Designers & Books sat down with interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber “to find out firsthand just how engaging and entertaining a storyteller [he is] at a recent face-to-face in his office on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.”

Before my first book, Design Basics (Rizzoli International Publications, 2003), I actually had no aspirations or real desire to be an author. Rizzoli approached me asking if I would be interested in writing a book. And I asked, why? The publisher had exactly the right answer—the one you want to hear. He said, “Because I believe you have a book in you.”

Read the full interview here, or visit Jeffrey Bilhuber’s Designers & Books Profile and Booklist.

You can also take a look inside Jeffrey’s newest Rizzoli book, The Way Home: Reflections on American Beauty.

Photo: From The Way Home (pp. 34–35), John Singer Sargent-inspired room in a Connecticut house. Photo: William Abranowicz