British designer David Hicks (1929–1998) wowed the English decorating world with his bold geometric prints, electrifying color combinations, and quirky mix of antique and contemporary furniture.

Thanks to his prodigious talents, his gift for publicity, and his connection to the royal family through his wife, Lady Pamela Mountbatten (cousin of Prince Philip), Hicks attracted an A-list clientele. For decades, Hicks documented every salient moment of his life in scrapbooks, amassing 24 volumes filled with press clippings, invitations, swatches of his signature textiles, sketches of interiors, magazine articles on his projects, and hundreds of photographs, mainly family snapshots but also his own photos of people like Jackie Kennedy, Grace Kelly, and Andy Warhol. Many of the pages, now thumbed and foxed, are laid out in a collage style, and several are embellished with drawings and notes, revealing Hicks’s thoughts and sense of whimsy. Here, his son, Ashley Hicks, has chosen more than 325 of the best pages — providing not just a window into the extraordinary world of David Hicks but also a fascinating time capsule.

About the Author:

Ashley Hicks, an architect and interior designer, is the author of two books on his father. Since 2003 he has produced a line of fabrics, carpets, and wallpaper called David Hicks by Ashley Hicks. 

Inspirational and visually on trend, Ashley Hicks's latest work is a pattern book for the twenty-first century. Offering insights and revelations, Hicks's own exquisitely quirky and colorful historicist interiors are discussed with designs from the recent and faraway past.

Ashley Hicks has created a mix of manifesto, souvenir album, and confession in this collection of noteworthy rooms--featuring his own one-of-a-kind interiors along with rooms that have inspired him. The manifesto aspect is rather limited, since Hicks is not a great believer in aesthetic rules or the value of so-called good taste, but as a souvenir album, it charts Hicks's personal creative journey of the last few years, illustrated with photographs of some favorite historical interiors and objects that represent a mixture of source material and inspiration.

The book's twelve chapters reveal Hicks's creative process, how he approaches different themes in his own interiors, furniture designs, and works of art, and how these themes can be applied to the works of others. Such subjects as flowers, color, layers, form, pattern, and memory are presented in the context of actual projects. Historical and recent interiors are discussed for their decorative value--notable rooms and architecture include the Pantheon in Rome; Emperor Maximilian's tomb in Innsbruck; the Royal Pavilion, Brighton; and the Petit Trianon at Versailles. Hicks has created a book for devotees of decorating and the history of interior design.

About the Author:

Ashley Hicks is a British author, architect, interior and furniture designer, and photographer. He is the son of Lady Pamela Hicks and the legendary decorator David Hicks. His personal Instagram profile has amassed over 200,000 followers. Christian Louboutin is a celebrated French shoe designer.

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Пролистать книгу Rooms with a History: Interiors and their Inspirations

Interior designer and artist Ashley Hicks presents his photographs and description of the interior design of Buckingham Palace, home of Britain's royal family since 1837.

An important representation of Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian styles, the palace is the work of such noted architects as John Nash and Sir Aston Webb. Hicks records the formal spaces with vibrancy, capturing the magnificent rooms furnished with treasures from the Royal Collection.

Starting at the Grand Staircase, Hicks leads us through the state rooms, which include the White Drawing Room and the Blue Drawing Room that both overlook the palace gardens; the Ballroom, which is the setting for twenty investiture ceremonies each year; and the Throne Room, used by Queen Victoria for spectacular costume balls in the 1840s. The long, skylit Picture Gallery is hung with important works of art from the Royal Collection by Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Nicolas Poussin, Anthony van Dyck, Johannes Vermeer, and Canaletto, among others. Decorative furnishings from George IV's exotic Brighton Pavilion lend a fanciful turn to many of the rooms.

About the Author:

Ashley Hicks is a British author, architect, interior and furniture designer, and photographer. He is the son of Lady Pamela Hicks and the legendary decorator David Hicks.

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Пролистать книгу Buckingham Palace: The Interiors

The Sackvilles have inhabited Knole, one of Britain’s greatest houses, for more than four hundred years. Robert Sackville-West, the thirteenth generation of the family, takes the reader on a personal tour of this “calendar house,” with its legendary 365 rooms, fifty-two staircases, and seven courtyards.

Sumptuous photographs by designer Ashley Hicks — who recently photographed the interiors of Buckingham Palace—capture the smoldering spirit of Knole, from the state rooms, which house possibly the finest collection of royal Stuart furniture in the world, to the private apartments and gardens to the behind-the-scenes labyrinth of cellars and attics.

Knole provides a window into English history. The characters who populate the pages — the grave Elizabethan statesman, the good-for-nothing gadabout at the seedy court of James I, the dashing cavalier, the Restoration rake, the 3rd Duke of the ancien régime — are all representative of their eras (members of a family described by Vita Sackville-West as “a race too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent, and too melancholy”). Vita's own disinheritance from Knole prompted her dear friend Virginia Woolf to pen Orlando, furthering the place’s fame and glamorous luster.

Similarly, the architectural and decorative features of the house illustrate the different tastes of successive ages, from Thomas Sackville’s seventeenth-century makeover of a ramshackle medieval mansion to an early twentieth-century suite of rooms designed in the Bloomsbury style. Knole has never been illuminated in this way before. 

About The Authors:

Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville, studied history at Oxford University and went on to work in publishing. He now chairs Knole Estates, the property and investment company that, in parallel with the National Trust, runs the Sackville family’s interests at Knole. Ashley Hicks is a British author, architect, interior and furniture designer, and photographer.

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Пролистать книгу Knole: A Private View of One of Britain's Great Houses

Back in print for the first time in years, this classic of interior-design history showcases the masterful work of David Hicks (1929–1998), who is acknowledged as one of the most important designers of the late twentieth century, in the company of Billy Baldwin and Albert Hadley.

Known for his bold use of color, eclecticism, and geometric designs in carpets and textiles, Hicks turned English decorating on its head in the 1950s and ’60s. His trademark use of electrifying color combinations, and mixing antiques, modern furniture, and abstract paintings became the “in style” for the chic of the day, including Vidal Sassoon and Helena Rubinstein. By the 1970s, David Hicks was a brand; his company was making wallpaper, fabrics, and linens and had outposts in eight countries, including the United States where he worked with the young Mark Hampton, and where his wallpaper was used in the White House. “My greatest contribution as an interior designer has been to show people how to use bold color mixtures, how to use patterned carpets, how to light rooms, and how to mix old with new,” he stated in his 1968 work, David Hicks on Living — With Taste, the last authoritative book on his work. Written by his son, Ashley Hicks, with unprecedented access to Hicks’s archives, personal photographs, journals, and scrapbooks, this book is a vibrantly illustrated celebration of a half century of stunning interiors.

About the Author:

Ashley Hicks is a British author, architect, interior and furniture designer, and photographer. He is the son of Lady Pamela Hicks and the legendary decorator David Hicks.

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Пролистать книгу David Hicks: A Life of Design на сайте издательства.