This article is part of our special design section, dedicated to making the environment a creative partner in the design of beautiful homes.
Interior design, an art form susceptible to the changing tastes of owners and the foibles of fabrics and wallpaper, is often appreciated only fleetingly or with hindsight. Several recent books capture this evanescence in the spirits of an abandoned craft community, the inspirations of a 20th-century maverick, the rocking decks of floating homes, and the ever-evolving ambience of plant-filled spaces.
Viking ship prows and Scandinavian wildlife were among the favorite subjects of a short-lived artisan cooperative called Elverhoj (pronounced el-ver-hoy), founded in 1912 on the west bank of the Hudson River north of Newburgh, NY “Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson” (Black Dome Press$35, 218 p.), by scholars William B. Rhoads and Leslie Melvin, is the first in-depth study of this ambitious, long-forgotten endeavor. Led by Anders H. Andersen, a Danish immigrant, the residents of Elverhoj built ramshackle cottages and offered copperwork, silverware, opal jewellery, leather book bindings and textiles, among other things. They decorated chandeliers with dragon heads, sculpted oak leaves and plump flower petals on metal teapots and inkwells, and wove portraits of polar bears into tapestries. Ruins of the colony’s buildings can be found in the woods, and among the poignant surviving archival materials is Mr. Andersen’s sketch from the 1930s, when bankruptcy threatened, of a trio of dagger-wielding creditor rolls.
“Frances Elkins: Visionary American Designer” (Rizzoli$65, 304 p.), by historian Scott Powell, examines some 60 commissions made by the Milwaukee-born heiress to the manufacture between the 1920s and 1950s. For commercial, institutional and residential clients, she clad walls in goatskin and framed fireplaces with mirrors and lapis slabs. She collaborated with luminaries such as Syrie Maugham, Marion Dorn, Dorothy Liebes, Alberto Giacometti and Jean-Michel Frank to specify teal and tangerine upholstery, mermaid murals and creamy fluted rugs. She turned glass pillars into gossamer balustrades and spiraled up a red-carpeted staircase around a stack of clear plastic spheres. Plaster hands served as mounts on her fringed, plaid curtains. Male colleagues did not dare to contradict the resourceful, intimidating businesswoman. “She’d run you over in nowhere,” one architect told an interviewer years after he and Ms. Elkins filled a boxy San Francisco home with red carpets and black-and-white leafy textiles.
In “Making Waves: Floating Houses and Life on the Water” (Thames & Hudson$40, 224 p.), British stylist Portland Mitchell reveals the benefits and horrors of occupying offshore flats. In their 20 case studies from 10 countries, homeowners describe how they avoid waves from ferry traffic and survive typhoons “when the sea flies around you”. Basic tasks, like cleaning hull rivets, can cause splashing leaks and doom and gloom. About a third of the dwellings in the book were built for living, and the remainder were converted from barges and other seagoing craft. Compact rooms are clad in blond plywood, recycled teak, metal panels, or psychedelic textiles. Respondents share a preference for catchy house names like Soggybottom Shanty. They are also united in their fondness of pipe-hanging lights and wraparound decks for wildlife viewing. “Once we saw a gray heron surfing on a magpie,” recalls a resident of a former speedboat in Germany.
Plant and interior designer, artist and author Hilton Carter wittily explains parallel patterns found in nature and in home furnishings “Living Wild: How to Decorate Your Home with Plants and Cultivate Happiness” (Cico books$45, 224 p.). Mottled begonias and leathery philodendrons play with bouclé and cowhide upholstery in his family’s home in Baltimore and his projects for private and commercial clients. Stripy monstera are perched on marble mantels and plinths, and wheeled planters make it easy to move plants to where they can soak up sunlight. Amidst his step-by-step green-fingered tutorials — like sprinkling sharp pebbles on soil to scare off curious cats — he points out his visual puns and shares the joy of his job. At a restaurant famous for fish tacos, he hung a herringbone cactus resembling a fish vertebra in a terra-cotta pot from the ceiling, “drawing its jagged, zigzagging foliage downward.” Installing a coffee plant on a kitchen counter, he writes, “Yes, I took it literally… But wait, I’m not done yet. I also made sure the planter was cream colored. Oh yes, watch me work!”
