Defining style The book of interior design

Journalist Freund (coauthor of Hidden Treasures) serves up a delectable survey of contemporary approaches to interior design. She pairs background on each style with profiles of its practitioners, as when she describes how today's modernists draw inspiration from the "clean, function-forward designs" of their early 20th-century predecessors and shows how Andre Mellone uses a custom-made back-to-back sofa to divide the sitting areas in the living room of a Brazilian home. Suggesting that rustic interiors "celebrate the rugged and the unadorned," Freund discusses how Benito Escat restored a 19th-century townhouse in Menorca, Spain, by removing paint from the wooden ceiling beams and exposing fresco work previously hidden behind wallpaper. Other styles are less familiar but no less arresting. For instance, Freund touts the "nerve and verve" of "spirited" design and showcases the rainbow-colored staircase in a San Francisco house and the massive Gaetano Pesce foot sculpture that takes up nearly the entire dining table in a Missouri artist's abode. The eclectic range of interiors ensures there's something for everyone, and Freund provides illuminating historical context, noting, for instance, that the "timeless" approach's emphasis on "balance, symmetry, and proportion" stems from the 18th-century vogue for ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics that followed excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii. This dazzles. (Mar.)