Called the most exciting designer we have ever had by Billy Baldwin, Frances Elkins has been revered for her classic, elegant, and timeless decor. Ahead of her time, Elkins became a successful designer in the man s world of the 1920s and 30s, with a talent rivaled only by her formidable sense of style. Known as the first great California designer, Elkins brought an international perspective and architectural sensibility to her work. With a social circle that included prominent artists and designers such as Jean-Michel Frank, Coco Chanel, and Alberto Giacometti, Elkins traveled widely with her brother, architect David Adler, introducing a modern European chic to her clients. She collaborated with craftsmen and artists, commissioning handloomed carpets, Mexican silverware, decorative finishes, and custom furniture, which gave her interiors their distinctive elegance and polish. Showcasing never-before-published material, Frances Elkins includes more than sixty interiors that illustrate her outstanding sense of color and her gift of mixing periods and styles from her early work in Pebble Beach, to houses she designed with her brother in Chicago in the 1930s, to iconic hotel commissions of the 1940s such as the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, to midcentury homes for William Paley and David O. Selznick. With images by top photographers of the day, this volume will serve as a revelation and inspiration to fans of design.

The purpose of this research is to holistically study how Appalachian students view postsecondary institutions in order to understand the factors that promote academic achievement and the factors that contribute to the gender gap that exists in postsecondary education in Appalachia. This research reveals that the issues related to the postsecondary educational achievement of Appalachian students require a holistic view incorporating economic, social, educational components. The findings specifically reveal, among others, that Appalachian students highly value education, suffer socio-cultural barriers to educational access, are very dependant on actors outside the family structure for motivation to pursue higher education, often lacked financial resources for college, often feel unmotivated in high school and college and suggest a multidimensional plan for Appalachian educational realization.