Southern Hospitality at Home: The Art of Gracious Living

Description

The words "Southern hospitality" conjure up a wealth of welcoming images, from breezy porches with white colonnades and the seductive scent of magnolia blossoms cut from the yard to fill heirloom vases to tables laden with fine china on embroidered linens, illuminated by candles. Southern Hospitality at Home showcases the special qualities of graciousness and charm that define the American South's way of living. Learn from Southern style experts how to make your home an inviting place for sharing with family and friends - from designing welcoming entrance halls and inviting living rooms to comfortable kitchens, pretty guest rooms, and shady garden rooms - and weave your spell of hospitality. Featured are an array of exceptional houses including an eighteenth-century dwelling in Charleston with a bold, contemporary palette and a rustic plantation where high and low styles mix in perfect harmony. In Savannah, interior designer Chuck Chewning brings modern sophistication to a Greek Revival townhouse. In Georgia, textile artist Susan Hable Smith injects bright colour and pattern into an old-fashioned cottage and a collector offers fresh ideas for displaying antiques. With tips for decorating and accessorising, arranging flowers and setting tables, caring for silver and serving authentic Southern recipes, this beautifully photographed hospitality resource is practical and inspirational, true to tradition, and relevant for today.

Susan Sully is a renowned expert on Southern style. She has authored numerous books, including the Rizzoli titles Charleston Style, Savannah Style, The Southern Cottage, The Southern Cosmopolitan, Houses with Charm, and has co-authored books with Bobby McAlpine, including the best-selling titles The Home Within Us and Poetry of Home. Sully is a frequent speaker at antiques shows, garden clubs, museums, and women's clubs. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

"The interplay of hospitality with interior design and architecture is explored in Susan Sully's Southern Hospitality at Home: The Art of Gracious Living (Rizzoli, $45). From inviting entrances to welcoming guest rooms, and polished silver to starched linens, the Southern style expert reveals how no detail goes unattended below the Mason Dixon line, in homes ranging from the casual to the formal." -ATLANTA HOMES & LIFESTYLES "Tastemaker and on-and-off Charleston resident Susan Sully has long chronicled the latest looks of Holy City homes" -POST AND COURIER