing.

        Exploring the work of writers like William Morris, Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, as well as Laura Riding and Bob Brown, he shows how each exploits the visibilities of language, often by aligning their work with older traditions of so-called Adamic language. McGann argues that in modernist writing, philosophical nominalism emerges as a key aesthetic point of departure. Such writing thus develops a pragmatic and performative "answer to Plato" in the matter of poetry's relation to truth and philosophy.

        Books:

        1. New Built-Ins Idea Book: Media Centers Nooks & Crannies Window Seats Kitchen & Dining Areas Work Centers (Idea Books)
        2. Off the Wall: Wonderful Wall Coverings of the Twentieth Century
        3. Paula Deen's Kitchen Classics: The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook and The Lady & Sons, Too!
        4. Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock (A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts)
        5. Pools & Spas: Ideas for Planning, Designing, and Landscaping
        6. Practical Research: Planning and Design (8th Edition)
        7. Prefab
        8. Private Tuscany
        9. Professional Practice for Interior Designers, 3rd Edition
        10. Provencal Interiors: French Country Style in America

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