Georgian Style And Design: Book Review & Giveaway

This Decorati Book Review & giveaway is a departure from the more modern look of our previous review on Liaigre.  Georgian Style And Design by Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, published by Rizzoli, is an educational tour of Georgian style, with practical ideas for its use in new homes today.

One lucky winner who registers with Decorati by Friday Dec 19th, 5pm PT will be entered to win a Free copy of Georgian Style And Design. To be entered to win your copy, please click here.  If you are already registered on Decorati, please click here. (Please note the contest has already been completed, however keep an eye out for more book giveaways on Access!)

The book is organized by room type, starting out with the most public of spaces, the entrance hall, and finishing with the most private, the bathroom.

We’ll start our tour of the book in the bedroom and skip past the bathroom.  However, for those of you perusing the book, look out for photos of exquisite bathrooms with wonderful clawfoot soaking tubs, including several more sleek, modern versions.

Spencer-Churchill explains that bedrooms featured the the most expensive piece of furniture typically owned by the family - the bed.  Many of the bedrooms depcited feature four-poster beds with colorful patterned curtains like the photo below.  Read more below.

Often bedrooms were treated as a sanctuary, or an escape for the inhabitants of the Georgian home.  They were designed to be cozy and calming.  It is particularly fitting that the bedroom below used lilac walls with an accent of cream to create this mood.  It is also very timely, and modern, as lavendar is one of the hot new colors for 2009.

Moving on to the kitchen, we see more adaptations made to service the needs of the modern family.  In a historic Georgian home, the kitchen wasn’t a place where the inhabitants gathered.  It was often a smaller room, crowded with workers.  The new kitchen chosen by Spencer-Churchill has a distinctly Georgian feel, but it is executed with a more current layout.  The majority of pieces were custom made for the space, including the brick fireplace below.

The family dining room or breakfast room chosen by Spencer-Churchill is less fancy than the formal dining room, but it still boasts several more thoughtful details, including the marvelous green trellis pattern on the ceiling.  This motif is carried throughout the room with the trellis wallpaper and the smaller trellis pattern in the chair rail.

The drawing room below is in a London townshouse that Spencer-Churchill designed.  Typical drawing rooms included three seating areas and this townhouse is no exception.  The seating area depicted below includes an 18th century settee and ornate chinoiserie panels.

The final stop in our tour from the inside out, is the entrance hall.  This room was meant to be impressive to first-time visitors (notice the gold leaf molding).  Yet at the same time it was supposed to be practical (notice the simple wood flooring).

This concludes our brief tour of Georgian Style and Design.  The book boasts many more lovely images of Georgian style rooms with informative histories of the different design elements that define them.
All images by Christopher Drake.