words in scarlet ink

Nantucket Cottage & Gardens: Charming Spaces on the Faraway Isle is a coffee table book by Leslie Linsley with photography by Terry Pommett, which I’ve had for awhile but finally read cover to cover during – you guessed it – covid lockdown.

Let me preface this by saying I have always loved New England. For as long as I can remember. I don’t really know why. I didn’t grow up there, my family didn’t take a lot of trips there, fishing for a living is probably my worst nightmare, but the New England coastal life (and now even interior New England life) is an aesthetic and lifestyle I’ve been obsessed with since I was…twelve? Yes, while other girls were into boy bands, I was into nautical decor. Why yes, I have always been hip and cool, why do you ask?

In Nantucket Cottages & Gardens, Linsley visits some of those classic design elements that make Nantucket’s famous cottages timelessly chic and warmly homey. The cottages Linsley showcases are from a time before Nantucket was for the obscenely wealthy, when square footage of these cottages was smaller for many reasons, the least of which not being it was all the residents of the time could afford. With Tiny Homes^TM all the rage these days, public interest in clever design for a smaller living spaces is booming.

I thought this book, in addition to being visually beautiful, was actually quite inspirational and informative. With more modern homeowners rethinking what they need in terms of space due to financial and environmental concerns, looking at the remodels and designs of homeowners who are confined to a smaller living space – not necessarily because they can’t afford a bigger one but because they literally can’t expand as Nantucket’s space is very much accounted for in most areas – it’s a practical guide to using these older, pragmatic design elements to create an efficient, functional space.