Villa

Book excerpt: John Saladino's powerful new book is nothing less than a master class in interior and garden design. Villa focuses on the stone ruin in Southern California that Saladino painstakingly refashioned into his dream house, and it shows how his principles and passions guided him through the five-year process of reconstruction, restoration, and decoration. With the aid of plans and drawings, as well as numerous photographs of the house — how it looked in the 1920s, shots of when he bought it, and snaps taken during reconstruction — Saladino traces the architectural work involved. Then, in a superbly illustrated tour of the house and grounds, he proves that he practices what he’s preached for more than 30 years. Juxtaposing light and dark, old and new, classical and modern, monumental and miniscule, hard and soft, Saladino creates the serenely timeless interiors and gardens that are his hallmark.