Irish Country: Personal Look at Decorating with Pottery, Fabrics and Furniture in the Irish Style - Hardcover

Mosse, Nicholas

9780091864439: Irish Country: Personal Look at Decorating with Pottery, Fabrics and Furniture in the Irish Style

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091864437 ISBN 13: 9780091864439

Publisher: Ebury Press, 1998

Irish country style evokes both richness and simplicity, with wonderfully textured natural materials, earthy colours and uncluttered interiors where the beauty of individual objects shines through. IRISH COUNTRY shows how to recreate this look in your own home, wherever you may live. Focused around the work of Nicholas Mosse and also drawing on many other examples, it looks at the essential elements of the style, including pottery, fabric and furniture. Each chapter opens with fascinating information and history, covering everything from traditional spongeware motifs to the regional variations in Irish linens. Practical information, including step-by-step projects, then enables the reader to bring these ideas into their own home, with sections on decorating pottery, for example, embroidering and using linen for all kinds of purposes, or decorating an Irish country-style table. This fascinating and personal book will enable anyone to enjoy some of the quiet simplicity and magical atmosphere of Ireland in their own life.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"Think what a piece of thread can do," urges Nicholas Mosse in his chapter on the fabrics of Ireland. "A tiny, flexible and unending bit of fluff has certainly wrapped up a good bit of Ireland-- and has joined it to the rest of the world several times over."

Every once in a while, this all-encompassing guide to Irish country style--full of practical projects and evocative photography-- descends into complete blarney. Then, often within the same paragraph, it presents the reader with some surprising historical or practical truth; and so well and so succinctly, the reader feels almost embarrassed for ever having doubted Mosse's message.

Nicholas Mosse admires and emulates the simple and useful shapes of Irish country life. Things should be made by hand, and made to suit; Irish dressers should be constructed around the things they are meant to treasure; chairs should reflect the sitter's leg and back size. "If something works, don't change it. If something still looks all right, don't buy another." What this has meant for the evolution of the Irish home, and what it means today as we fashion our own interiors, are the poles between which this fascinating and personal book swings. --Simon Ings

About the Author:

Nicholas Mosse studied ceramics in London and in Japan before returning to his native Kilkenny to found Nicholas Mosse Pottery. He is now one of the country's most successful potters and his work is known far beyond Ireland, with extensive sales worldwide. Together with his wife, Susan, Nicholas has extended his business into other areas of traditional Irish crafts and style, incorporating a range of fabrics and glass, a restaurant and the restoration of a 40-acre 18th-century garden complete with traditional cottage and waterfall. Nicholas's pottery and home have been featured in many leading magazines, including Country Living, House & Garden, Garden Design and Homes & Gardens.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.