Bookend: Embellished Spaces by Anthony Catalfano

The tale told in Anthony Catalfano’s Embellished Spaces is one of a self-taught creator whose rise to success transported him from the blue-collar streets of Leominster, Massachusetts, to the more private lanes of New England’s moneyed haunts. Propelled by an innate passion and a boundless self-confidence, Catalfano has led his own interior design firm since 1989, undertaking projects from Maine to New York to Florida.

His interiors are most often traditional in their fundamentals—you’ll see valences, floral prints, and English antiques aplenty—with the occasional foray into a Deco- or midcentury-inflected modernism (and, at least once, a jewel-hued evocation of a south Asian harem). Quiet palettes of caramels and creams are frequently punched up with a few juicy splashes of color—as in the library shown above, which appeared in the very first issue of New England Home. But for Catalfano, it is the totality that counts: “It must all tie together to become a singular piece of art,” he says. Finally, should anyone doubt his drive or appetite for hard work . . . there are now 276 pages of solid evidence to make the case. | $95, Bass Rocks Press, bassrockspress.com