Darryl Carter’s ‘Collected Home’: New ways of framing the past

What to do when you’ve got a beloved family coffee table that’s just too small for your space? If you’re designer Darryl Carter, you build a second table around it.

In Carter’s new “The Collected Home: Rooms With Style, Grace, and History,” co-written with Trish Donnally and released Tuesday by Clarkson Potter, the designer recalls a client whose father had made a small table under the tutelage of the great George Nakashima. When the table was pulled out of storage, Carter says, it was clearly not the right scale for its intended new home.

The designer’s solution: Fabricate a three-sided metal box that left the wood table top and its legs exposed. The mash-up not only provides a functional tabletop but also elevates a diminutive heirloom into a centerpiece with personal history.

Mixing the old with the new has been the dominant theme in the surge of new decorating books we’ve seen in the run-up to the holidays. You can read reviews and Q&As; spun off of new books from Kelly Wearstler, Nathan Turner, Danny Seo and Robert and Cortney Novogratzes. More to come ...

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