AROUND HOME : NEW BOOKS : Nineteenth-Century Decoration: The Art of the Interior, BY CHARLOTTE GERE, (Harry N. Abrams Inc.; 1989)

ORNATE AND CLUTTERED but, nevertheless, comfortably intriguing, the 19th-Century interior now becomes inspirational to modern-day interior decorators with the publication of Charlotte Gere’s exhaustive book covering European and American interiors.

Not only did interior decoration as an art form come of age in that century, but the interior also became widely depicted in paintings, drawings and, later, in photography.

Gere publishes 500 of these representations to illustrate interiors ranging from Italianate mansions to simple cottages. “An autocrat in his drawing room,” for instance, shows a Henry Cole and his family in a Kensington High Street salon that might be contemporary for its mix of chintzes and velvets and small framed prints above the fireplace.

Also note the unusual display of vases on a mantel in a plate called “Furniture in the Anglo-Japanese Taste.”

Ideas abound: sofas sumptuously swagged in velvet, embroidered tablecloths, painted screens.

An inspiration for romantically inclined home decorators, and a virtual textbook for those in the interior design business. (Hardcover $95.)