Love, love, love the beautiful wall of bookshelves! The diagonal design is great for preventing the bookshelves look like one solid, heavy mass of books. Nice to see such a book-positive post on a site where the mantra so often is "pare down your books!"

Exactly. Not only are the bookshelves themselves very striking, but the room cries out "This is who I am."

Those shelves are glorious! So clever to use exposed framing as built-ins.

The house is stunning, but the fact that it's occupied by such a poncy cliche of a man brings it down a few pegs in my estimation. I can't separate these beautiful houses in design mags from the often (though of course not always) absolutely appalling people who seem to live in them.

sherry2, your comment made me read the article. Beautiful county, beautiful house, and a talented architect. And yeah, the guy's a ponce.

I like how the article describes him as "an ascetic as much as an environmentalist" because he used local workers and materials and refused to install air conditioning. Nevermind that he's a constant jet setter with a maid, two gardeners, and a night watchman. Oh, eight kids spread around the world. The guy's a regular Ghandi! (To his credit, though, he does rock the pink tank tops.)

COUNTRY, not county. My bad.

So, uhhh, how about those Howard Miller clocks?