Two fall book releases that I have highly anticipated are The Drawing Room: English Country House Decoration by British historian and writer, Jeremy Musson, and The Private Houses of France: Living with History by French writer Christiane de Nicolay-Mazery. I collect books by both authors, and their latest efforts were well worth the wait.
As the title of Musson's book implies, The Drawing Room explores "one of the defining spaces of the English country house." The author's introduction gives a concise history of this room, which evolved from the modest, early seventeenth-century "withdrawing" room to a space that, by the late seventeenth century, stood almost equal in importance to the dining room, thus earning the drawing room the sometimes expensive, usually well-appointed decor that defines these rooms today. Musson has divided his book into chronological sections that trace the evolution of drawing room decor from the sixteenth century up to today, using numerous examples of well-known (and perhaps not so well-known) country house drawing rooms. In the section devoted to the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century drawing room, expect to find photos of South Wraxall Manor, Kedleston Hall, and Broadlands. Attingham Park and Renishaw Hall represent the elegant nineteenth-century drawing room, while the "opulence" of the later nineteenth-century can be seen in the rooms of Knebworth and Madresfield Court. The drawing rooms of David Hicks, Detmar Blow, and Nancy Lancaster are prime examples of how tastemakers decorated and used these rooms during the twentieth century. Finally, the book ends with a look at what the twenty-first-century drawing room looks like, specifically rooms decorated by Veere Grenney and Chester Jones. (All of the country houses I have mentioned are but a fraction of the houses featured in Musson's book.)
As tempting as it might be ignore the text in favor of the book's beautiful photos by Paul Barker, don't. Musson's brief but illuminating surveys of each drawing room are chock full of architectural history, social history, and descriptions of furnishings and decor, all of which tend to interest people like us. And one more thing- Musson's book will make a nice companion to Mark Girouard's Life in the English Country House, a book that many of us own.
Moving on to France.... I'm an ardent fan of author Christiane de Nicolay-Mazery, whose books give readers an insider's view of life in aristocratic French residences. Although the concept of her latest book, Private Houses of France, is not markedly different from that of The Finest Houses of Paris or even The French Chateau, that's okay with me. I never grow tired of looking at big, beautiful photos of sumptuously-appointed French homes.
De Nicolay-Mazery's latest endeavour profiles such private houses as Château d'Anet, Champchevrier, and the Paris apartment of Princesse G. There are also chapters on Hubert de Givenchy's Paris residence, Hôtel d'Orrouer, as well as Baron de Redé's first floor residence of Hôtel Lambert. (I believe that the book's photos of both residences have never before been published.) Like Musson's work, the text in this book deals mostly with the history of each residence, although the author does delve into how the various aristocratic homeowners live in their luxurious abodes. But it's the book's photos that might well send the reader into a reverie. In addition to large, overall room shots, there are plenty of detail photos as well, which capture the personal details that say so much about a home. Just take a look below:
*The Drawing Room is available via Barnes & Noble, Amazon
, and IndieBound. Private Houses of France also available through Barnes & Noble, Amazon
, and IndieBound.Photos from The Drawing Room by Jeremy Musson, copyright © Rizzoli Publishers 2014. Photos from Private Houses of Frances by Christiane de Nicolay-Mazery, copyright © Rizzoli Publishers 2014.