Mario Buatta - Fifty Years of American Interior Decoration.

Mario Buatta with Emily Evans Eerdmans, Paige Rense (Foreword by).

Published by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2013

429 p. New York. Fo. First edition, first printing. Publisher's folio 3/4 blue leather hardcover, gilt title stamped title on spine cover, paper covered boards with leather end caps, illustrated text, ink inscribed by the author/designer " For Gregory - with thanks Mario Buatta 10.26.13" on the title page. Measures: 1.75 W x 9.75 x 12.25 H inches. About the author/designer and his work: Mario Buatta (1935-2018), the AD100 interior decorator was hailed for decades as the Prince of Chintz because of the cheerful flowered fabrics that were a signature element of his English country style rooms. The extremely popular interiors for which Buatta became renowned including a parade of influential settings for the Kips Bay Decorator Show House and notably lavish, ultrafeminine bedrooms were American in their sense of gusto and color but utterly English in their comfort, layering, and love of history. As The New York Times observed in 1970, he was the first to admit that he was born in the wrong century; his love is the ebullient English Regency period and most of the things surrounding him are choice examples of the early 19th century. Buatta freely admitted his indebtedness to grandees of inventive traditionalism such as Parish, Rose Cumming, and particularly John Fowler and Nancy Lancaster of London s Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler. Sometimes, though, his tributes cut too close to the bone. Young man, if you re going to copy me, you could ve done a better job, Fowler coolly observed when Buatta proudly brandished a photograph of his Manhattan apartment, which was then being heralded in the United States and which Buatta later cheerfully admitted was a real copycat room. Born and raised in Staten Island, New York, a son of violinist and bandleader Phil Burton (née Felice Buatta, aka Felix Buatta, aka Phil Buatta) and a grandson of Italian immigrant craftsmen one grandfather was a carpenter, the other was a plasterer the future decorator grew up disenchanted with all things modern. Antiques were more to his liking, preferably of English origin, and decoration, ditto, neither of which described Olive and Felix Buatta s modest redbrick home at 534 Oakland Avenue in Staten Island s West Brighton neighborhood. My parents built it in the '30s and furnished it with glass and steel and chrome, all the sorts of things that are terribly popular today, he said in an interview with Barbaralee Diamondstein-Spielvogel in the 1980s, adding, as if to explain his ardent Anglophilia, You find that a lot of people who were brought up with chrome and steel are suddenly living in very embellished kinds of rooms. (AD) CONDITION NOTES: Fine; light wear not commensurate with age and use (e.g. rubbed wear at a corner tip of spine crown), strong square spine/tight binding, crisp and clean text pages. A gift quality copy. Seller Inventory # 002761

Bibliographic Details

Title: Mario Buatta - Fifty Years of American ...
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
Publication Date: 2013
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition