This article is part of our special Design section on making the environment a creative partner in designing beautiful homes.
Interior design, an art form vulnerable to the changing tastes of owners and the foibles of fabrics and wallpaper, is often valued only fleetingly or in hindsight. Several recent books capture this transience in the ghosts of an abandoned artisan community, the inspirations of a 20th-century maverick interior decorator, the rocking decks of floating houses, and the ever-evolving atmosphere of plant-filled rooms.
The prows of Viking ships and Scandinavian wildlife were among the favored motifs of a short-lived cooperative of artisans called Elverhoj (pronounced el-ver-hoy), founded in 1912 on the western banks of the Hudson River, just north of Newburgh , NY “Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson” (Black dome press$35,218pp), by scholars William B. Rhoads and Leslie Melvin, is the first in-depth study of this ambitious, long-forgotten endeavor. Under the leadership of Anders H. Andersen, a Danish immigrant, the residents of Elverhoj built themselves dilapidated cottages and offered items such as brassware, silver cutlery, opal-studded jewelry, leather book bindings, and textiles. They decorated chandeliers with dragon heads, molded oak leaves and thick petals on metal teapots and inkwells, and wove portraits of polar bears into tapestries. Ruins of the colony’s buildings can be found in the woods, and among the poignantly preserved archival material is Mr. Andersen’s 1930s sketch, when bankruptcy was looming, of a trio of dagger-wielding creditor trolls.
“Frances Elkins: Visionary American Designer” (Rizzoli$65,304pp), by historian Scott Powell, examines about 60 commissions that the Milwaukee-born manufacturing heiress realized between the 1920s and 1950s. For commercial, institutional and residential clients, she covered walls with goatskin and framed fireplaces with mirrors and lapis. She collaborated with celebrities such as Syrie Maugham, Marion Dorn, Dorothy Liebes, Alberto Giacometti and Jean-Michel Frank to specify teal and tangerine upholstery, mermaid murals and creamy ribbed carpets. She turned glass pillars into gossamer balusters and twisted a crimson staircase around a stack of clear plastic balls. Plaster hands served as props for her fringed checkered curtains. Male colleagues did not dare to disagree with the inventive, intimidating businesswoman. “She’d run you over nothing,” one architect told an interviewer, years after he and Mrs. Elkins filled a San Francisco rectangular house with red carpets and black-and-white leafy textiles.
In “Making Waves: Floating Houses and Life on the Water” (Thames and Hudson$40,224pp), British stylist Portland Mitchell reveals the benefits and horrors of occupying homes off the coast. In her 20 case studies from 10 countries, homeowners describe avoiding the swell of ferry traffic and surviving typhoons “when the sea flies all around you.” Basic chores, such as cleaning hull rivets, can lead to spouting leaks and a fear of sinking. About a third of the homes in the book are built for residential use, with the rest converted from barges and other seagoing vessels. The compact rooms are clad in blond plywood, recycled teak, metal plates or psychedelic textiles. The interviewees share their taste for memorable house names such as Soggybottom Shanty. They also unite in their affection for light fixtures hanging from plumbing pipes and wraparound decks for wildlife watching. “Once we saw a gray heron surfing on a magpie,” recalls a resident of a former speedboat in Germany.
Hilton Carter, a plant and interior stylist, artist and author, wittily explains parallel patterns found in nature and furniture “Living Wild: How to Style Your Home and Cultivate Happiness” (Cico Books$45,224pp). In his family’s Baltimore home and his projects for residential and commercial clients, speckled begonias and leathery philodendrons play bouclé and cowhide trim. Grooved monsteras stand on marble mantelpieces and pedestals, and wheeled planters make it easy to move flora anywhere they can soak up sunlight. Amid his step-by-step instructions for greening thumbs — for example, topping soil into sharp pebbles to deter curious cats — he points out his visual puns and shares his joy in his profession. At a restaurant famed for fish tacos, he hung a herringbone cactus resembling a fish vertebra in a terracotta pot from the ceiling, “causing the jagged, zigzagging foliage to tumble down.” Placing a coffee plant on a counter, he writes, “Yeah, I went quite literally… But wait, I’m not done yet. I also made sure the planter was cream colored. Oh yes, look at me at work!”