PASSIONS

Flowers, small dogs, and gorgeous interiors are the obsessions of this illustrated coffee-table book.

Roehm, a designer, painter, and photographer, opens her meditation with a photo essay on the “Feminine Touch” in decorating, by which she means “thoughtful, intentional, well-placed details of color and décor and lovely added nuances…accomplished with care and grace.” She illustrates the topic with many photos of indoor room and table treatments in a mansion of darkly glowing wood furniture, parquet floors, and panels with complicated trim. The design elements she spotlights include classical motifs of fluted Grecian columns and busts of women in togas; 17th-century portraits and lushly upholstered chairs; wall sconces; and breakfast, lunch, and dinner settings staged as still lifes with cheese, grapes, and wine. Most of all, there are flowers: atop pianos, as centerpieces for meals, strewn on vestibule side tables. The flowers take the lead in the author’s bimodal color palette; her red-spectrum treatments feature red, russet, and gold, with the flowers contributing throbbing pinks and purples. They contrast with her blue-spectrum tableaux—cool blue-and-white or pale green furnishings and tableware complemented by white flowers. The book’s second photo essay, “Flowers and Gardens,” studies a semiformal garden centered on a giant eagle statue; the blooms include daffodils, tulips, snapdragons, chrysanthemums, and red and pink roses. Roehm’s concluding section, “Furry Friends,” showcases a jumble of dogs, mainly terriers with the odd Labrador and dachshund joining the pack. The canine models are all fluffy hair, button eyes, and steady, grave countenances. The author sprinkles inspirational quotations in the tome that aren’t always correctly attributed. (The line “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” comes from mid-20th-century writers, not Leonardo da Vinci.) Roehm’s own sparse but pithy commentary features design aphorisms—“Style is often created by bold displays”—and winsome girlhood memories (“Nurtured by my grandmother’s love of nature, I was enthralled with her rustic garden and often made mud pies decorated with flowers that became my ‘fancy cakes,’ for sale, of course!”). The photography is stunning, with deep, saturated hues and cunning compositions that bring out exquisite details as well as the larger balance of color and form in a scene. If you love blossoms, dogs, and deluxe digs, this is your book.

A catalog of plants, animals, and spaces that’s a feast for the eyes.