Rustic: Country Houses, Rural Dwellings, Wooded Retreats

Who has not dreamed of an idyllic house in the country? Rustic architecture is the expression of an aesthetic concerned primarily with the informal beauty of the natural world. Often set upon craggy peaks, on cliffs overlooking wild seas, beside calm riverbanks, or in the depths of old forests, houses in the Rustic Style engage the eye and rouse the poetic soul by means of picturesque siting, evocative landscaping, asymmetrical architectural compositions, and often wonderful vernacular detail that reveals evidence of handmade work, including uneven floor boards, sloping ceilings, rough-hewn and textured surfaces of plaster, stone, rubble, and wood. In Rustic, Bret Morgan illuminates this much-loved style, giving us the definitive volume on the subject. Comprehensive in scope, Rustic features historically important houses from across America, some small-scale, some larger, from the sublime Ames Gates Lodge of 1881 in North Easton, Massachusetts, designed by H. H. Richardson, to the Arcadian masterpiece Ridge House of 2001, in Spokane, Washington, by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. A beautifully photographed and astutely written volume, Rustic is destined to become a much-cherished companion for those whose love of the woodlands is matched only by a love of home.

Bret Morgan is a widely published architectural photographer. His books include Historic Houses of the Hudson River Valley (Rizzoli) and Shingle Styles: Innovation and Tradition in American Architecture 1874 to 1982, among others.