Everything Old is Old Again

Storage, a 1997 DK Home Design Work Books, by Dinah Hall & Barbara Weiss, is sumptuous. The kind of book you wish magically came with fabric swatches, paint chips and squares of the wickers used in all the baskets. In other words, it’s gorgeous, wonder-and-envy-inducing and an awfully good example of what I call “Of course you can” books. “Of course you can” books don’t really look very hard at little details like budgets, or whether the person reading the book may be ADD-abled, or that people who rent their spaces aren’t going to be allowed to build closets. There’s the sly wink at limits, for example when Goodwill and Salvation Army are, rightfully, identified as terrific economical sources of all sorts of supplies from furniture to bins, but this is a book for people with champagne tastes who drink champagne.

Once us Average Janes get over our haut monde shock, this is a practical book with some startling and timeless ideas and information. Just the carefully-illustrated specifications concerning ergonomic heights for hanging shelves and hooks are worth their weight in caviar. The authors point to Shaker and minimalist concepts as valuable starting points in the design process. It has some interesting notions, for example that one can create more space in a bathroom by building cabinets on top of and enclosing the toilet tanks. And on a whim, I went to the reference section advertising vendors. The “General Furniture,” “Kitchen,” and “Bathroom” options offered 41 purveyors of temptation. From 1997 to today, 30 are still in business, and many are closing on 100 years old – so I grant Hall and Weiss eyes for excellence.

This was another of my library fundraising finds, great for four days of snowed-in. If you can find it easily, I recommend it without hesitation.