Dreamhouse: Penny Drue Baird

by Penny Drue Baird, Mario Buatta (Foreword by)

Overview

Architectural Digest Top 100 interior designer Penny Drue Baird’s rooms are universally admired for their seamless weaving of past and present. From luxurious Manhattan apartments and a jewel-toned Parisian pied-à-terre, to family homes in Connecticut and New Jersey, and a whimsical Bucks County barn, Baird’s work is the result of deep client relationships that have lasted for decades.

A Tudor-style house is redesigned to feel fresher as its owners’ tastes mature, an airy Beverly Hills villa follows a young bachelor’s first apartment in The San Remo, and sumptuous fabrics and textures provide a modern backdrop for the vintage collections of “the chicest person Baird knows.”

Baird incorporates bold architectural gestures - tufted niches, gold-leaf and turquoise coffered ceilings, classical moldings and other made-from-scratch details - with fabrics from taffeta to practical corduroy, and unexpected finishes like mother of pearl and strié painted walls, trompe l’oeil limestone, classic bead board, or end-grain wood wallpaper. In his warmly written foreword, Mario Buatta lauds her skill and taste in sourcing unique pieces for each room.

Art Deco cabinets, Sputnik chandeliers, and gracious European antiques discovered in France, England, and Italy are received with the same delight as salvaged barn siding and old crates. Au courant but never trendy, with elements both classical and contemporary, each dreamhouse is infused with Penny Drue Baird’s irresistible sense of romance, charm, and joie de vivre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580933711
Publisher:	The Monacelli Press
Publication date:	04/21/2015
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 11.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Penny Drue Baird is an internationally renowned interior designer, known not only for her design talents but also for her knowledge of history and culture. Her delight in all things French is legendary - her first two books, Bringing Paris Home and The New French Interior, were published by The Monacelli Press - but her first priority is creating designs that bring her clients’ tastes and preferences to life. Baird's firm, Dessins, is based in New York and Paris. An AD Top 100 Designer, she is frequently featured in Architectural Digest and other prestigious shelter magazines.

Editorial Reviews

03/16/2015
Innovative ideas abound in this classic retrospective of interior design, even as it leans toward the designer’s most dramatic examples, such as a barn in Bucks County, Pa., converted to a “guesthouse and entertainment center for their farmhouse.” With its grand yet rustic dining table illuminated by vintage carriage lights, and custom wrought-iron banisters made from farm tools, this is no average living space. Yet the book also includes a historic manor house in which a casual family room has a kid-sized kitchen and armchair tucked into the corners and a patterned sofa to hide spills. Most of the selected homes feel lived in rather than staged, in spite of the spotlessness. A 1920s Park Avenue apartment in N.Y.C. gives off a decidedly Liberace vibe, gold leaf and all, but the book also shows off a refined terracotta plaid set of chairs for a client with a more traditional tastes. The sampling of styles, locations (New York; Palm Desert, Calif.; Paris; Los Angeles), and types of homes displays Baird’s range and ability to satisfy any client. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Tells you how to be the best client you can be. How to get the most from your decorator. And like Penny’s earlier books - Bringing Paris Home, The New French Interior - it’s filled with ideas to steal, lighting solutions, closet extensions, tricks to shortcut your needs, luxurious touches to look for in your own flea markets.” - Gael Greene, 'Insatiable Critic'

“To be sure, Penny Drue Baird's work often incorporates salon- and château-like details drawn directly from France - not to mention plenty of finds from the Marché Biron and Marché aux Puces, in Paris. But her rooms are also suffused with a distinctly American tendency toward casual comfort - often filled with soft, upholstered furniture - and many accommodate children in a way that is decidedly un-French. As she proves in Dreamhouse, elegance and practicality are not mutually exclusive.” - 1st Dibs' Introspective

“Innovative ideas abound in this classic retrospective of interior design. Most of the selected homes feel lived in rather than staged, in spite of the spotlessness. The sampling of styles, locations, and types of homes display's Baird's range and ability to satisfy any client.” - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher