Explains how to produce the country look in interior design, room by room, using patterns and instructions to create country arts and create an imaginative living space Country. It's a simple word, it seems, but just what does it mean? What is Country? Country resonates with associations, some literal, some symbolic, some rooted in emotion. First, of course, country means nation, where we come from, where we live, that land we identify ourselves with. Country, in the context of this book, is America. County also connotes a sense of place or a sense of the natural environment. Country is mountains and marshland, plains and desert, river bank and oceanfront. Country is the rural outdoors. But the concept of county runs deeper than patriotism or ecology. Country, over the course of the last decade or so, has come to signify and symbolize both a lifestyle and a homestyle -- and it has come to describe a way of decorating as well. With the birth of our magazine, Country Living, a term was coined to embrace a uniquely American decorating style -- and an attitude of state of mind. The term, Country, suddenly and clearly brought into focus a homestyle and lifestyle that had, in fact, endured for not only generations, but, in the purest "roots" sense, for centuries. Many Americans find in Country a reaffirmation and a reconfirmation of the way they actually lived, or the way their parents lived, or the way they remember -- or were told -- their grandparents, great-grandparents, and ancestors lived. In terms of decorating, Country initiated a trend for those unfamiliar with is elements; for countless others, country reinforced notions about making their houses comfortable in a uniquely American way. A decade ago, Country Living had a vision of a homestyle that hearkened back to a gentle, innocent past. Country was perceived as a refreshing antidote to high-technology and streamlined modernism. And Country reasserted a focus on family values. The appreciation of Country coincided with a yearning for a seminal version of the American Dream: to live in a simple place with simple furnishings, in a simple and unaffected way. Though romanticized, the yearning was -- and is -- very real: the spirit of Country centers on the home. Homemade, homespun, homegrown. These words capture the values of the county style. Those pioneer values of fortitude, honesty, strength in the face of adversity, and communion with family and friends underscored and lent energy to the Country style. The elements of Country are now icons: primitive handmade furnishings dressed in their original paint or smoothed to a well-woven patina by use; homespun fabrics exhibiting plain waved, gritty textures, and robust earthy colors, or displaying gentle miniature prints in pretty hues woodburning stoves and hearty homemade foods; and handmade crafts often indigenous to America, such as quilts, hooked rugs, and folk art. Copyright 1988 by The Hearst Corporation