Secondhand Interior Design Bargain Book Box SP4256

Secondhand Interior Design Bargain Book Box SP4256

Eight large hardbacks on English and Irish country-house style, five of them by Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, who grew up at Blenheim Palace and decorates in that tradition. Georgian proportions, swagged curtains, fabrics and table settings, with Judith Miller on colour and a tour of Ireland’s great houses. A matched set for anyone furnishing a period home.

1. The Romance of Country Inns — Elizabeth Bond — Four-poster beds, toile wallpaper and breakfast trays, with ideas for getting the look of a country-house hotel at home. A decorating book as much as a travel one.
2. Classic Fabrics — Henrietta Spencer-Churchill — Damask, chintz, velvet and toile: what each is, where it came from and which rooms it suits. The most practical of her books.
3. Classic English Interiors — Henrietta Spencer-Churchill — The English country-house look taken room by room, from drawing room to bedroom. She explains why the look works, as someone raised inside it.
4. Country Colour — Judith Miller — Colour schemes for country interiors, arranged by palette from earth reds to faded blues, with photographs by Simon Upton. Miller made her name on antiques, and she knows how old paint ought to look.
5. Classic Georgian Style — Henrietta Spencer-Churchill — Proportion, panelling, fireplaces and window treatments from 1714 to 1830, with advice for restoring a Georgian house or borrowing its manners. The curtain chapter alone justifies the book.
6. Classic Entertaining — Henrietta Spencer-Churchill — Table settings, flowers and menus for lunches, dinners and Christmas, photographed with real silver and blue-and-white china. It shows how grand houses actually lay a table.
7. Classic Decorative Details — Henrietta Spencer-Churchill — Cornices, door furniture, lamps, picture hanging and how to arrange a mantelpiece. It covers the small things that make a room look finished.
8. Great Houses of Ireland — Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd & Christopher Simon Sykes — Some of Ireland’s finest country houses, with the family stories told by a writer who loved eccentric aristocrats. Sykes’s photographs catch the houses lived-in.