BOOK REVIEW HOLIDAY SPECIAL SECTION : Rich <i> and </i> Strange

This year there is a very healthy crop of unusual cocktail-table gift books. Absent for the most part are books on such vibrant subjects as basket weaving, antiquing, perfect doily-making and spindly kitchen chairs that should, at best, be given to Goodwill.

There are a slew of books devoted to rooms in your house and even your closets. Most of these “style” books are just some decorator’s half-baked fantasies about how life in medieval Ruratania was lived. Your reviewer, having barely survived a decorator-inspired purple bedroom and black bathroom, cannot recommend these books.

One of the most unusual of this year’s assortment is “The Legend of the Lighter.” For those of you who remember “The Great Age of Smoking,” this is your book. Think of Rhett Butler giving up his ornate gold cigar case for The Cause in “Gone With The Wind,” of Norma Desmond casually tossing a gold-engraved case at Joe Gillis in “Sunset Boulevard,” or of Camille Beauchamp sensually sealing her pact with her lover by blowing smoke in his face in “Now, Voyager.” Your reviewer remembers his father, who never smoked, carrying an elegant Zippo lighter for mom, who did. He also remembers mom, all 350 pounds of her, collapsing when she had her massive myocardial infarction, splitting the floorboards when she hit the ground. The dangers of smoking aside . . .

“The Legend of the Lighter” is principally brought together by Ad van Weert, the director of the Dutch Lighter Museum, which contains one of the world’s largest collections of lighting equipment. The book traces the lighter (and smoking) back to its origins in the tinderbox, introduced in about 1600. Tinderboxes were boxes, tins and pouches in which flint, fire-stick and tinder were stored. Elegant little things, they were often made of wood, mother-of-pearl and brass. It was Sir Walter Raleigh, who, in 1586, introduced pipe-smoking to England. But it was Christopher Columbus who was the first European to meet serious smokers. He was greeted in the Americas by a small group of Native Americans smoking cigars. The Spanish eventually brought the tobacco back to Europe, calling it “nicotiana.”

By 1823, a German chemist perfected a table-lighter suitable for domestic use. Ever since then the lighter and cigarette case have improved to more portable sizes and have become elegant accessories to many a wardrobe. The display of lighters in this book is staggering. The reader is reminded that every era had its own style of lighting equipment, from the grand jeweled affairs of the 1930s to the streamlined elegance of the chrome lighters of the ‘60s.

The authors note sadly that “today, a portable fire-source is no longer a prized possession.” Where once humans believed that fire was a gift from the gods, now we’re stuck with childproof Bic lighters.

Now that the O.J. Simpson trial is over, and you don’t really care about those pasty Menendez brothers, you need a hobby. Usually, how-to books are not well-organized, attractive, and easy to understand. Not so with “Hand-Painting China.” It is simply and clearly written, the illustrations can be followed by a hobby idiot like your reviewer and the results are stunning. Although the book demonstrates how to recreate Delftware and florid English blue-and-white designs, craftswomen Lesley Harle and Susan Conder, the authors, stick pretty much to modern bold designs that are easy to recreate. They also suggest a number of alternative paints and glazes that don’t require kiln-baking, which, especially for pieces used to serve food or drink, is the preferred method. You can always rent a kiln short-term. Or you can use water-based ceramic paints that can be baked dry in your home oven--which will give you time to watch Court TV while your plates are baking should Burt murder Loni.

Easily one of the chic-est books on the shelves this season is “Hair Style” by Amy Fine Collins, the style editor of Harper’s Bazaar magazine. There is little text: The “Brief History” notes that such was the power of court hairdressers that King Philip IV of Spain conferred the same rank on the royal barber as he did on the court painter, Diego Velazquez. Things have not changed much in the world of the super-rich. Some of the hair-dos in this exquisitely photographed book could have been coiffed by Marie Antoinette’s hairdresser--if he’d taken enough LSD. “Hair Style” features eight of the world’s best hairdressers who have worked on the world’s best heads, from Janet Jackson to Madonna to Uma Thurman to Her Royal Highness, the Princess Diana. And it sails from the unimaginably exotic to basic elegance with a graceful twist of the rudder.

