Lifestyle and design author Susanna Salk has written many books, including the successful Be Your Own Decorator and At Home with Dogs and Their Designers. She also hosts and coproduces the At Home With video series featuring visits with leading international tastemakers.
Though Paolo Moschino and Philip Vergleyen's French bulldog Jack, who graces the cover of Susanna Salk's At Home in the English Countryside: Designers and their Dogs, would not be my choice for a canine companion (too precious), the pooch does illustrate the thesis of the book, namely that dogs have the ability to tie a room together in a way that a Ming vase can't quite. Through seventeen chapters, each featuring a famed British interior designer and his or her dogs--from Labradors to lurchers, Jack Russells to jaunty spaniels--Salk demonstrates how both canine art, and the dogs themselves, can alleviate the frightful grandeur of certain country homes, humanizing us in the process. --NEW CRITERION