Product Description

For decades the East African savanna has attracted Europeans yearning to experience life with nature at its closest - on safari. Drawing on their experiences during the safari, these visitors have created a compelling style of living distinctly displayed in the architecture and interiors of the homes, safari lodges and camps they have established across the vast eastern reaches of the Eastern continent. Safari Style offers a sample of this appealing approach to interior design, with its emphasis on relaxed living, its elemental approach to texture and colour, its borrowing of native African patterns and architecture, and its vital interaction with nature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #827374 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

From Amazon.com
As Western lavishness collided with striking native elements in the vast reaches of the East African savanna, the Safari style was born. Blending ethnic African with colonial European, the look emphasizes relaxed yet luxurious living, drawing on an elemental approach to texture, color, and pattern, and on indigenous materials and design. Exploring 21 spectacular homes in glorious color, Safari Style takes us on an expedition through a fantastic Moorish residence in Kenya, a hotel in Zanzibar masquerading as a Persian palace, an Italianate villa on a former coffee plantation in Nairobi, a tree house hideaway perched in the Ngong hills, and a host of other extraordinary dwellings. Though most of us will never live anywhere so unique, we can certainly find countless great ideas here to incorporate into our own more humble abodes. This is about a lot more than a few animal-print pillows and some swags of mosquito netting; it's about Old World elegance and evocations of the pleasures of exotic travel, even if we only get to enjoy it from the comforts of a cushy mudcloth-covered armchair. --Amy Handy

Review
This is a lavish presentation of the best of Southern Africa's interior design. Aptly named "Safari Style", it is an eclectic mix of native and imported styles. From the native bandas to Lutyen-style English mansions, the designs reflect the origins of the colonialist settlers and wealthy holidaymakers at the turn of the century: Dutch, German, English and Italian. Moorish overtones insinuate themselves into homes such as that belonging to the Corses, with central courtyards, wooden shutters and whitewashed walls. Native influences abound in every home with wooden carvings, beaded bottles and woven rugs making appearances either minimally or dictating the whole house style like the De Boers' magnificent island hideaway. From safari camps to private homes, this is a photographic portfolio of a style at once exotic yet homely, perfectly in tune with its surroundings and now becoming popular in Britain with the increased interest in third world countries and their peoples. - Lucy Watson

About the Author
Tim Beddow specializes in interior and travel photography, and has a particular interest in African subjects. Previous commissions have taken him to the Sahara, were he spent a year documenting desert life, and East Africa to capture the landscape. Natasha Burns was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, and spent much of her early journalistic career writing about the visual arts of Africa. She is now based in London.

Customer Reviews

As useful a memory guide as a hunting trophy
One should not get the idea that the "camps" depicted in SAFARI STYLE have anything to do with the experience of safari. I have stayed in both tent and cabin camps and they were comfortable. They were not, emphatically NOT, anything like these. However, after safari is only a memory and an anticipation, a room decorated with ideas put forth in this volume will help soothe the longing until you can really go back. Whether your goal is to compile your memories in photos, watercolors, or traditional heads and horns a "trophy" room decked out in Safari Style will end up being the most satisfying in the home.

Romanitc,exotic living found here, but not for the timid!
Safari Style is the quintessential insiders design source for creating African interiors. At over 200 pages, literally every other page has a full page color photo on it! While this book is a feast of exotic interiors, exteriors are featured too, they include a wide array of domiciles: rugged tents to palaces to tree houses, and game camps to very exclusive lodges. In fact, at the back of the book, the author has generously offered up a �Safari Guide,� complete with addresses and phone numbers of many of the books featured sites, for those of you inspired to go to these places!

Designers will appreciate the clear arrangement and large scope of design possibilities. You will see everything from salvaged heavy teak wood platform beds with misquote netting, baskets and carved masks in very rustic bedroom settings, to contemporary eclectic dining rooms with ever so slight touches of favorite and hard to find African objects strewn within more modern houses. Part of what makes this such a fantastic book is that the �look� you wish you could achieve in your own home are possible; Classical, Stylish, Simple, Eclectic, Exotic, Masculine or Feminine, Rustic, etc. For example - a photo of a patio with a raw timber pergola covered with fucia bougainvillea and a casual wood four person dining area replete with plants, chaise lounge and ethnic lanterns could easily fit into a Southwestern home. Another example of the diversity of style in the ideas found in this book is the Modern Romantic open loft room. Here is where a tanned leather couches gently separate the space between the living and dining areas. Additionally, the Modern Romantic has silver columns with only a little mudcloth wrapped around the bottom, raw wood tables and lighting treatments, bamboo blinds and a large abstract oil on canvas taking up an entire wall in the dining area. This second example could be found in a Manhattan apartment or a swank L.A. house with only subtle nuances to a mixed African style.

A plethora of native craft objects such as, paintings, carvings, textiles, spears, shields, shells, bowls, and pottery, which make their appearance throughout. I would also like to site that more architectural elements like treatments for roofs, ceilings, walls and floors, balconies, chimneys, sinks and showers, windows, doors, corridors and more are all part of what makes these places so enticing. Natural elements are key � stone and wood, rough woven textiles, baskets, mats, and so on. If you like more eco-friendly living (such as the books Earth to Spirit, or the New Natural House Book both by David Pearson), you must at least look at this Safari Style for reference material. Indian, Asian and Coastal / subtropical blends on the African tradition are perfectly woven into the concept of creating foreign spaces yet comfortably beautiful living arrangements.

Indeed this book makes no argument that it borrows from the land and native cultures. Black and white photos from the 1920�s accompany historical text exploring the British colonization of south and eastern regions of Africa. Very fortunately, I counted less than ten photos, which depict hunting trophies, animal skins or taxidermy, which I had previously associated with a safari style. I find this refreshing! Don�t be mistaken that Tin Beddow�s book departs from more than an exploration of sites into adventures. Not a single image shown within depicts humans, native or non-native, beyond the introduction. Safari Style does not whatsoever portray, with even the remotest sense of accuracy, how any native African peoples live, their homes or villages. Then again, this subject is hardly broached.

It is easy to promote this book to the both the novice interior designers and design student, professional interior design firms, architects and possibly contractors, the curious eclectic artist, hermits and meditative spirits, romantics and in general, to travel lifestyle enthusiasts. (Stay away Ralph Laurent platinum card waving wannabes and homogenized Martha Stewart rip-off artists, or you�ll ruin a good thing.)

Luxurious lives of the expats
One side of me recognizes that the younger sons of the Empire without great resources "went out" to Africa where they could live like princes on comparatively little [comparative only for Europeans, of course]. The other side wishes I had enough decadence in me to have lived in Happy Valley. There is no pretense that this is anything other than splendid housing for Europeans, not native Africans, and it is honest about malaria and the like, without mentioning politics. Nonetheless, I am happy to put this on my shelf with more technical works on indigenous African architecture. The work offers splendid structures built of simple materials on simple plans in which I could happily end my days relishing the elegant detail. The rich melange of styles effectively denies any dim notion of East African cultural isolation. Here Arab, Persian and Indian met and married native genius, and biologists know the offspring of heterosis are often ravishing.