High-profile designer, Nate Berkus, gets up close and personal with his latest design book, The Things that Matter. He reveals intimate details of his life and upbringing and talks about the people who have influenced him and his sense of style.

Yes, he takes you home with him and into the homes of 12 other stylish people as well. As you would expect, all of the places are beautiful and executed with an exceptional eye for detail. But, this is a text-heavy book where he shares stories about the people who live in the handsome places and what is meaningful to them.

The homes all have eye-catching collections of interesting and unique objects and each tells a tale. A brass gazelle named Fiona sits regally atop a smoked glass table in the heart of a chic black-and-white living room. Fiona is a treasured object from a humble source: EBay. Other treasures in other homes speak of esoteric interests and exotic places.

The homes are not all palatial. Fiona lives in a cookie-cutter contemporary apartment of modest proportions. He visits the tiny apartment (450 sf) in Greenwich Village of his hair dresser whose charming home is skillfully edited.

Some places are sleek and glamorous; others are cozy and filled with vintage furnishings. You see the home of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist and media personality. You also see the swanky digs of Chris Gardner whose rags to riches career – and year of homelessness – was chronicled in the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness.

Along with the many talents that have made him a successful designer, Berkus is a good story teller.

- Jane

Flea Market Finds with Matthew Mead is a new title that revels in the glories of a day spent sifting through vintage cast-offs. It proves once again that trash becomes treasure in the hands of those with fertile imagination, a sack full of DIY tricks and a gift for arrangement.

Mead is a style guru who applies his talents to rehabbing a multitude of unlikely finds into attractive home furnishings. For example, a coil of baling wire found at a farm sale is snipped and twisted into whimsical picture frames.

Unbreakable vintage melamine, enamelware dishes and a daisy-covered teapot create a play set for little girls. The lively colours make a pretty mix with the sugar cookies and candy of the tea party.

Inspired by an art book of black-and-white doodles, he applies marker pen to a spool of craft paper hung high on the wall and unrolled to the floor. This quick-change art installation is surprisingly chic and who woulda thunk it? Well, apparently, Matthew Mead.

He does some clever things with mid-century modern finds to create a stylish room setting.

In a section titled, Frond Moments, he makes a case for the friendly fern found on collectibles or plucked from the garden to decorate walls and table settings. With a stencil he applies a fern design to an old chest of drawers with a drop-down desk.

The book is a fun browse just for the level of ingenuity invested into reclaiming these old objects of his affection.

- Jane

Creative Display, by Geraldine James, makes a virtue out of clutter. In this inspiring book, objects are imaginatively displayed on every possible surface and every homemaker is an interior stylist. Layered surfaces include artwork, memorabilia and found objects.

Some displays are carefully organized by colour, theme or size and righteously balanced. Other arrangements appear organic and spontaneous, however carefully assembled.

There are displays that feature clever juxtapositions or “unlikely alliances”. On a long table covered by a paint-spattered drop cloth, a collection of expressionist paintings is paired with a loose arrangement of wild flowers.

Books may be the main event or used as props to stage other items.

If you have ever considered cobbling together a house from reclaimed materials, check out Handmade Houses by Richard Olsen. The book is billed the “first comprehensive consideration of the residential design of the back-to-the-land movement.”

It traces the history and origins of the movement and shows houses built by homeowners without architects and well as those designed by the pros.

Fleamarket Chic is another design book that works with vintage furnishings from humble sources integrated into contemporary interiors.

Unlike Homespun Style, which I reviewed last blog, many of the interiors are put together with subtlety and restraint because crafting is not the point of the exercise. Rather, collecting or rehabbing a worthy item that fits well into the decorating scheme is the name of the game.

- Jane

If you love colour and craft and reclaiming vintage furniture, you will enjoy the rooms created by interior stylist Selina Lake. In her new book, Homespun Style, she celebrates the power of hand-made furnishings to create homes that are personal and distinctive as well as welcoming.

She takes “a modern approach to craft” favouring simple creations over tricky techniques. The contemporary shape of a swivel chair is transformed by a funky, over-sized granny square afghan that is casually wrapped around it. Colourful textiles are made into easy cushion covers or simply draped.

