Easy Steps to Successful Decorating
Bradford
1971
Yes this is THE Barbara Taylor Bradford. Before she hit it big with A Woman of Substance and the subsequent Emma Harte books, she was a home decorating/style expert. So do we weed or keep? After all, it is Barbara Taylor Bradford.
Before you give your answer, take a look at some of these decorating ideas and tell me that we need to hang on to this in a modern public library. An archive should keep this for posterity, for the rest of us it is a weeder. On a personal note, the cage style bedroom evokes a certain charm.
Mary
I saw this kind of red in a swedish magazine. It is not a bad scan. The real color is looking good. But the shape of the chair and the panther spots…
The “teenager room” is giving me a headache. Reminds me of the ugly wallpaper that was all over my parent’s house for years until they saved up enough to replace it.
I just don’t know how we could get rid of such an exciting idea as the pole-dance bed! Jeepers–such a keeper.
I always wanted a bed that evoked being in prison.
Have you seen the latest jacket photos of BTB? Airbrushed beyond belief!
I’m not sure I’d be able to keep a meal down in that last room.
I want that floral houndstooth bedroom so bad I can barely breathe. Plus I’m already in therapy so no one would have to refer me when they saw it. And the prison bed isn’t that bad… if you’re into that sort of thing. Ow ow!
To steal a quote: “from back when more was… more”
Houndstooth is making something of a fashion comeback, often combined with bold floral prints. Check out the work of Mondo Guerra.
The houndstooth girls’ bedroom makes me anxious. Maybe that was the parents’ idea?
I love this book.
But do not operate heavy machinery while dizzy from that teenager’s bedroom.
I swear I saw the Con-Tact paper nightmare on the bottom in the Lileks book “Interior Desecrators”. It is definitely hideous enough to be in there.
Is that a frog and a cow on the wall of the last picture? Even a child would be quite overwhelmed in that room! Perhaps Ms. Taylor-Bradford would approve of organizing a bookshelf by color since she’s the combo of a book lover and interior decorator! It’s a great photo of her in any case. Perhaps you could weed the book and use the cover to make a sign for her books in your fiction section ;).
I bet there are collectors who’d pay for it.
I think I just had a small seizure looking at that bedroom picture.
I am a vintage girl who buys a lot of vintage things and this book would surely improve my decorating skills. I love these historic vintage decorating finds.
That “prison bed” might be a big hit, what with “Fifty Shades of Grey” having sent everyone to their local fetish shop for a pair of cuffs… 😉
The house I grew up in had carpeting like the dining room picture…. Orange shag carpeting, still there 20 years after it was installed! My mom said that it did hide a lot of stains.
The only good part about the house catching on fire was that the carpets were damaged and the orange shag was replaced.
I do like that bed in the lat photo. Imagine the walls in gray or purple and it would fit in an Ikea catalog.