Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic Treasure Hunting and Decorating Guide

Amazon.com
By now most readers even marginally interested in home decorating are familiar with the democratic principles of decorating elaborated in Rachel Ashwell's first book, Shabby Chic: namely, that well-made vintage furniture and home accessories can add a cozy grandeur to your home, even if the paint's a little thin or the fabric a bit faded. In her second book, Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic Treasure Hunting & Decorating Guide, Ashwell shares her processes, from a stall-by-stall description of a flea market trip to pictures of her design boards scattered with photos, fabric swatches, and paint chips. Ashwell doesn't skimp on details: she tells how to decide on a fair bargaining price at flea markets, how to clean old items without harming them, and (step by step) how one ugly glass-fronted cabinet topped with old linoleum and mismatched shelf paper became an attractive, roomy storage piece that houses her daughter's books, dolls, and bedding. This is a friendly, intimate book in which Ashwell shares pictures of her own home and those of her friends--some of whom live in roomy beach houses and some of whom live in 450-square-foot cottages, and all of whom use the main Shabby Chic concepts of comfort, function, and beauty in deciding which objects to share their space with. Fans of the original Shabby Chic will find this follow-up every bit as useful, attractive, and accessible.

From Booklist
Who is Rachel Ashwell--and why should we care? Not really a Martha Stewart clone, she is the owner and quasioriginator of a line of home furnishings that recalls the aesthetic sensibilities of genteel nobility, the kind of clean but slightly neglected homes and interiors associated with a decline in income. In an intensely personal narrative, she invites readers to flea markets, to examine the old and unusual, and to tour her home (and those of four others), and all photographic wanderings are accompanied by gentle, almost subconscious instructions. An oversize round table, whitewashed and with cutoff legs, becomes a comfortable coffee table in a seaside cottage. Carefully scrubbed and washed, old Christmas mercury ornaments shine like silver in garden settings. Even a stained linen cloth and a pink sari have new lives. Barbara Jacobs

Mary Daniels, Chicago Tribune
"...Rachel Ashwell [is] the founder of the Shabby Chic home-decor empire and the queen of secondhand stylishness...."

Hamish Bowles, Vogue Style
"When she merged English country style with L.A. ease, Rachel Ashwell didn't realize she was unleashing a phenomenon."

Africa Ragland, Palm Beach Post
"Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic" is a treasure-hunter's dream guide...."

Bay News
"Exquisitely photographed and richly detailed, this is the essential, step-by-step guide to finding the treasures of a lifetime...."

Mary Daniels, Chicago Tribune
"...Rachel Ashwell [is] the founder of the Shabby Chic home-decor empire and the queen of secondhand stylishness...."

Book Description
It helps the healthiness both of body and soul to live among beautiful things. --designer William Morris, 1882 Shabby Chic -- the rich, inviting, practical, time-worn style created by one of America's top designers, Rachel Ashwell, is a style of living that reflects the grace and simplicity of another time. Now you can do more than just dream of living in a Shabby Chic home. You can create one yourself. With invaluable treasure-hunting advice and tips for essential materials, furniture, objects and decorations, you can live a life of simple, but rich, beauty. With her practiced eye Rachel takes you on a tour of flea markets, antique malls, and a variety of secondhand sales -- estate, tag, yard, church, garage -- to demonstrate how, with a little taste, imagination, work and ingenuity, you can turn trinkets from the past into treasures for today. As Rachel sifts through the discarded, the crumbling, the shabby, she takes you step by step through her personal process, sharing how you, too, can spot a fabulous buy, repair and alter it, and by following her guideline words -- comfort, function, and beauty -- develop your own distinctive, original look that is down-to-earth yet truly exquisite. Following her sensible advice you can exchange the anonymity of mass-produced furniture and home accessories for unique, inviting surroundings for a fraction of the cost and decorate comfortable, livable rooms in which family heirlooms blend with flea-market finds and the new combines gracefully with the well worn. Lavishly illustrated with lovely and informative photographs and drawings, Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic Treasure Hunting & Decorating Guide shows you how to have the home you've always dreamed of, a place where children's dinners are served on mix-and-match antique plates at a table covered with lace from a renovated curtain set with unironed linen napkins. A space where fresh flowers stand in antique jugs, complementing comfortable furniture covered in crisp white denim that is enhanced with each laundering. For Rachel, Shabby Chic is not just style. It is a way of living. With her trademark warmth and charm she reveals how she sleeps on embroidered antique linen and dresses in cashmeres and bias-cut silk dresses discovered in vintage clothing shops and flea markets. Throughout, she teaches you how to recognize and appreciate beauty in unlikely and often overlooked places, as well as how to define and refine your individual taste. Worn damask, relaxed velvets, tea-stained florals, washed-out cotton prints, tattered lace, monogrammed linen.... Comforting colors: celadon, mint and seafoam greens; dusty rose; ivories, creams and faded grays; a touch of pale sky-blue; crisp, clean white....Faded grandeur: the incomplete, the neglected, the crumbling, the cracked, the mismatched, the wrinkled.... Ruffles, gathers, tucks; scuffs, chips, imperfections; worn moldings, tired elegance, peeling paint.... An appreciation of vintage and history....This is Shabby Chic

About the Author
Rachel Ashwell was born in England and has spent the past eighteen years in Malibu, California. She created the Shabby Chic style in 1989 and is the founder of the Shabby Chic home furnishing stores and the designer of a line of slipeovered furniture, bedding, and fabric sold worldwide under the Shabby Chic by Rachel Ashwell label. She is the author of the bestselling Shabby Chic and Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic Treasure Hunting & Decorating Guide, and is the host of E! Style Network's Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic on Style.Amy Neunsinger is a freelance photographer who lives in Los Angeles and New York City. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and ad campaigns ranging from beauty to travel. She is currently working on a fine art book of flowers.Deborah Greenfield, Rachel Ashwell's sister, was born in London. She studied art at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design in New York. She is a cho reographer and an award-winning flamenco dancer She lives in Los Angeles, where she divides her time among illustration, acting, and dance.


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"...Rachel Ashwell [is] the founder of the Shabby Chic home-decor empire and the queen of secondhand stylishness...."  — HarperCollins


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