In an age of picture-perfect interior design, best-selling author Mary Randolph Carter celebrates her highly personal and creative approach to decor, illustrating how to live stylishly with the many items you want to treasure forever. Mary Randolph Carter's newest book indulges our desire to surround ourselves with belongings that impart beauty and meaning to our lives. Whether you are passionate about flea market thrifting, have a collection of pedigreed antiques, or simply find inspiration among the castoffs in your attic, this book is a tribute to making artful interiors with your acquisitions.
With her trademark style and love of heirlooms and beautiful old objects, Carter delves into the interiors of real-life tastemakers (antique dealers, fashion designers, artists, and boutique owners) to explore how our homes are the perfect canvas for our self-expression. In these pages, Carter curates a variety of unique interiors, from a couple who restores and displays antique textiles and china to an anglophile with an incredible library of vintage books to an artist who lives with the old photos and maps he uses in his work to an antique dealer known for having multiples of everything. Carter muses delightfully on the universal desire to acquire while imparting her philosophy and tips for living creatively and integrating our passions stylishly into our decor. Chock-full of ideas and inspiration, this book exalts in the beauty of bounty and is sure to delight Carter's legions of fans.

Lens Wallace is a dutiful art professor's wife and mother of two teenage daughters. For sixteen years she's been the one organising schedules and taking care of everyone - especially during Alex's frequent business trips to Italy. Only after a series of mysterious phone calls does she start to question his absences. When she flies out to Florence to visit him, she learns that her husband has a flat and a mistress there - and he wants to end their marriage. Stunned and grief stricken, Lena decides she's going to stay in Florence and get her husband back, but the further Lena goes to win Alex, the less she recognises herself. And in this magical and inspiring city, she begins to evaluate what really matters to her family, and to her own life...

For all those who choose to live "imperfectly" with the messy things they love, this book shows how to do so creatively, happily, and with considerable style ideas from leading designers. A beautiful and inspiring volume, A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of A Misspent Life focuses on living well with everything that makes a house a home. If you have been influenced by the picturesquely cluttered studios of Pablo Picasso or Alexander Calder, or by the art- and book-filled house of Vanessa Bell, this unique style book will stimulate you with its creative ideas.This volume explores how real-life tastemakers (photographers, textile designers, fashion designers, writers, artists) integrate their life and interiors to live well with their passions, histories, conveniences, and inconveniences. In inspiring essays, Mary Randolph Carter muses on such key housekeeping concerns as clutter versus mess; open windows; and unmade beds. Combining practical tips with liberating philosophy-"Don't scrub the soul out of your home"; "Make room for what you love"-this volume celebrates living beautifully and happily, not messily. Lavishly illustrated with intimate photographs of different living spaces, Carter exalts in the beauty of imperfection and in living perfectly in our "imperfect" homes. Life isn't perfect-why should your house be?