Shell Chic: The Ultimate Guide to Decorating Your Home with Seashells by Marlene Hurley Marshall, Sabine Vollmer Von Falken

Synopsis

Shell Chic brings the design and imagination of today's shell enthusiasts and artisans to the home. This is a book to be savored for its eccentric decorative flair, its lavish sense of fun, and its practical instructions for shell projects and design ideas that will work in any home decor. Frames, chandeliers, unusual boxes, mirrors, a child-size claw-foot tub - all are fabulous possibilities for shell encrustation. Memories of peaceful beach vacations become ravishing decorative items when glued to lampshades and screens.

In all, 14 step-by-step illustrated projects and 20 design ideas cover everything readers need to know to create richly marvelous objects. To lend inspiration, there are profiles of contemporary shell artists photographed with their creations. One profile features Marian McEvoy, editor of House Beautiful, who has embellished her Manhattan apartment with an estimated 15,000 shells. While most shell enthusiasts will not be working on quite this scale, there are ideas, photographs, profiles, and inspiration for all!

Library Journal

The fashion for seashells as decorative material has taken a variety of forms over time, from baroque garden grottoes encrusted with shells to Victorian bric-a-brac displayed under glass. This well-illustrated book by Marshall and Vollmer von Falken (who coauthored Making Bits & Pieces Mosaics) contains step-by-step projects for traditional items of shell art such as flower arrangements and shell-encrusted boxes, all interspersed with a colorful running narrative describing decorative uses of shells by contemporary designers. Highly recommended for public libraries. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Biography

There's much experience behind author Marlene Hurley Marshall's book, Making Bits & Pieces Mosaics, for she has been creating her own mosaic masterpieces for over a decade. Marlene's work has been exhibited and sold in galleries and museums shops alike in Boston, San Francisco and the Berkshire region of Massachusetts, where she resides.

Sabine Vollmer von Falken worked as a commercial photographer in Duesseldorf and as a theater photographer in Berlin before moving to western Massachusetts in the 1980s.