Artists' Homes

by Tom Harford-Thompson

This lavishly illustrated book is an intimate look at the interiors, lifestyles, and houses belonging to a wide range of artists and creatives.  In this beautifully illustrated book, writer and photographer Tom Harford-Thompson presents individual, eccentric homes and workspaces, from a music producer’s studio to an ecowarrior’s treehouse. His evocative photographs show how our life/work spaces, whether a tumbledown cottage, a country farmhouse, or a reclaimed factory, are beautiful because of the lives we live in them. With work no longer separate from home life, we see how these artists function the spaces that inspire them, pursuing the life creative. Among the artists and craftspeople featured are internationally recognized names like Billy Childish, cofounder of the Stuckist art movement; Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher, creative partners who set up their home and studio as an ‘anarchist-pacifist open house’; and music producer Liam Watson of the famed London studio Toe Rag. Harford-Thompson, whose work has been featured in the Guardian and Art Review , showcasing craft and design with a homespun edge. For people who want to move beyond glossy, styled homes and wish to revamp their personal spaces to make them truly individual, Artists’ Homes is an essential resource.  c.350 illustrations, 300 in color

Genres: Nonfiction, Design, Art, Interior Design, Travel

288 pages, Hardcover

Published October 16, 2018

Reviews

[JH · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is like a British version of “The Selby is in Your Place.” There are brief bios of the artists, then you see their homes. They all kind of seem like hoarders and on each page I kept thinking of all the dirt and dust that must be accumulating on their collections, but better to see in a book than in-person.

[Thomasin Propson · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. This is an odd one. Black and white straight-faced portraits of the artists (charming, each) then followed by color photographs of their houses and gardens.

Or, at least, *parts* of their houses: a few eclectic pictures on a wall, a pet on a couch, the base of a stair. The items chosen by the photographer were too random for my full enjoyment, as seemed the descriptions which accompanied. For example, a closeup of a ratty couch covered by an ugly coverlet is highlighted in not just one but two of the homes, and there's a picture of a stairway covered (barely) by a worn runner and decked by piles of old magazines. Why choose these particular views? Is it to show that artists are 'just like us'? Or perhaps - depending on the reader - 'dirtier than us'?

I don't regret reading through it, but I didn't really "get" it.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting peek into the homes of British artists mainly in Lewes. Lots of clutter, junk, ambience , design, some color and many pieces of furniture wrecks. I loved the art and the gardens and I loved the inspiration especially. Also I now do not feel badly about my cluttered, eclectic art studio that I maintain. The gardens are just beautiful and so artistic !! a variety of artists - potters, painters, sculptors , musicians , designers!!

[Emily Duchon · Rating 5 out of 5]

charming. my favorite artist listed was daniel, who lived in a basic treehouse next to a vodka millionaire's mansion on a 200 acre organic farm. wonderful photos, eclectic snippets of lives.

vignettes of homes and the personalities nestled therein.

my kind of thing in a nutshell. loved it.

[Bridgette Guerzon Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between a 3 and 4. I love getting peeks into working artists homes and studios and the photos are of the everyday- creative corners in homes, a beautiful doorway, a hallway filled to the gills with stuff. All are artists who reside in England

[Relyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was some nice eye candy here, but there was too much writing and it wasn't great.

[Deirdre · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had great pictures and stories and I didn’t relate to them as well as I might to artist living and working in small spaces in America