Vintage Home: 20th-century Design for Contemporary Living Hardcover – 15 October 2015

excellent

Love thus book

disappointing book which I thought was going to illustrate lesser known patterns of china and glass of various periods, emphasis was too much on furniture for my taste.

This is a beautiful, full size coffee table book, loaded with full color, clear and detailed images of homes and collectibles. There's a lot of focus on influential pieces of more modern design periods, such as art deco, arts and crafts, Scandinavian, skyscraper, post-modernism, retro, space-age, ect. The book is divided into design periods, and has a few rooms of much older homes designed with the more modern-Vintage furnishings.From bubble chairs to marshmallow sofas, and art deco statues to Lalique and Murano glass vases, beautiful, characteristic desired objects are detailed, and that gave me a good feel for each period.I love the section on color at the end, I wish it had been longer. I feel like that would have made this book a bit more useful to me personally in my own decor efforts, but that's not really what this book excels at. It excels at training the eye to appreciate and recognize design elements that characterize the art and design movements of the 20th century. This is a book for antique dealers, designers of all types, art lovers, and collectible hunters.If there are pages without very detailed photographs, they are rare. This is a picture book. Each picture is carefully labeled and explained, and it is always easy to tell what the text is referring to.I found this very enjoyable to read and look through. It's eye candy, but presents useful and potentially lucrative knowledge too.

Judith Miller has brought us an impressive work on twentieth century furnishings. The book contains nearly 300 pages of color photos of individual objects and full rooms, along with text explanations. The photos are all very well executed including those of the rooms. The rooms are done as still lifes. I would like to have seen more evidence of human habitation, e.g., a sweater-draped chair, a sleeping cat, or an electronic device or two.I think of myself as a twentieth century person, having lived the majority of my life in that century. I was surprised that this is now called “vintage.” Most of my furniture comes from the twentieth century. Despite its thorough treatment, the book seems to have left out lava lamps and the butterfly chair. I think of these as icons of the mid-twentieth century. I have accumulated five of the chairs. It is still possible to find replacement covers on the Internet. There are some advantages to living in the twenty-first century.Some of the styles shown are quite attractive. Others not so much. However, I have found two pages with my very own style. It is called “Retro Mix.” Ms. Miller says “Combining retro pieces from different eras creates characterful interiors filled with color and interest.” Retro Mix does permit retro-styled technology. I used to think of my style as “Clutter.” Now, I am happy to be "Retro Mix."