Kathryn Ireland Timeless Interiors - Kathryn Ireland (Boek)

European tradition meets California informality and globe-trekker chicFrom stateside townhomes in New York, beach houses in the Hamptons and Malibu, and ranch homes in California to farmhouses in the English countryside and Southwest France, this collection of Kathryn Ireland's interiors moves up and down the sliding scale of formality.

As Timeless Interiors demonstrates, a Kathryn Ireland-designed space, no matter how playful and unorthodox, is always inviting and livable. As her fabric design business thrived and expanded, so her interior style began to incorporate elements of from her expansive travels-paisleys, ikats, and madras- taking on a lively globe-trekker chic appeal.

This mid-career report card showcases rooms and residences that Kathryn designed last week and as far back as 20 years ago. Even her earliest installations are aging extremely well, like a good Bordeaux.

Kathryn M. Ireland is among House & Garden's "10 to Watch" architects and designers expected to influence 21st-century style. She starred in Bravo TV's Million Dollar Decorator in 2011. She is the author of Summers in France, Creating a Home and Classic Country. She divides her time between Santa Monica, California, and Montauban, France.

Review
Beautiful saturated colors, arresting fabrics, and a style that blends California dreamin' with European sensibility characterize the rooms in the new book Kathryn M. Ireland Timeless Interiors (Gibbs-Smith, 2012).

Kathryn, an interior designer and fabric designer whose work has graced our pages, starred in Bravo's Million Dollar Decorator in 2011.

As a fan of playwright David Mamet, I was glad to get a glimpse at the good-looking, easygoing style Kathryn gave his home in Santa Monica. It was designed by John Byers in the thirties, who was known for his Spanish Colonial Revival and Monterrey-style homes. Here's a closeup of a bookshelf with memorabilia from plays of Mamet's that have been made into movies.

"What I love about the Southern California houses built between the First and Second World Wars is that the architects of that period, Byers among them, understood that exterior living spaces were as important as the interiors," Kathryn writes in the book. "So they created lovely interior fluidity through clear, distinct rooms and plenty of garden and patio space for outdoor living."

Here's an example from the grounds of a Santa Barbara horse ranch: ahhhh

As a bibliophile, I always think of home as a form of autobiography, and Kathryn is expert at letting her clients' lives tell stories in their homes. I especially love the screening room she designed in the home of film director Robert Zemeckis. Kathryn says, "I merely had to camouflage the projection port with a large painting that could rise mechanically for screenings." (The painting itself, charmingly, is of film watchers.)

While they were designing this home, Kathryn says, she and the client were so in sync they could finish each other's sentences. It shows.

(Rebecca Christian Tradition Home 20121208)
From the Inside Flap
From a bohemian 1960s beach house in Malibu, California, to a grand nineteenth-century manor on the coast of Normandy, France, the diverse collection of Kathryn M. Ireland interiors showcased in this book move up and down the sliding scale of formality. No matter the client, the style idiom, or the degree of playful unorthodoxy, Timeless Interiors demonstrates that a Kathryn Ireland-designed space is always inviting and livable, original and appealing.

While Kathryn's design mind may have blossomed in the hothouse of cool California style, her roots are unapologetically European. The result is a highly evolved personal style that marries a deep reverence for tradition with the blithe spirit of fresh reinterpretation.

As her eponymous fabric design business thrived and expanded, so too did Kathryn M. Ireland's interior style begin to incorporate elements from her travels-patterns of paisley, ikat, and madras in vivid colors stories picked up in South America, Northern Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. As the book clearly reveals, her talent with cross-pollination creates chic home environments with lively globe-trekker appeal.

Despite Kathryn M. Ireland's wide spectrum of work-a film director's screening room in Santa Barbara, a playwright's home in Santa Monica, a formal estate in Brentwood and a Roland Coates-designed Spanish Colonial Revival in Palos Verdes-all the homes she decorates bear the unmistakable imprimatur of her signature look-comfortable and stylish habitability.

KATHRYN M. IRELAND stars in Bravo TV's Million Dollar Decorator. Named by Elle Décor in 2012 as one of the top 25 design stars in the U.S., Kathryn enjoys an international reputation for her expertise in the "sympathetic restoration" of older properties with important architectural origins. A well-established fabric designer, Kathryn has been invited to design a collection for the venerable fabric house Scalamandré based on vintage patterns from their voluminous archive of textiles. Though based in Los Angeles, Kathryn continues to travel the world, collaborating with clients, sourcing furnishings, and conducting design seminars. Kathryn is the author of Summers in France, Creating a Home, and Classic Country. She and her three sons divide their time between a Spanish Colonial Revival home in Santa Monica, California, and a farmhouse in Southwest France.

http://www.amazon.com/Kathryn-Ireland-Timeless-Interiors/dp/1423630319/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362833508&sr=1-13&keywords=interior+design+books+best+sellers+2012

http://www.kathrynireland.com