The look is light-hearted and casual. In a cheerful dining area, candy-hued finishes are painted onto mismatched chairs. The walls are decorated with pop art trimmed with swags of pin lights and coloured beads. Above the arrangement hangs a bunting of pretty handkerchiefs knotted together at the corners.

Old light fixtures are redeemed with a splash of flowers painted on a lampshade or ribbon streamers fluttering from a chandelier. A modern chest of drawers was customized by refinishing the drawer fronts with pastel paint and vintage wallpaper.

She also demonstrates how to make eye-catching, still-life arrangements from favourite objects.

Lake insists that applying your passion for handiwork to your home does not mean that you need to be handy. She advocates support of your local artist and craftsperson. And good on her.

I’m thinking that if you admire their artistic ablility or tricky techniques mastered, you should be happy to pay for them.

- Jane

Sibella Court loves to travel and bring home mementos from her trips. She uses them to create rich interior vignettes which continue to remind her of the travel experiences. Court is a designer who writes for design magazines, owns an online shop and works with Anthropologie, a store that embraces her signature look.

Her new book, Nomad: A global approach to interior style, has a layout somewhere between a scrapbook and mood board. She combines her fusion style of decorating with stories about the people and cultures she has encountered in trips to Japan, Italy, India, Syria and Mexico.

A trip to Japan is reflected in a bedroom corner where a futon is covered with worn peasant textiles dyed with indigo. The reader learns about her stay in a Japanese inn and her visit with a famous indigo dyer.

A beautiful book of Amalfi paper displays a collection of seaside mementos from the Isle of Capri. From India, ethnic textiles drape a lush, tented bedroom. There are amulets and talismans from the Seed Souq of Damascus.

At the back of the book, she lists wide-ranging reference sources for her travels which include books, magazines, music and movies. In Japan, she stayed a while at the Park Hyatt Tokyo and listened to the saxophonist at the bar. The stay was inspired by Lost in Translation directed by Sofia Coppola.

Her style will appeal to those who enjoy rich layers and colours in décor and personal collections where each object recalls a story.

- Jane

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

My friend Bob, who is a wonderful musician, hangs some of his instruments on the living room wall – and very nice they look there. I think that personal collections have tremendous decorative power because they reveal the passion and interests of the homeowner. Recently, he added a ukulele to his collection of guitars, banjo and violin.

The ukulele is an instrument that I have not always respected. I suppose watching Tiny Tim on television as a younger person prejudiced me somewhat. When Bob plays the ukulele for his mother-in-law in the nursing home, he finds an appreciative audience.

This week we got a brand new book, Make your Own Ukulele by Bill Plant, and it made me think about Bob and the happy music he makes for himself and others.

The Ukulele gallery beginning on page 12 shows shapes of a very cheerful persuasion – hearts and cupcakes – as well as other quirky and unusual models. Who knew that there were four different types of the instrument? Also, who knew that they could be made from recycled materials?

Instructions begin with the basic “boxer” instrument. The last section shows how to construct a professional-grade ukulele. One way or the other, there is the promise of great fun in this little book.

- Candace

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

Words fade away,

Like hills in fog.

(from a Netsilik Inuit song)

To me, small and precious link together naturally. They also describe the objects from a new book, Upside down: arctic realities, by Edmund Carpenter.

Imagine the carver hunched over a small piece of ivory with a piece of bone or sharp stone teasing the image of a seal or a bear from the material. The tool follows the curves of the form and incises lines: stories in bone or ivory or wood.

Some of the wonderful little objects were made and discarded by peoples long since vanished. They were not made to be kept; they were made to be magical.

What we can put into a curio cabinet, they drew from their imaginations to serve some long forgotten purpose, dreamed of in a land where the sky was the same colour as the land or the sea. The carver “…must reveal form in order to protest against a universe that is formless, and the form he reveals should be beautiful.”

