The House Book II

      I know I'm repeating myself here but the strength of the interiors shown in The House Book is their confidence.  Their creators may sometimes miss the mark but they are not afraid of failure. Colourful, bold, experimental they are expressions of the personality, and perhaps even the subconscious, of the owner.  And for that they are to be applauded.

      Today - what a sorry contrast - we are timid. Bland. I may have used this analogy before but Goodhart Rendell, writing about the Late Gothic Revival followers of G F Bodley coined the phrase 'The wages of good taste is death' (cf Romans 6. 23) to describe their attenuated churches. (A little harsh, perhaps) The same could be applied to too much of today's interiors. It is all too reasonable. What are we so scared of? Are we so characterless? Unformed?

     I suppose that some of the blame can be placed with property programmes on tv as though we all should live permanently in blank canvas mode in case we should suddenly want to sell up and move. All far too corporate for me. The whole thing exemplified by C4's 'Grand Designs', where houses look like public buildings rather than homes; Dolly Parton once said, "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap," and 'Grand Designs' shows it certainly takes a lot of money to look that bland, that characterless. Happily I think things really are beginning to change for the better. Colour, at least, is returning.
     Anyway here is a second selection of interiors and/or images that caught my eye; the first image is actually the Conran's kitchen from when they lived in one of those spectacularly theatrical terraces that fringe Regent's Park in London.