1/5/13 review of The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe

(Image: Rizzoli New York)

Here is my January 5, 2013 Twitter review of The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe.

Unlike my later Twitter reviews, this was not posted all in one thread. Instead, I posted each tweet separately.

The tweets are below for your convenience.

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Tweet 1. Finished reading Elsie de Wolfe's The House in Good Taste. The classic work of high-class interior design for those not fabulously wealthy. T2. For such a short book, of which I understood so little, de Wolfe's House in Good Taste was greatly inspiring to me and gave me many ideas.

T3. For de Wolfe, each room entails a balance between the social and personal, the reserved and intimate, and is designed/decorated accordingly. T4. The House in Good Taste is at least partly in the tradition of Thoreau's diary, van Gogh's letters, and Goethe's Theory of Color.

T5. The House in Good Taste is built on three formulae. Number one: suitability, simplicity, and proportion. T6. The House in Good Taste, formula two: light, air, and comfort. T7. The House in Good Taste, formula three: harmony of purpose and harmony of effect.

T8. The House in Good Taste moves through the various rooms of a large house, exploring their purpose, and matching purpose with decoration.

T9. De Wolfe includes a chapter on the apartment, which has often been ridiculed as ignorant of real working-class families with children. T10. But  de Wolfe's chapter on apartments is really aimed at young professionals, or at roomie/companion couples, kind of like Barbie houses. T11. The best part of the apartment chapter is de Wolfe's recognition of modern living rooms as multi-purpose, expressing interests/occupations.

T12. A great thing in The House in Good Taste is de Wolfe's history of Isabella d'Este and Madame de Rambouillet.

T13. But the real star of The House in Good Taste is -- color! Creams, blues, greys, greens, rose, in so many shades! Close to 50 shades, I bet. T14. My favorite is de Wolfe's gentian blue, rose pink, and buff. It's a variation of red, white, and blue. Eat your heart out, Jasper Johns!

T15. Just wanted also to say that the edition of The House in Good Taste I read was published by @Rizzoli_Books. A very lovely printing, overall.

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Here is the link to the Rizzoli edition of The House in Good Taste.

I should mention that I checked this book out from the Jefferson County Public Library system in Colorado.