Private View

For over 30 years London-based interior designer and Designers Guild founder Tricia Guild has looked to the world's beauty for design ideas. Her book Private View is a captivating collection of her passions - art and music; architecture and design; theater and opera; novels and poetry; food; flowers and gardening; the broad sweep of landscape and the miraculous minutiae of nature; texture and form; light and shadow; and color. "Wherever we go we are taking in glimpses, impressions, of the world around us, and I believe that these images go deep into our psyches, become part of our own energy and imagination," she writes. Her passions range from the art of Frida Kahlo to the colors of India, from hydrangeas to butterfly wings. James Merrell's photographs juxtapose raw muses with finished objects and the lovely presentation of these images encourages readers to reflect upon the beauty of this world.