SISTER PARISH DESIGN
By Susan Bartlett Crater & Libby Cameron
November 2009 * NONFICTION * St. Martins Griffin
0-312-38458-0 * $35.00 * 272 pages
Over 75 watercolor illustrations throughout.
Across America today, "shabby chic" style is all the rage. But before the television shows, magazines, and design blogs began really singing the praises of flea market finds and mismatched prints, there was Sister Parish. As one of the most iconic decorators in American history, Sister Parish can be credited for what is typically considered American country décor.
She encouraged bright colors, promoted the use of found items and family heirlooms, and insisted that rooms should center around what people truly enjoyed - not simply what "matched". She is well-known for her use of overstuffed armchairs, patchwork quilts, and varied patterns. Her style is beautiful yet homey, stunning yet accessible.
In SISTER PARISH DESIGN: On Decorating (St. Martin’s Press; November 2009), Susan Bartlett Crater and Libby Cameron continue the tradition of Sister Parish. They draw on their backgrounds and experiences (one as a family member, the other as a former protégé), and with the help of some of the most renowned decorators in the business, explain how you can translate these details into inspired surroundings.
Illustrated with watercolors that invoke these timeless interiors, this is more than a stunning book: it in an inspirational resource for making a comfortable, stylish, inviting home, responsive to the people who live in it every day.
ADVANCED PRAISE
Sister Parish Design is a treasure trove of conversational tidbits, priceless decorating tips, and equally priceless tales.
I loved learning about how Sister hit on "Taxi Cab Yellow" for Bill Paley's drawing room, how Mario Buatta ended up eating tuna casserole off Rose Cumming's floor! The charming remembrances of Sister by those she knew and those she inspired-from Albert Hadley and Bunny Williams to Jane Churchill and Miles Redd-are matched by the enchantingly beautiful watercolors by Mita Bland. The most useful and seductive design book I've ever picked up-and one I did not want to put down.
---Julia Reed
This is a book all decorating habitués would like. Libby Cameron and Susan Crater are as indefatigable as was Sister Parish, mentor and grandmother respectively. They take us inside the rarified world of decorating to show how you can achieve a range of fresh looks that have never gone out of style, full of color, charm, and lasting comfort.
---Mario Buatta
Imagine the pure bliss: eavesdropping on thirty of the best American and English decorators sitting around a table, candidly sharing ideas and secrets and dreams, talking about what they love most…….each new subject is introduced by a disarmingly personal family anecdote from the authors, who each possess Design Royalty DNA:Susan Crater, granddaughter of Sister Parish, and Libby Cameron, great niece of Rory Cameron and a thirteen year veteran of Parish-Hadley. These chapters are illustrated by Mita Corsini Bland's beautiful Mark Hampton inspired watercolors.
---William Ivey Long, Broadway set designer and winner of five Tony awards for Hairspray, The Producers, Grey Gardens, and Nine among others
NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE
Books
The Gospel According to Sister Parish
By PENELOPE GREEN
Published: November 4, 2009
Sister Parish, the influential American decorator who started working during the Great Depression and died in 1994, was an originator of what came to be known as the American country style, featuring much painted white furniture and homey elements like patchwork quilts, stenciled floors and mattress ticking pillows. Though Mrs. Parish herself was something of an autocrat, her ideas were eminently sensible, reflecting the very basic principle that the people in a room are more important than the objects in it. Call it humanistic decorating.
That is the engine behind “Sister Parish Design: On Decorating,” by Susan Bartlett Crater, a granddaughter of Mrs. Parish, and Libby Cameron, who worked at Parish-Hadley, Mrs. Parish’s firm, for 15 years. (Ms. Crater and Ms. Cameron’s eight-year-old business, Sister Parish Design, makes fabrics and wallpapers inspired by Mrs. Parish’s collections.) The book, devoid of photographs and illustrated instead with the watercolors of Mita Corsini Bland, is a gentle, Studs Terkel-ish conversation involving Ms. Crater, Ms. Cameron and a handful of contemporary designers like Miles Redd, Todd Romano and Bunny Williams. Less prescriptive than impressionistic, it meanders from what to do with a small room (counterintuitively, to make it look bigger, paint it a dark color, like eggplant or deep blue, with shiny white trim) and buying a sofa (never longer than seven feet and never two facing each other, which is “too hotelish,” to Miles Redd’s mind) to hanging art in the living room (plan the arrangement while sitting down, since nobody stands in the living room).
