Tucker & Marks

Get an early start on your holiday shopping and pick up a copy of the Design Leadership Network's "Travel by Design", featuring travel photographs by more than 150 of America's leading designers and architect - including this Scottish ceiling beauty, captured by Suzanne Tucker

Look up! Room corner detail: the woodwork is wire-brushed, pickled white oak, hand-stenciled by Stancil Studios. Interior design by Suzanne Tucker/Tucker & Marks.

A closer look at the very same ceiling - with hand stenciled details and gold leaf trim. Interior design by Suzanne Tucker/Tucker & Marks. Photo by Edward Addeo.

Coffered ceiling of a California dining room, designed by Suzanne Tucker/Tucker & Marks, with architecture by Andrew Skurman. Photo by Edward Addeo.

On the ceiling of the dining room in 2010 SF Decorator's Showcase: a 1920's Spanish gilded tole chandelier and a custom-printed craft paper applied between the beams. Interior design by Suzanne Tucker/Tucker & Marks

Six unblinking, disembodied eyes bear down on all those who arrive at the principal entrance to Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill. The decoration of the portico dates to 1928 and the patronage of Gladys Deacon, the second wife of the 9th Duke of Marlborough, who commissioned British war artist Colin Gill to paint the eyes of her and her husband in 1928. The duchess allegedly scaled Gill's ladder waving a silk scarf so that he might perfect the exact shade of her famously disarming eyes.

The great hall ceiling at Blenheim palace features a painting by Sir James Thornhill, depicting an allegory on the successes of John Churchill (1st Duke of Marlborough), who, as Mars, approaches Britannia (Queen Anne) as mistress of the World, on which she is seated; Fame is above, and accompanied by angels sounding the praises of the Duke; the foreground is filled with military trophies

A masterpiece of Persian Architecture, the Shah Mosque of Isfahan - a world heritage site - was built from 1611 to 1629. The entrance, with its towering facade, is a highlight, but equally impressive ceilings can be found within.

The Great Hall ceiling in Castle Howard in Yorkshire - one of a handful of great 18th Century stately homes still in private hands. It was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor for Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle in 1699.

In the Long Library of Blenheim Palace the extraordinarily fine stucco decoration of the ceiling, including the two false domes, is by Isaac Mansfield.

From libraries, we move on to our new favorite subject matter: ceilings! First up: the elaborate plaster ceiling in the chapel of Blenheim Palace. Photo via jadebrahmsodyssey

Codrington library wasdesigned by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1716, completed in 1751 and has been in continuous use by scholars since then. The first woman to be admitted as a reader to the library was Cornelia Sorabji from Somerville College, at Sir William Anson's invitation in 1890.

The Codrington Library is an academic library in the city of Oxford, England. It is the library of All Souls College, a graduate constituent college of the University of Oxford.