Beavis - Style your modern vintage home: a guide to buying, restoring and styling from the 1920s to the 1990s

I met Kate and her husband, Adam, at a London vintage furniture fair while shopping for my dream mid-century bed. The bed I wanted was from the 1970s with a fabric headboard and built-in speakers wacky retro and quite rare. Im drawn to nostalgia and vintage and recently bought my first home; I decorated it all in about 2 months with junk shop finds. Its filled with chintzy glamour.

Even though Kate and Adam didnt have the bed I was looking for it was clear that they were passionate about their vintage business and more importantly, that they understand 20th century design.

Kate has put her passion into writing this book so that everyone else can fall in love with stylish vintage pieces from the last 100 years. Her expert tips and advice for buying, restoring and styling have created something we can not only learn from, but be inspired by, so that we can all style our own modern vintage homes with confidence to create a space that is unique and special.

We live in a modern world with the desire for greater technology and more space, yet our love for vintage seems to be stronger than ever. In a time of fast speed and lack of time we are craving a sense of nostalgia to add contrast to our lives. I have often been asked how to style vintage homewares and furniture without actually recreating a period home, so from this idea Style Your Modern Vintage Home was born.

The book covers all decades from the 1920s through to the early 1990s. It provides hints and tips for styling your vintage home in a modern setting with other current pieces, such as your television or computer. You can mix up eras too if you want: many homes feature loved items from different decades as well as modern and antique pieces. Within each era the home has been broken down into key rooms, including the kitchen and living room. Must-have items are suggested, plus cleaning and restoration tips and watch outs to consider when buying vintage, as well as extra finishing touches you may want to consider to complete the look.

Throughout the book there are inspiring photos from real homes filled with great vintage treasures. Many books on decorating homes style amazing spaces that are unobtainable for many of us. Therefore it was important to use real homes lived in by real people that have great style. The homes are also very different from each other and cover all shapes and sizes: Justin and Adelles home is in the country with beamed ceilings, Sarah B.s home is a bungalow reminiscent of American ranch houses and Carla and Martins home is an open-plan city flat. They have kindly shared their thoughts on how they have styled their homes, where to buy vintage and what it is they love most about it.

It is also important to understand some of the social history of the time and how it impacted our homes. Loving and collecting vintage is about being unique, knowing your own style and buying local, but it should also be about respecting the time it came from and knowing as much as possible about its history. So lets love a 1930s enamel bread bin with its slight wear and tear knowing it has survived a world war, or restore a 1960s sideboard, giving it the second chance it deserves when most people discarded them in the 1980s.

Not forgetting that, above all, collecting and styling vintage is fun. The homes featured havent created this look overnight; they have lovingly added items over the years, re-positioning them each time a new collectable arrives. I hope this book will help you to get the vintage look and also act as a guide for years to come as you create your modern vintage home.

The 1920s were a time of hope, with a desire to live for the moment. World War I ended with 16 million deaths worldwide, making it one of the worst wars in history. As a result young people decided to throw caution to the wind and enjoy every second of their lives. They partied, drank cocktails and danced the night away earning their title bright, young things. Even prohibition in America didnt hold them back driving dance halls and alcohol underground made it even more fashionable to have a good time.

The 1920s and 1930s were highly innovative times, with the invention of the radio in 1920 and the television in 1925, as well as further developments in new materials, such as Bakelite. Commercially, the western world was booming, with couples going to far-flung holiday destinations on trains, cruise liners and airships. They brought back souvenirs from African safaris, such as ivory and tortoiseshell, to adorn their living rooms. The discovery of Tutankhamuns tomb in 1922 reinforced that there was a big, wide world out there ready to be explored.

This was also the golden age of film, with Hollywood producing silent movies oozing with high fashion and glamour. This influenced our homes with mirrored surfaces, cocktail cabinets and glassware for the opulent parties that ensued.

Interior design became fashionable with the birth of modernism. In Paris in 1925 the Exposition Internationale des Arts Dcoratifs et Industriels Modernes showcased a new minimal style exhibiting streamlined, geometric art and stylized furniture in new materials, which complemented a new, simple architecture. Le Corbusiers work received mixed reviews; his minimalist designs of tower blocks, roof-top terraces and walls of windows was seen as revolutionary, heralding him as a true pioneer of modern architecture. However, it took until the 1930s for it to become mainstream and the 1960s before the phrase art deco was coined.

In Germany the Bauhaus school was developing its own style of modernism that would influence the rest of the world for decades to come. After Germanys defeat in World War I, freedom of expression was finally encouraged after years of censorship. The Bauhaus school brought together art, crafts and architecture, which focused on simplicity, functionality and the ability to be commercial yet still beautiful.

The role of women in society was evolving fast. The flapper girl burst onto the dance floor with her new androgynous style, short boxy dresses and even shorter hair. She danced the Charleston, smoked in public and did things her way. In the UK in 1928, women finally gained voting equality with men and were released from restrictive Edwardian propriety.

All of this was against a backdrop of high unemployment and strikes. The world was heading for bust and in 1929 the American stock market in Wall Street crashed. This was to be the start of the worst global recession of the 20th century. The depression of the 1930s had a devastating effect on America with 25 per cent unemployment it took ten long years to recover.

In the UK interest rates were cut, signalling the push towards home ownership. The falling costs of building materials and cheap price of land meant that the construction industry boomed, especially in the south. Three million new homes were built and by 1938, 35 per cent of homes were privately owned. Marriage rates began to rise with a real desire for security, contrasting with previous generations. Prices dropped, credit became available and with 600,000 people attending the 1938 Ideal Home Exhibition the long-term future looked promising. However, the world was about to change. On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland; Britain and France declared war and the next six years altered our homes, our relationships and our lives forever.