Interior Landscapes: Gardens and the Domestic Environment

This book shows how the decorative tradition of naturalistic interiors--whether expressed in tapestries, needlework, carpets or wallpaper--began with a compulsion to represent the outdoor world inside of dwellings. Beginning with Roman palaces and villas, then moving on to medieval cloisters and castles, and to Renaissance, neo-classical, and finally 19th-century villa interiors, Rees, a professor of geography at Mount Allison University, takes readers on a verdant walk through garden motifs. He plies us with examples of bringing the outdoors in, from huge tapestries depicting epic hunting scenes to embroidery expressing floral life so loyally that the language of the two--needlework and garden--have become interchangeable. His detail and scholarship are admirable, telling us of herbs and flowers scattered across palace floors; of intricate botanical effects in needlework, with dozens of exotic plants, symbolic flowers, and even insects depicted vibrantly in thread; of rich Renaissance-era carpets, where one could walk on the woven plants of nature as if through a path in the woods; and of the florid wallpaper designs of William Morris and the ``interior rooms'' still created today in conservatories. Though the naturalistic approach still lives in interior design, Rees mostly takes a backward look; his work is that of a historian, not a pragmatic advisor. And so, though not ``useful,'' the book is a delightfully written, vivid story of people's connection to the outdoors. (May)