Charleston Style: Past and Present
Reviewed by Stephen MacMillan Moser, Fri., Dec. 17, 1999
Charleston Style:
Past and Presentby Susan Sully, photographs by John Blais
Rizzoli, 200 pp., $50
Every book that Rizzoli publishes is spectacularly produced, and always lavish in its detail. (And pricey enough to consider them investment books.) But you get exactly what you pay for with Rizzoli, and so it is with high expectations that we are escorted through Charleston by author Susan Sully and photographer John Blais. Through the enveloping text and breathtaking photos, Italianate, Greek Revival, Victorian, and Gothic styles all swirl together to create a portrait of unparalleled graciousness when cotton was king, and the South was whistlin' "Dixie." But that was a very long time ago and Charleston is a very old city, replete with the vagaries of old cities, but never without magnificent style. "Beautiful as a dream, tinged with romance, consecrated by tradition, glorified by history, rising from the very bosom of the waves, like a fairy city created by the enchanter's wand," says an 1875 guide to Charleston. Now and forever.
