Color and history of San Miguel

THERE is no “San Miguel style,” writes Jorge Almada in the foreword of this coffee table book. Only “an amalgamation of influences,” says the co-founder of the Casamidy design store in the Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende.

Writer Annie Kelly and her husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter, highlight that diversity in narratives paired with captivating photographs that provide a real sense of why so many expatriates are flocking to this colony of artists.

Kelly’s profiles of the casas, casonas, haciendas and ranchos and their homeowners are part biography, part history lesson and part travelogue. But this is ultimately a design book. It is filled with ideas for anyone in need of Mexican inspiration such as painting a dining room red to reflect the color of the bougainvillea outside or pairing a red Chinese Art Deco rug with Mexican Deco-style furniture.

Though some of Street-Porter’s photographs are of the Architectural Digest variety, his forays into the idiosyncratic are delightful: a Modernist water trough for horses at the hacienda La Laja is striking, as are a pair of front doors covered in retablo and ex-voto art and a taxi carrying life-sized figures for a parade. Images explode off the pages with the colors of Mexico.

-- Lisa Boone