“The White House Collection of American Crafts” is quite a nice surprise. This little-known collection, like American craft work itself, hasn’t received much national attention until recently. The craft movement has existed throughout the century, mostly at small schools and colleges. Only a few museums exhibited craft works. It was not until Joan Mondale decorated Blair House with the American crafts to which she was devoted that Americans recognized the individualism, the charm and the refinement of our craftwork.

In 1993, this collection was begun by President and Mrs. Clinton. The surprise is the way in which these contemporary refined pieces (72 in all) have been perfectly integrated into the 18th- and 19th-Century interiors of the White House. Some pieces play against the furniture, others slyly mimic it, while the glazing on some pieces actually accentuates the overall palette of the space, as does Dante Marion’s 1993 “Yellow Pair,” in the yellow Oval Room.

Your reviewer will keep a copy of this book on his cocktail table for some time to remind him that something of national importance can occasionally occur in the White House.

According to “Silver in America 1840-1940,” after 1840 and for several decades Americans were larger producers, consumers and exporters of silver than their European counterparts. In 1845, the “Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy” listed the usual silver articles needed for a proper table:

“Dishes and covers, table knives and forks, desert knives and forks, table spoons, gravy spoons, soup ladles, salt spoons with gilt bowls, pie slicers, trays and waiters, bread baskets, cake baskets, decanter stands, decanter labels, liquor and bottle stands, cruet frames, asparagus tongs, cheese scoops, knife rests, nutcrackers, grape scissors, tea urns, coffee urns, teapots, coffee filters, sugar basins, cream ewers, sugar tongs, teaspoons, toast racks, butter coolers, sniffer trays [and] candlesticks.”

The text traces the manufacturing and financial developments of great American silver companies like Tiffany, Gorham, and Reed & Barton and is as thorough as the preceding list. The accompanying photographs represent what is certainly the American belle age of silver, a time when Rockefellers and Morgans and Beaumonts bought thousands of pieces for their grand palaces that are now museums, too impossibly large for any single family to own anymore.

The grand palaces or fazendas of the Brazilian plantation owners were built in the 18th and 19th centuries around Rio de Janeiro and Sa~o Paulo. They are equally as large as the mansions of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Morgans--and filled with as much sterling. These estates were occupied by the family of the plantation owners and their vast administration, each fazenda operating as a powerful fiefdom.

The most opulent of the houses date from the 18th Century in a style heavily influenced by Portuguese Baroque architecture, usually square or rectangular with thick walls of stone and mortar. The estate house was focused around an interior courtyard.

The 19th-Century fazenda was a two-story neoclassical style mansion featuring many windows and ornamental entries and wrought-iron balconies.

Author Fernando Tasso Fracoso Pires beautifully describes and presents more than two dozen of these South American jewels in this book, each remarkable for its understated use of warm earth colors and the remarkable interior and exterior woodcarving.

****

THE WHITE HOUSE COLLECTION OF AMERICAN CRAFTS, By Michael W. Monroe with an essay by Barbaralee Diamonstein; foreword by Elizabeth Broun; photography by John Bigelow Taylor (Harry N. Abrams: $35; 128 pp.)

HAND-PAINTING CHINA: How to Design and Paint Your Own Beautiful Ceramics, Without the Need for Kiln-Firing. By Lesley Harle and Susan Conder, photos by Debbie Paterson (Lorenz Books / distributed by Stewart, Tabori and Chang $17.95 paper; 1365; 160 pp . )

SILVER IN AMERICA 1840-1940. By Charles L. Venable, Tom Jenkins lead photographer. Biographical essays by D. Albert Soeffing (Dallas Museum of Art / distributed by Harry N. Abrams $65; 365 pp.)

THE LEGEND OF THE LIGHTER, By Joop Bromet with Ad and Alice van Weert (Abbeville: $45; 191 pp.)

HAIR STYLE, By Amy Fine Collins (HarperStyle/HarperCollins: $60; 158 pp.)

FAZENDAS: The Great Houses and Plantations of Brazil, By Fernando Tasso Fracoso Pires . Photos by Nicolas Sapieha (Abbeville: $65; 204 pp.)