Publisher Description

The Inspired Home: Interiors of Deep Beauty opens the door to twenty-five of the most beautiful homes in the world—ones owned by top interior designers, fashion designers, artists, and stylists—to reveal how simple principles borrowed from nature can inspire gorgeous, innovative interiors that both calm and embolden us.To create this unique volume, Karen Lehrman Bloch interviewed renowned aesthetes with homes all over the world, including interior designers Juan Montoya, Darryl Carter, and Vicente Wolf; fashion designers Donna Karan, Alberta Ferretti, and Consuelo Castiglioni; stylist Lori Goldstein; and artist Michele Oka Doner.The direct and practical advice featured inside, along with a wealth of extraordinary photographs of the homes, teaches us how to feel visually, understand color and texture, and find objects, new and used, with a sense of life. An inspired home, Bloch reveals, fulfills our physical and spiritual needs, provides an enduring sense of rejuvenation and pleasure, and is both easily attainable and timeless.

Notes

Full of practical advice for creating beautiful and uplifting homes.

Author Biography

Karen Lehrman Bloch is a cultural critic, a curator, and the director of Grafia Books, a producer of high-end books on art, design, and style. She has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as one of the "sharpest of the individualist critics," and her criticism and commentary have appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Art + Auction, and Metropolis. She is the author of The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World and contributed the foreword to La Formentera: The Woodland Refuge of Juan Montoya.

Review

"The Inspired Home: Interiors of Deep Beauty sounds like yet another gorgeous coffee table book. But its author, Karen Lehrman Bloch, was determined to show homes that are not merely perfect; they also have a soul." -- The New York Times "Bloch chose to separate the projects [in The Inspired Home] into such categories as Restraint, Poetry, Stillness and Reduction. In the "Balance" chapter, you'll find [Donna] Karan's home ... a study in calmness and serenity - open, uncluttered spaces, simple furnishings, a restrained palette. But dull it's not." -- New York Post "The book looks at the dwellings of a variety of designers, artists, and stylists for whom the phrase 'less is more' is a mantra at home." -- Women's Wear Daily "Unique details and artifacts transform each of these interiors into a truly unique and beautiful oasis ... Lehrman Bloch explains how these professionals are evoking the most basic principles found in nature to create spaces that are as good for the soul as they are innovative." -- Luxury Interior Design Journal "What is the difference between a house that is merely pretty and one that speaks to the soul?... As Lehrman Bloch puts it, the secret lies in the ability to draw upon color, texture, and nature to imbue spaces and objects with imagination and meaning." -- Lonny Magazine "The Inspired Home is jam-packed full of stunning photography of some amazingly beautiful homes that I could spend hours drooling over ... .[Karen Lehrman Bloch] advocates the use of natural elements to create a home that we feel comfortable and at peace in." -- The Fantasy Decorator "Every once in a while the fruits of an author's labor brings forth a uniquely substantive and fresh approach to how we view and, therefore, interpret interior design ... Karen Lehrman Bloch has achieved this in her newly released book The Inspired Home." -- C. J. Dellatore "[Karen Lehrman Bloch] has a certain and constant focus-and with this new book she presents her ideas of authentic, uplifting, elegant, and enduring beauty." -- The Style Saloniste

Review Quote

"What is the difference between a house that is merely pretty and one that speaks to the soul?… As Lehrman Bloch puts it, the secret lies in the ability to draw upon color, texture, and nature to imbue spaces and objects with imagination and meaning."

Details