Legendary Decorators of the Twentieth Ce

Hampton, whose star rose some time ago in the firmament of interior decoration, here gazes back on a century of taste in home design, opining that a onetime pastime of idle 19th-century ladies has edged much closer to Art. He sketches the professional--and sometimes the private--lives of the industry's demi-gods, modestly presenting himself as an acolyte. Hampton's witty, well-crafted biographies include everyone from Elsie de Wolfe (who claimed she was the first interior decorator) to David Hicks and Michael Taylor, the author's immediate predecessors. We are also allowed a glimpse into the narrow world of American wealth that eagerly defined class as displayed in home possessions. Woven into the book as well is a tale of the development of an upper-class American domestic sensibility. Hampton's own preferences lean toward a relatively clean and simple traditional look that breaks away from fuss and pretension, but makes no attempt to be egalitarian. He illustrates his book with his own hand, in accomplished but homogeneous watercolors of 22 decorators' interiors. Author tour; first serial to House Beautiful. (Oct.)