The Russian House: Architecture & Interiors

This rich compendium of Russian houses-from the regal Turgenev house and Maxim Gorky's former residence to modest wooden country dachas-presents a portrait of domestic life that evokes pre-revolutionary splendor as much as the blossoming opportunities of the post-Soviet era. Krasner feels an exciting moment of Russian rebirth is in the offing; changes in personal property laws allow the ""burgeoning middle class"" to buy and renovate dilapidated apartments where ""marble entrance halls have all but disappeared under grime, and magnificent staircases are painted in Soviet green...so thick that its flakes are like wallpaper."" Owners of the less grand homes decorated with whatever they had available: folk art, hand-embroidered linens, stacks of garishly colored toilet paper rolls and lively newspaper illustrations. Sumptuous jewel-tones and daring Parma yellows are in evidence in the luxury homes, but due to the ""prohibitively expensive"" cost of paint, the more modest homes and artists' dacha rely upon peeling paint, hand-picked flowers and regal Byzantine-inspired icons to inspire a sense of faded grandeur. Antiques enthusiasts will appreciate the ornate furniture featured in a grand apartment in the Petrogradsky District of St. Petersburg owned by an art collector whose master bedroom is furnished with 19th-century Karelian-birch furniture. Photographer Von Einsiedel's eye for detail makes the book an escapist dream, but it is the author's ability to recreate the mystery and illusion of Russian life both today and yesterday that is this book's greatest strength.