Interior Alchemy: Secrets to Creating Expressive Ambience

by Rebecca Purcell and Kathy Walton

Book Overview

Here are tricks for creating cutting-edge interior design from tile original style setter at New Yorks trendsetting ABC Carpet & Home. The recent issue of Metropolitan Home magazine featured a New... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688148948
• ISBN13: 9780688148942
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.4" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

My Favorite "Decorating" book

This is more of an analysis of your artistic style than one of those cookie cutter decorating books--every page is amazing. If you are artistic & don't like to follow current trends, you will love the offbeat, quirky ideas. Worth every penny--sequel, please?

My new decorating bible

I adore this book. I found a copy of it mysteriously in my office (I'm a set dresser) and it has completely overhauled my beliefs in decorating. The pictures are feasts for your eyes... There's just so much to look at, all layered so perfectly. I can't wait to create my own lofted bed, my own hooshes, and mysteriously curtained nooks. I feel like I finally fit into a design catagory. Even if this book doesn't quite mesh as well with your design style, it is still interesting to look at the unique ways of decorating, and the text is lively and quite non-snore inducing (which most decorating books tend to be). Amazing book. Buy it, you won't be disappointed. It will leave you yearning for another one from the very creative Rebecca Prucell.

Close-to-realistic decorating

I have mixed feelings about this book, despite the 5 stars. I don't actually like clutter myself. I take its presence as a sign that somebody needs to tidy up and/or throw a few things out. Still, whose home is neat and organized all the time? Through great effort, I can get mine to lose that just-been-burglerized look for about 5 minutes a week. So I was delighted to find Purcell's book, much of which is devoted to making clutter actually look good, a process she refers to as "hooshing." She also appreciates that few people's household belongings are new, unstained or well-matched. --which is (IMO) why the rooms in this book bear some resemblance to places people actually live. The main deviation from TRULY realistic decor derives from the fact that HER piles of clutter consist of things like old globes, brocade samples, hardcover books etc., whereas most people's clutter is stuff like old newspapers and dead plants. But for an interior decorating book, it's close enough.

Interior Alchemy

If you buy every new interior decorating book on the market, and you open each book with the believer's prayer, which goes something like, let there be one idea worth stealing in this book, then you're in for a faith renewing experiece.Purcell has managed to come up with new ideas, as well as some new terms, guerilla architecture, Do-It-Yourself Art, and Attention-getting Mechanisms, all of which gave this jaded professional an almost religious experience.Perhaps because of her background in retail display, Purcell takes an irreverent approach to putting together a room. The photographs and text make you slap yourself on the head and ask, why didn't I think of that? Decorating books tend to fall into two categories, either how to's or beautiful pictures. Interior Alchemy combines these two styles, providing excellent, revealing pictures and text that tells you how to produce the same results, either by aging, no talent carpentery or as the title suggests by magic.

Interior design for the creative person!

Hallelujah! At last there's an interior design book for people who are creative, imaginative, original, and/or artistic! Interior Alchemy is not for the Martha Stewart wannabe or anyone with timid or conventional tastes . Instead the book shows how to take a bold, eclectic approach to creating an interior design that is original and a little off-beat. After reading this book, I completely rearranged four of my rooms, and now I have a home that has translated my deepest fantasies, longings, and dreams into reality. The author, Rebecca Purcell, helped me identify exactly what kind of interior design appeals to me, and then she gave lots of practical tips about how to create that look. I was able to use (mostly) things I already had, but the book showed me how to arrange them to create a dramatic effect. Right now I'm so in love with the look of my new interior design that I don't want to leave the house unless it's important! I never thought I could have a house ! ! decor that I liked so much. While the names Purcell gives the specific designs are sometimes a little strange (for example, "Alienated" refers to a blend of medieval and modern), the looks she achieves will inspire people who want a more creative environment in their homes. This is a beautiful, rich, imaginative, delightful book.