Zona Home: Essential Designs for Living

Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary gem.
Review: Everyone has heard that the truest and most durable beauty lies within. Zona Home confirms it. This book about interior design for living spaces is a remarkable gem. In 208 pages everything is touched on from a personal design theory to some practical "recipes". Nothing is left out. The author warms to his true love of texture and contrast, elements of earth, air, fire and water, scent, sound and discovery. He goes on to topics of travel, gift giving and buying antiques. The ideas he presents revolve around the beautiful object, a simple lifestyle, and the search for a spiritual center. With the author's Zona approach your living space does not change at the whim of popular style. You can return to this book many times and always find more. I fact you may not need any other book about decorating.

Although Louis Sagar ran a beautiful store in Manhattan's Soho district for seventeen years, Zona Home is not a push for sales but presents ideas and frees the beholder to create interiors from his or her own life.

A lot of meaning can be taken from the lifestyle choices a person makes but it's often assumed that to have a planned design for a living space one must spend a lot of money. Sagar shows that choices of simple objects from ones own life and travels are an important part of letting our surroundings express who we are.

The book relies heavily on photographs for it's comfortable appeal. The photos are well selected and express a spirituality without shouting it. The effect is serene but not droning. They are full of detail but not overwhelming and project the book's message of beauty with character, not a slick polish.

The text is peppered with many quotes from notables including G K Chesterton, William Carlos Williams and Joseph Conrad. Unfortunately the author also quotes himself in his own book. This lapse can be forgiven however, because the book is a work of art that "casts a spell". A delicious "travel" book presenting us with beautiful, exotic and unusual places that could be our own homes.