Found Style: Vintage Ideas for Modern Living

by David Butler, Amy Butler

For most folks, creating a home where the decor reflects their personal style and taste requires more than just simply perusing the pages of a catalog. Unique style comes with successfully blending the old and new, the unexpected with the familiar - a white antique stove and modern chrome refrigerator placed side by side, or a 50s kidney-shaped coffee table accented by an Adirondack chair. Enter Found Style , the modern-day guide to the mix-and-match aesthetic. From vintage treasures to contemporary furnishings, family heirlooms to flea market finds, authors David and Amy Butler take a friendly approach to creating spaces that are courageously unique - and undeniably stylish. Illustrated with 200 inspiring color photographs, Found Style offers up a host of innovative ideas, as well as tips for honing one's flea market savvy, and blending old and new with unexpected dash. Found Style is a celebration of creating eclectic personal style and a resource for those who live for the hunt.

Genres: Nonfiction, Design, Interior Design, Adult

220 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2003

About the author

David^^Butler

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

LFL find... should be perfect, right? Wrong. Too much clutter, too much furniture that is so worn it is splintery, too many tchotchkes and dust collectors, and too many medical carts. I love to shop thrift, but for attractive *functional* items that I have an active need for. Maybe for someone who is 99% into the 'style' part of the title promise, and doesn't care if they actually can live in the space?

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes me want to go flea market shopping!

[Linda]

After bringing home a U-Haul truck full of stuff from my in-laws last year, I needed some help in figuring out how to incorporate some of the items into my little home, and what to use and what to put away or give away. I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of stuff.
I still have one item that is a big question - a large chest that is still wrapped in the cellophane from the movers. I know - use it as a coffee table or a blanket chest. Well, there is no room in my living room and certainly no room in my small bedroom for such a large object. It sits in my dining room, blocking access to my lower cupboards.
That item aside, I did find a lot of inspiration in this book. It was not about decorating, but about creating a style, finding alternate uses for things, making your space comfortable for the way you live. Aside from bedrooms with no visible clothing storage (no dressers in a bedroom), or storage for the ordinary things that people have (no toys in the children's room?), the book had quite a few good ideas. Never mind that most of the rooms, including the bathrooms, were gigantic. One dining room had a table for 12 that looked dwarfed by the room. Was this an erstwhile ballroom or what? I think that room was bigger than my whole house.
But I liked looking at the details. The way that items were grouped, the idea that you could incorporate ordinary items as sculpture displays, the idea that you could avoid themes to simply let your style shine. I liked that. I did get enough inspiration from this to change my mind about my teeny bathroom (embrace the reality instead of fighting it) and got some actual ideas for things to do in my living room and bedroom (some of which I already did).
The problem I have is that my furniture was not bought for this house. In many cases, it was not purchased at all, but most of it came down through the family, either mine or my husband's. I think it's time to make some hard decisions about some of this stuff. Probably the four panel 6 ft tall rosewood screen with matching side table could go.

[jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is supposed to be an idea book - inspirational, avoiding lengthy how-to's, heavy on photos. It's perfectly adequate in that respect, and there's probably not much to say about shopping for junk to make your house look nice. Be creative, re-purpose things, don't spend a lot of money, use items that are functional in addition to being beautiful. What else is there to say about it, really? The taste of the authors is definitely different from my taste, so my response was more "grimace!" than "inspired!" If you like Capital-Q Quirky, shabby chic design, this might be up your alley...

[Inder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite sources of inspiration for interior decorating, and I refer back to it often for ideas. So lovely!

[Marisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by how accessible and even inspirational this book is.

[Kariann Burleson]

Found Style: Vintage Ideas for Modern Living by David Butler (2003)

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super cute. Some great ideas:)

[Janie Zekkou · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots of great ideas

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting concepts