Small in size but monumental in content, most of these objects would fit into a hand. There are delicate little animals, an Ekven ivory carving that looks like a spaceship, masks, heads and little females with steatopygic hips. They served a purpose and fell away, like the cultures that produced them.

Canadian poet Al Purdy wrote the beautiful and evocative Lament for the Dorsets which celebrates the richness of lost cultures.

If you are intrigued with these stories, I also recommend A Dream in Polar Fog by Yuri Rytkheu. The novel gives clear and moving insight into traditional Siberian Yupik life as seen through the eyes of a marooned Canadian sailor in the late 1800s. Rytkheu wrote in both Chukchi and Russian and is considered the father of Chukchi literature.

- Candace

Today’s blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

The coffee table is a small surface that calls out for the clutter of life: a book, a tea or coffee mug and small things. Small things – either curious or beautiful – invite inspection and reflection.

The art of small things by John Mack considers the aesthetic of smallness and celebrates the art of the miniature. Among many fine things, he profiles two of the treasures that I keep on my coffee table.

I was given a plaster replica of the queen from the famed Lewis Chessmen. They are a collection of pieces from four different chess sets that were found in a bay in the Outer Hebrides.

My queen is great for ruminating on, although something a little stronger that tea may be called for. Based on her expression, being a medieval queen could not have been all pleasure. She is slightly larger than the figures of another obsession of mine: netsuke.

Netsukes are small sculptures about an inch tall, commonly carved from ivory or wood. Grace Gift Shop in the Dragon City Mall (second floor) in Chinatown carries some lovely Chinese netsuke. I have carved my own versions using taqua nut.

In the collection at Central Library, there is a splendid older book, The Art of Netsuke Carving, by Masatoshi. It shows traditional tools and techniques as well showcasing examples. Carving Japanese Netsuke for Beginners is another inspiring source that includes a gallery of beautiful pieces.

Finally, keep a place on the table for The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. Winner of 2011 Ondaatje prize, it traces the history of a family and an era through the story of a delicate and exquisite collection of netsuke.

Candace

Today's blog comes from Candace Weir, Central Library staff:

I love to look at books with pretty photos of interesting things: homey things that become treasures that are a joy to use. Things Chinese, a new addition to the CPL collection, is one of those books. It covers objects as diverse as cricket cages and dragons.

Chinese furnishings are some of the most delectable eye candy imaginable. There are door pulls shaped like carp and pottery stools incised with plum blossoms. Pottery abounds; pillows are actually made of it.

If I ever win the lottery, I plan to acquire a collection of Chinese beds: canopy or couch bed – doesn’t matter. I’m thinking a Chinese screen as well – and there will need to be a calligraphy painting to accent them, like one of these by local artist Simon Wong.

How many of us bought our dishes in Chinatown when we were students? My favourite was and remains the rice pattern chinaware with its translucent patterns and blue brushwork. Who hasn’t marveled at the intricate paper cuts, or wondered about the Scholars’ Rocks and wished that we could wear the sleek silk dresses with their clever knotted closures?

My personal collection includes a wedding basket, chopsticks, lots of calligraphy brushes and tea with a purple clay teapot to make it in. I once found a Chairman Mao cigarette case, much to the glee of a chain-smoking relative.

This book details it all.

Candace

“God is in the details” is an oft-quoted saying attributed Mies van der Rohe, the architect of modern glass, steel and concrete buildings.

Charles Faudree loves details too; however, Faudree’s world is lush and layered. He’s an American interior designer whose traditional decor has been featured in prominent shelter magazines like House Beautiful and Veranda.

In his newest book, Faudree zeroes in on the details that contribute to the lavish look.

Think carefully crafted still life of beautiful objects (or, if you prefer, objets). A collection of bronze dogs sits on a rare upholstery-topped table; real life fur-ball, Cavalier King Charles spaniel, lolls nearby on the sofa.

Draperies are trimmed with tassels; lampshades are edged with braid and baubles. Walls are papered or studded with pretty collections of china and dog portraits. In an entrance hall, an antique French floor clock sets the tone.

If you love traditional interiors filled with lots of lovely things, this book is for you.