At Home in the English Countryside: Designers and Their Dogs [Hardcover]

Tour the dreamy country homes and gardens of Britain’s brightest interior design stars—and their dogs—in this inspirational coffee table book celebrating British country life.

British design and dogs are as intertwined as roses and Wellingtons!

At Home in the English Countryside showcases a mix of glamorously bohemian and casually aristocratic country homes captured in original photography and lively text. Presented are the striking and chic houses of several of Great Britain’s top international interior designers, from Paolo Moschino and Kit Kemp to Anouska Hempel and Veere Grenney. Beloved canines of several sizes and breeds, among them whippets, Labrador Retrievers, lurchers, Cavalier Kin Charles spaniels, and Jack Russell terriers, are shown in their picturesque homes and gardens of fragrant flowers.

The designers offer ideas on how to live stylishly with their dogs, from choosing the best upholstery to organizing pet accoutrements. Seen are dog collars (one of custom leather and green malachite), dog bowls of antique Spode porcelain, and chic and comfy napping spots. Anglophiles will be inspired by the lives of these designers, who are devoted to their canine companions. Though Paolo Moschino and Philip Vergleyen’s French bulldog Jack, who graces the cover of Susanna Salk’s At Home in the English Countryside: Designers and their Dogs, would not be my choice for a canine companion (too precious), the pooch does illustrate the thesis of the book, namely that dogs have the ability to tie a room together in a way that a Ming vase can’t quite. Through seventeen chapters, each featuring a famed British interior designer and his or her dogs—from Labradors to lurchers, Jack Russells to jaunty spaniels—Salk demonstratel£+