The Private House

If you are ever in LA, treat yourself to a visit to this designer's showroom. It's like stepping into another world that has been completely removed from the hustle and smog of the city...find more of this type of inspiration in her book. A total pleasure to read and absorb...my only regret is that i never got a chance to take her class at UCLA...

As an interior designer, my library is bulging with design books. Yet, time and time again, I reach for "The Private House." Insightful and genuine, "The Private House" always provides me with a bit of stimulation, a bit of grounding, and a subtle reminder to always use the best and most unusual furniture, fabrics, and art available to a client's budget. The information provided within the pages of "The Private House," are worth the journey - constantly.

I waited a long time for a Western interior design book that speaks directly to me; it was worth the wait. Paul Goldberger says it best in his foreword: "Rose Tarlow's work celebrates the reality of living -- the way in which, out of a complex mist of memories, emotions, aspirations, and knowledge, each of us builds a life that is like none other. Her rooms are like no other, and they are marked by a natural grace." Her wonderful, delicate text and intensely satisfying photographs are to return to time and again; this is a treasure that is much more than an obsessive-compulsive personal summary of what antiquaire Rose Tarlow teaches in her UCLA master interior design class. As she also writes (and I've long agreed), "If I were forced to choose, I would much prefer to live surrounded by carefully selected and much loved books than by indifferent art" -- add the fabulous At Home With Books by Estelle Ellis to your purchase. A true connoisseur.

After reading and flipping the pages of many architecture and design books over the last 20 years, I have found none as fun or in truly informative as this one Ms.Tarlow has put together. It's her human quality in the writing that really comes across in this book to make it warm and a real learning experience, not like a difficult professor in grad school but more of caring private tutor who tells you all the stories so you learn the lesson not just memorize it. Some of the design situations certainly will not arise in my life (dealing with a kitchen in the pool house comes to mind.) But it's full of great perspective, many lessons and a wonderful read nonetheless. Ms. Tarlow takes us on a journey that is so personal yet so professional and exotic you feel lucky to have been invited into her Private House.

Rose Tarlow invites us into her rarefied world, and aren't we lucky. She has created sublimely elegant furniture and environments for a number of years, yet her work has not received the kind of extensive editorial converage that some of her less talented contemporaries have. She has composed a relatively slim volume of words and images that is at once very personal yet instructional.We are given a peek into her private life with descriptions of the house she grew up in as well as the creation of her magnificent home in Bel Air California and other projects.She shares some of her fundamental design pricipals in addition to a history of how she began her very unique and successful career.This is a book for anyone who appreciates extraordinary design in addition to being a wealth of information culminated from a lifetime of exploration and study.