While cheerfully admitting to being a JK Rowling fan (happily on page 129 of the new book), we were surprised to realize this week that bound up in the prose and drama of these books is a very strong and purposeful sense of interior design.
Rowling's "Harry Potter Style" is at once old fashioned, comfortable, cozy & disshevelled
and signals (to us) a refuge from and a reflection of the troubling times brewing within (and without) the books.
Here's a typical passage from page 38:
The room was strewn with various possessions and a good smattering of rubbish. Owl feathers, apple cores, and sweet wrappers littered the floor, a number of spell books higgledy-piggledy among the tanged robes on his bed, and a mess of newspapers sat in a puddle of light on his desk.
I've wondered why modern is so frequently interpreted as cold - interior photos of the Eames' own house are pleasantly cluttered and textured, with lots of art and plants in the way you describe above, without resorting to ruffles, ogee curves and paisley. Can you break new ground, and show us a Comfy Mod?
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool tradtionalist who favors the country house style but the world's big enough for all of us.
Consumers are so well educated on the myriad of styles they can choose today that nobody should feel pressured to "bend to trend" anyhow.
http://www.marygrandpre.com/
It's the illustrators vision dude!
: )
Mack, indeed, i found the pic at Mary Grand Pre's site (love), BUT the vision is clearly Rowlings to begin with.
I consider her interiors as much a part of Rowling's statement as is her insistence on optimism and tolerance in the books.
British children's authors seem especially good at creating this mood of cozy disarray. Terence Conran quotes The Wind in the Willows in his style book Easy Living and generally celebrates
this same kind of warm, worn aesthetic, even if his stores have a more rigidly spartan look. JRR Tolkein also hassome great descriptions of Bilbo's house, Bag End. When I watched the first LOTR movie, I kept straining to see more of the house!
The interiors in the Harry Potter movies seemed remarkably true to the books. Several interiors were featured I belive in Architectural Digest, with a great opportunity for a closer look and lots of great detail about the porcess from the production designers.
I soooooo want to spend Christmas at Hogwart's, moving staircases and all!
Me too, but I'd settle for the enchanted ceiling from the Great Hall.
But Nora's right. True happiness is having a Shire to come home to.
I love all the house descriptions in the series. I haven't seen the Black family house, but I still have a pretty complete sense of it, even though those scenes are still two movies away...
Come to think of it, no one in that place has a modernist or uncluttered house -- the Dursley mom's perfectly clean kitchen is the closest she gets...
...And in fact Mrs. Dursley's obsessive cleanliness is a bit threatening and definitely unfriendly! The Burrow, the Weasley home where Harry is truly happy, is described as incredibly cluttered, stuffed, leaning, and worn, and Harry says it's the best house he's ever seen.