I am someone who needs fairly constant inspiration, a busy brain that needs stimulation, usually/always of the visual kind. I’m no longer engaging with Instagram which used to provide me with lots of inspiring ideas and now feels heavy with rubbish and layered with tension. Substack notes is a surprisingly fresh feeling space with original content and less pressure, but ultimately, vintage books are my jam.
The above is a photo I took in Ben Pentreath’s studio, he has talked at length about his love for vintage books and the analogue quality of engagement this encourages.
For me, vintage books take me out of the over engineered Pinterest images that are heavily styled and worse, AI generated. This AI thing feels like wholly new territory doesn’t it, at least for me it does and I’m still figuring out how I feel about it. Useful, as a tool, scary, as a tactic?
Vintage books land you back in a space that is unself-conscious, showcases technical construction and principles and also highlights how interior style, as with anything is cyclical, very little is actually new.
A few books that I enjoy below, always bought cheaply from World of Books, tatty and replete with inspiration.
House & Garden book of bedrooms, so full of flounces and frills and still so compelling.
Elsie de Wolfe’s a Decorative Life, includes a section on ‘Bath Salons’ definitely going to start referring to bathrooms in this way going forwards.
Influential interiors by Suzanne Trocme, covering a selection of the greatest interior designers and highlights of their work.
