About this Event
Join us for a reading, conversation, and signing with R. Tripp Evans and Nina Farmer! Copies of their books The Importance of Being Furnished and Timeless by Design will be available for purchase after the event. One ticket comes with guaranteed seating and a glass of wine or ginger lemonade.
About the Book:
Exploring the lives of four bachelor designers, The Importance of Being Furnished: Four Bachelors at Home invites readers into the private worlds they created. Spanning the Gilded to the Jazz Age, these fascinating interiors not only reflect the intimate lives of their owners – men whose personal stories have, until now, remained in the shadows – but they serve as monuments to the Queer shaping of the American home as we know it today.
Meet Charles Leonard Pendleton, (1846-1904), the reclusive gambler who built one of the greatest furniture collections of his age, all for a house ultimately built on sand. Explore the aristocratic interiors of renowned interior decorator Ogden Codman, Jr. (1863-1951), whose ancestral home served as a laboratory for his enormously successful 1897 manifesto, The Decoration of Houses, even as it transmitted his forebears’ vices. Join the literary salon of writer Charles H. Gibson, Jr. (1874-1954), who made his Boston home a monument to personal ambition and his own, once heralded beauty – all while transforming himself into a campy caricature of his own “Boston Brahmin” class. And last, fall under the spell of Henry Davis Sleeper (1878-1934), the nationally recognized decorator who created his fifty-room seaside masterpiece, Beauport, for the love of the man next door.
About the Author:
R. Tripp Evans is a Professor of the History of Art at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, where he specializes in American material culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He earned his B.A. in Architectural History from the University of Virginia and his M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Art from Yale University, where he was named the Henry S. McNeil Fellow in American Decorative Arts. He is the author of two previous books, Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820-1915 (University of Texas Press, 2004) and Grant Wood: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), the latter of which received the National Award for Arts Writing.
About the Moderator:
Nina Farmer's design philosophy is rooted in a classical sensibility. Her sophisticated eye and use of color leads to interiors that are elegant, comfortable and timeless. Her work has been published in Architectural Digest, Marie Claire Maison, House Beautiful and New England Home. Nina has also been honored with the “5 under 40” award from New England Home, has been named “Best of Boston” by Boston Magazine and received “The Rising Star Award” by New York School of Interior Design. She has also been named to the prestigious 1stDibs 50. 's design philosophy is rooted in a classical sensibility. Her sophisticated eye and use of color leads to interiors that are elegant, comfortable and timeless. Nina’s first book Timeless by Design by Rizzoli launched last fall to much acclaim. She lives in Beacon Hill with her husband and two daughters.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Beacon Hill Books & Cafe, 71 Charles Street, Boston, United States
USD 12.51