Antique Decorating

Care and Repair of Antiques and Collectables

Carving Classical Styles in Wood

Product Description
Join an expert craftsman on a full-color journey to see how classical motifs evolved through the Greek, Roman, Romanesque, Renaissance, and Neoclassical periods; and learn how to add exquisite period details to all your woodworking projects, too. Detailed carving instructions help you incorporate relief panels, bands, foliage, tablets, escutcheons, scrolls, cartouches, fans, sunbursts, shells, keystones, and finials into your own work. A final project chapter offers easy-to-follow examples of these elements brought together in the making of chests, benches, cabinets, and mirror frames. Plenty of photographs, practical guidance, and fascinating historical commentary will inspire woodworkers and interest students of art and those curious about the development of ornamental styles.

Chic Living With Feng Shui: Stylish Designs for Harmonious Living

Product Description
Using the ancient principles of feng shui, transform your home into an environment that’s both chic and life-enhancing.

Breathtaking full-color photos show how easy it is to establish retreats and secret spaces for renewing the spirit, to design shared areas that promote harmonious relationships, and to adapt ancient Chinese principles to modern tastes by using exercises for exploring the chi, or aura. Room-by-room guides display strategies for adjusting the shapes, colors, textures, and position of your furnishings to strengthen immune systems, eliminate clutter, encourage confidence, and reduce stress. Just moving a bed can increase passion, repositioning a desk will expand powers of concentration, and repainting surfaces can lead to a boost in energy levels. Your home will have the balance and harmony vital to success and happiness.

Chinese Furniture: A Guide to Collecting Antiques

Product Description
The international market for antique Chinese furniture is booming, and masterpieces from the Ming and Qing dynasties are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Chinese Furniture is a survey of these collectibles--from the very best hardwood pieces featured to standard softwood specimens still available on the Asian market. The book presents an overview of carving styles, wood types, regional variations, class distinctions and restoration techniques.

With this renewed interest in antique furniture, a forgery market has emerged. Thousands of factories in southern China are churning out brand new or refurbished furniture and passing them off as antiques. Chinese Furniture unearths these forgeries and serves as an indispensable reference guide to collectors.

About The Author
Karen Mazurkewich is an Asian Wall Street Journal reporter who has covered Asian culture and the retail scene for three years from her base in Hong Kong. Mazurkewich has investigated art forgery, interviewed countless collectors, grilled innovative businessmen and queried tradesmen all in a quest to better understand antiques and manufacturing in Asia.

Christopher Lowell's If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It!: Dream Decor on a Budget

From Publishers Weekly
Lowell, the host of an eponymous home decorating show on the Discovery Channel and the author of the very successful Christopher Lowell's Seven Layers of Design, has a vivacious, flamboyant persona that's garnered him a considerable squadron of fans. His forte: inspiration on the psychological side, and re-design on the physical. Taking a room in a modest house or apartment, for example, he applies a theme ("Theater Living," say, or "Zen-sational Office") to liven it up; "every dream, like every good room," he writes, "needs a theme." Unfortunately, most theme projects provide an opportunity for cliché: "Martini Lounge" means zebra print pillows and bar stools; "Moroccan Mystique" translates into hanging tapestries and paisley prints. The unifying style that Lowell achieves is something cramped, gaudy, and busy to the point of exhaustion, flooded with the brilliant color spectrum of the mall teen-furnishings store. On the other hand, he does empower his fans to pursue their home decorating fantasies in whatever wild and potentially wonderful direction they may lead.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Emmy award-winning author Christopher Lowell is back with his second groundbreaking book, ready to inspire his millions of fans with hundreds of ideas that can transform their homes—and their lives. With his first book, Christopher Lowell’s Seven Layers of Design, Lowell introduced design basics layer by layer, demystifying and reassuring the first-time home decorator. Now he takes the process one step further, encouraging readers to discover their own hearts’ desires so they can turn their dreams into unique realities.

