‘Jungalow: Decorate Wild,’ is Justina Blakeney’s 3rd & BEST Interior Design Book

So says I, self-appointed connoisseur of BoHo (a quirky variation of boho) and queen of this blog.

Justina Blakeney of Jungalow fame came out with this, her third interior design book, Jungalow: Decorate Wild, last year, and I beg forgiveness at the altar of maximalism that I only recently got around to reading it. But that aside, I’ve concluded it’s her best book so far and the one interior design tome any respectable boho mama must have on her shelf.

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I think what I love most about this book and about Blakeney herself is that she’s so real, and the real Justina is what comes across. The book is personal, open, down-to-earth, and so, so creative. I also love her look–earthy and zaftig, right down to the natural coif, peasant dress and bare feet in the dust-jacket photo. She’s equal measure earth mother, philosopher and artist.

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“A Home is like a garden. It must be cultivated to create the conditions for healthy growth.”

–Justina Blakeney in Decorate WIld

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These words shout out from the wildly patterned introductory pages of the book right through to the end, some 270 pages later.

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From the beginning Blakeney encourages people to decorate their homes for personal happiness, and this book gives them the platinum permission card.

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“Mixing is magic,” she writes and takes the time in the first part of the book to ground her words in botany, genetics, world history, cooking, music, fine arts, language, architecture and design, anthropology, and most importantly, in personal history.

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She charts for the reader precisely where her inspiration found her, names it, and catalogs it as if the book was her larger mood board.

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She calls her collective design influences, charmingly, Moroc-Cali (reminds me of broccoli), West Afric-Coastal, Tropic-Talian, Turk-Xican, and New Mexi-Copenhagen.

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She’s more widely traveled than I, but she inspires me to try to name my influences as well, which sounds like a great idea for a mood board AND a future post. And I have just the empty corner in my study to build it!

The book also includes art and craft ideas that can help readers cultivate and stretch their creative muscles. As a fan of M. C. Escher, I was drawn to the tesselation exercise and illustrations of how tesselation is used in design–particularly in tile, wallpaper and fabric. Maybe I’ll design my own fabric yet–something I’ve always dreamed of.

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An avowed “plant mama,” Blakeney included in her discussion of pattern the patterns in plants. That appealed to the master gardener in me and has me interested in adding some plants INSIDE my house now that I live in a house with great light.

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And this craft of making faces from plant leaves was, I thought, too fun to pass up. I may be sharing some of my efforts in future posts. I’ll need to take a foraging trip to a city park for materials first, since the trees in my neighborhood are small and the bushes are few. I will try faces, but I also like mandalas as an meditative art exercise.

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Her section explaining natural fibers was also very useful. Now I know the difference between bamboo, cane, coconut, coir, flax, hemp, jute, rattan, raffia, sisal, water hyacinth and more.

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If you want more…

Check out previous BoHo Home posts on Justina Blakeney:

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