The Sensual Home. This item is unavailable.The Sensual Home

"The Sensual Home" is the key to creating private havens that soothe and enhance each of the senses: the all-important gifts of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing that are so often overwhelmed by the frantic pace of the outside world. Separate chapters examine first the senses themselves, then our sensual needs in categories such as Light & Space and Energy & Spirit. 200+ illustrations, 175 in color .

As befits the title Sensual Home, this comes with a sensual suede-like cover, with an atmospheric cut-out card featuring a cat peering through a muslin window. Subtitled "liberate your senses and change your life", this is an interiors book with a difference. Reading the list of contents, such as hearing, touch, sixth sense, sight, taste, you could mistake this for a guide to holistic health.

Interiors guru Ilse Crawford is known for launching Elle Deco, the first contemporary interiors magazine, and then moving onto masterminding designer Donna Karan's home furnishings. Writing more like a wise friend, than a design snob, Ilse Crawford presents an approach to the home that transcends the look. This is not a how-to manual, but an invitation to consciously enjoy every aspect of the home, from bed linen to crockery, from food to flowers.

Absolutely every photograph by Martyn Thompson is a gem, from the child drawing on a giant black board, to the shaggy dog (captioned "we are all animals underneath"). Ilse Crawford's trademark contemporary style, with natural colours, comfy minimal furniture and the simplest of details such as log fires and candles becomes a vision available to us all. What's more, the clever database at the end contains a plethora of practical tips and information that will defy any cynic. --Lorna V