Taking us by the hand, Lowell starts with his own experiences of self-discovery as a guide for the dreaming process. Next he provides a questionnaire that helps you identify your own sources of pleasure and fulfillment. Finally, he illustrates the process with exciting design projects built on particular themes. The longing to entertain friends in a cozy cocktail room transforms an awkward space into a “Martini Lounge”; dreams of living
by the seashore become “Coastal Living”; the desire for travel and theatrical surroundings informs “Moroccan Mystique”; and a nostalgia for the mid-twentieth century finds its creative expression in “Retro Chic.” Each of these imaginative rooms not only expresses the creative spirit, but also feeds the soul.

As Lowell explains it, no matter what your budget, no matter what your talents, if you begin to understand the relationship between the interior of your mind and the interior of your home, you can create beauty in both. The sense of satisfaction promised by a home that you yourself decorated is not beyond your reach or your budget, if you follow the simple steps of America’s favorite design guru.

Classic English Design and Antiques: Period Styles and Furniture

11/29 NEWSDAY
"marvelously British"

Feb07 MAINE ANTIQUE DIGEST
"easy-to-read history"

Classical Furniture

From Library Journal
Classicism continues to be a dominant principle in Western design, and nowhere has the sense of beauty, harmony, and proportion been more evident than in the design of furniture. Linley traces classicism from its origins in ancient Greece to other parts of the world, including interesting historical facts and insight into lifestyles. A student of fine crafting and a furniture designer and maker--as well as Princess Margaret's son--Linley is well qualified for the discussions of materials and methods used. Of particular interest is his directory of furniture, which illustrates the evolution of styles in chairs, tables, settees, sideboards, desks, dressers, and firescreens. Included are excellent black-and-white line sketches and rich color photographs. While not necessary for a limited collection, this will be of interest to art and architectural students.
- Barbara Bartos, St. Croix Cty. Lib., Hammond, Wis.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Classical Guitar Making: A Modern Approach to Traditional Design

Product Description
What a thrill for any musician: playing a fine-sounding instrument that he or she has lovingly crafted from scratch. With this richly illustrated manual, well-known luthier and guitarist John Bogdanovich shows exactly how to build that first, beautiful guitar, using traditional, time-tested methods. All that’s required are basic woodworking techniques and a minimally equipped shop. Bogdanovich discusses the anatomy of the guitar, sound, choosing an instrument, selecting woods, templates and molds, and preparation. In more than 300 pages of text, he painstakingly lays out the details of construction, from assembling the neck and sides to installing the fingerboard and bridge.

Colette's Birthday Cakes

From Booklist
A cake is de rigeur for any American birthday celebration worthy of the name. Continuing her series of volumes pictorializing her sumptuous cakes, Peters brings her decorative skills to cakes designed specifically for birthday observances. And anyone receiving a cake like one of Peters' creations should be particularly grateful. Peters' skill with milled fondant overshadows that of most other professional bakers. She can carve fondant into tight, sharp geometries, or she can swirl it, fold it, and wave it into silken ruffles and curves that belie its solidity. Line drawings assist the cook in recreating these elegant pastries, but only professionals and those with some formal training in handling fondants and cake-decorating tools and techniques will readily pick up on Peters' barebones instructions. Recipes, too, reflect a professional's approach, measuring by weight rather than volume. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
No one makes more beautiful cakes than Colette Peters. Now anyone with an interest in pastry art can make them at home. There are cakes for every sort of birthday celebrant. Each month has a sign of the zodiac cake (for Aquarius, a Water Pitcher mosaic), a birthstone cake (for June, a Crown of Pearls), and a flower cake. In addition there are assorted cakes such as a doctors bag, a chess set, and an Art Deco confection. The book includes delicious basic recipes and instructions for everything from how to build a tiered cake to airbrushing with sugar.

Colette's Cakes: The Art of Cake Decorating

From Library Journal
Peters is an artist and former Tiffany's designer turned cake decorator extraordinaire. Here she presents detailed instructions, accompanied by line drawings and color photographs, of three dozen of her elaborate creations. Her collection is somewhat more sophisticated than Greg Robinson and Max Schofield's The Icing on the Cake ( LJ 5/15/89), and cake bakers with lots of patience should find it inspiring. For special collections.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Colette's Wedding Cakes

Collins Encyclopedia de Antiques