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In an age in which houses exhibiting unchecked exuberance, high drama or conspicuous luxury get all the attention, leading interior designer Tom Scheerer has cultivated his own more restrained brand of chic, a look he modestly describes as ''cheerful'' and ''no nonsense''. But it is so much more. In New York apartments, Brooklyn brownstones, Bahamian country clubs, and Maine summer houses, Scheerer has created rooms that are crisp, confident, classic and unfailingly correct but also visually enthralling. His sophistication is extreme, but it is accessible, relaxed, and a touch ''under baked'', as Scheerer says, because he thinks the smartest rooms are always a little under-decorated. The magic is in the way Scheerer combines classic, old-fashioned decorating with modernist touches a la Albert Hadley and Billy Baldwin, but with a keener attention to natural materials, unpretentious vernacular crafts, and the prettiest colour combinations this side of India. He cherishes the simplest, least manipulated fabrics - cottons, linens, dimities, even candlewicking - and loves certain inexpensive accents as much as he does truly fine ones. All this adds up to fresh, relaxed interiors that look like no others. Exquisitely photographed, this is the first book of Scheerer''s work, and it''s a must for all lovers of interior design.
