Lavishing Decor on Outdoor Spaces
If you’re not reading this while lounging in a hammock, you might want to invest in a book that could inspire you to transform your backyard into a beguiling outdoor room.
“Open Air Living” by Enrica Stabile (Ryland Peters & Small, 144 pages, $27.50) shows how style setters the world over have furnished their gravel patios, urban decks and other outdoor spaces with as much imagination as they would lavish on an indoor room.
You’ll find both the familiar sun-dappled hammock topped with an inviting pillow as well as more inventive ideas, like mattresses slipcovered in red-and-white striped canvas and scattered about a terrace for extra seating. Imagine how you could surprise your friends when you show up for your next picnic with ideas taken from a St. Tropez beach pavilion.
Stabile is a well-known Milanese decorator with a retail store filled with striking textiles and rustic antiques. Her motto: It is better to have a happy room than an impressive one. She has houses in Milan, Provence and London, and these locales figure prominently in her book. (Her Web site, with examples of her decorating style, is https://www. enricastabile.com.)
This book illustrates how to frame the great outdoors as a backdrop for dining, reading, working, even bathing. Home offices never looked this good: Laptops perch on patio tables next to urns spilling with geraniums; desks moved into sun rooms create an inspiring work space.
She shows picnics in the Hudson River Valley and meditation corners on a SoHo rooftop furnished with mats, pillows and exotic foliage. There’s an earthy set-up of a woman bathing in a rushing stream. Helpful chapters discuss how to choose textiles for use outdoors (avoiding fabrics that fade, choosing colors that look best next to swimming pools). She discusses lighting options. Step-by-step illustrated instructions show how to construct a beach tent using a lightweight gauzy fabric and poles available from camping suppliers.
For those who think globally, the source glossary in the back will delight, with addresses and Web links from Milan’s chic shopping streets to Pier 1 Imports.
If you read the fine print in the back, you’ll find that some of the photographs were taken at a pastoral French inn owned by former aide to John F. Kennedy, Pierre Salinger, and his wife, Nicole.
Of course, most of the gardens, porches and patios shown in this book are pretty fabulous to start with. But we can dream, can’t we?
