Rooms with a History

Inspirational and visually on trend, Ashley Hicks's latest work is a pattern book for the twenty-first century. Offering insights and revelations, Hicks's own exquisitely quirky and colorful historicist interiors are discussed with designs from the recent and faraway past.

Ashley Hicks has created a mix of manifesto, souvenir album, and confession in this collection of noteworthy rooms--featuring his own one-of-a-kind interiors along with rooms that have inspired him. The manifesto aspect is rather limited, since Hicks is not a great believer in aesthetic rules or the value of so-called good taste, but as a souvenir album, it charts Hicks's personal creative journey of the last few years, illustrated with photographs of some favorite historical interiors and objects that represent a mixture of source material and inspiration.

The book's twelve chapters reveal Hicks's creative process, how he approaches different themes in his own interiors, furniture designs, and works of art, and how these themes can be applied to the works of others. Such subjects as flowers, color, layers, form, pattern, and memory are presented in the context of actual projects. Historical and recent interiors are discussed for their decorative value--notable rooms and architecture include the Pantheon in Rome; Emperor Maximilian's tomb in Innsbruck; the Royal Pavilion, Brighton; and the Petit Trianon at Versailles. Hicks has created a book for devotees of decorating and the history of interior design.