David Hicks on Decoration

First edition (1966) copy of David Hicks on Decoration by David Hicks. David Hicks on decoration, Britain's most gifted, most sought-after designer and decorator demonstrates how even the most ambitious interior designs can be applied economically to your home or apartment. Throughout this beautiful book, which contains 32 pages of magnificent color plates and 120 black-and-white photographs, Mr. Hicks illustrates and describes many of the techniques he has used in decorating and designing rooms for a host of distinguished public figures, from the private suites at Windsor of the Prince of Wales and Princess Anne to the London flat of the late Helena Rubinstein. In Mr. Hicks's view, "interior decoration is the art of achieving the maximum with the minimum. It is the art of making the most of your house, your rooms, and your possessions. It must create a background for living for each individual house and owner." His book covers every aspect of interior design, including the all-important use of color and lighting, the selection of furniture, fabrics, carpets, and accessories, the special challenges of kitchens, bathrooms, halls, and staircases, the special pleasures of the well-designed garden. Mr. Hicks contends that creating the right background for living is chiefly a matter of good taste, not money. "People can be born with taste or they can acquire it-providing that they are aware of what it is. Taste is a gradual development of visual awareness and decisiveness. It is a question of being interested in all you see and use, and of continually searching, selecting, and experimenting. I have found that the way in which objects are arranged and lit-whether they are expensive and rare or simple and everyday-gives a room style." Throughout the book, he stimulates and encourages the reader to re-create his own design for living through common sense, careful planning, and imagination. David Hicks is, at thirty-eight, Britain's top interior decorator. His work covers an astonishingly wide range-from interior designs for the world's most glamorous residences to tin tea trays retailing in England at 9s 6d; from luxurious yachts to London's omnipresent "semi-detacheds"; from the fabulous revolving restaurant at the top of London's GPO tower to designs for fabrics, mass-production carpets, and silverware. He has traveled widely and is internationally in demand. He recently completed work in San Francisco on the sets for the new Julie Christie film Petulia, decorated a Palm Beach house for Michael Phipps, and completed his largest room to date, the night club of the new (as yet unnamed) Cunard liner. Other recent assignments have included designing the interiors of a new restaurant for Covent Garden in London, an eighteenth-century country house for Noel Cunningham-Reid, a Channel Islands house for Sir Francis and Lady Cook, a flat in Milan, a palace in Venice, and a house for the Duchess of Rutland. Mr. Hicks is also a painter, sculptor, and photographer. Married, with three children, he divides his time between London, Oxfordshire, the Var district of Provence, and New York and Nassau, where he maintains offices. Author: David Hicks Hardcover with dust jacket Edition/year: 1st, 1966, Macmillan Company Condition: good vintage condition with minor creases and a small tear to the top of the dust jacket, which is protected in a plastic sleeve.  Dimensions: 12.25" x 9.5" x 0.75"