It was more than a decade ago that I happened upon Maine Cottage Furniture in Yarmouth. I remember the brightly colored wooden headboards, painted tables that were simple, whimsical and unpretentious, and paintings that exuded a real joy of life. When co-owner, designer and painter Carol Bass introduced herself to me, I understood where these delightful pieces were coming from. Friendly, down-to-earth and enthusiastic, Bass was as charming as her creations.

Bass has since added writing to her many talents. In the last two years, she has created two separate, related odes to Maine life in the form of two coffee table books. The 2004 volume is “Maine Living,” an amalgam of Maine places and people that have fascinated Bass, ostensibly created as a decorating book. The 2003 volume is “The Cottage Book: Living Simple and Easy,” a photographic journey through the rustic wooden cottages and their porches that are more like Maine camps – not the self-important grand mansions of Seal Harbor, Camden and Boothbay. Both books are richly saturated with color, though issued by separate publishers, and both use images of Maine photographer Dennis Welsh.

The sensuous nature of Bass’s books is no accident; Bass is attracted to deep, rich colors, to the image of poppies growing by the seaside, to air scented by lavender and lilac, to the way light falls on a painted pine floor. Such details are her frame of reference. Raised an hour north of Charleston, S.C., she recalls growing up in “another yummy place like Maine, a feeling place, a sensual place. I always remember driving under the canopy of huge oak trees.” She came to Maine in the early 1970s, just out of college, and has been collecting stories, people and images ever since. When she began her books, it was a matter of making choices from the many attachments to places and people she had gathered over the last 30 years. “Driving around Maine, your eye goes to something, it’s like walking around in a flea market, one thing jumps out at you and you have to take it,” she says.

In “The Cottage Book,” Bass explores the gathering places of the cottages, vast and small porches, kitchens, living rooms, all unpeopled, though you can sometimes hear the stories in the worn painted walls, the sweet peas dipping over a vase. You can imagine leaning your elbows on that kitchen table, catching up with a girlfriend of years ago, you can hear the creek of the rocker on that porch, feeling the sandy grit of a child climbing into your lap.

“Maine Living” goes deeper. Here, Bass starts telling stories, focusing on a range of people who have moved her, “people that make Maine such a wonderful place, like the Vietnam Vet selling fish in Thomaston and the man at the end of the main street in Eastport who makes teardrop trailers to go behind old woodies, or the guy from Falmouth, who makes archery bows.”

Bass waxes positively breathless with the people she continues to cherish: the back-to-the-landers who stayed, the fairs and festivals, the architects, antique dealers, painters, plus a smattering of farmers, even the folks at Belle of Maine, who have been canning fiddleheads since 1898. It’s an eclectic mix, something of an idealization of Maine life, kind of a Martha Stewart goes to the Common Ground Country Fair. But I’m not complaining, because Bass, like Stewart, has a good eye. Her choices are fresh and sometimes surprising, and she does go to the Common Ground Fair. I was able to catch up on old friends through her pages and even see how my very first writing studio in Maine, a weaving studio called Brahm’s-Mount Textiles in Hallo-well, has fared through the years.

At the end of each section Bass offers tips on how to make life more “Maine.” Some of her suggestions may go a little overboard, such as in the section highlighting Portland’s waterfront staple, the Porthole Restaurant, she encourages turning your kitchen into a dive: “Create a one-of-a-kind table: cover a flea-market tabletop with retro linoleum” and “Find metal-legged Deco diner stools, cover the seats with a bold-colored leather, and use at your kitchen island.” Elsewhere, though, Bass’ ideas are more about relating to where you live, not trying to turn your suburban ranch house into a Maine cottage. “Join your local historical society,” she suggests and later, “Build your house around what you love, not what you think will improve resale value.”

Well of course, you might say, but you are living in Maine. What Bass is celebrating in this book is the authenticity that comes from simply engaging in the world one lives in, cutting firewood and collecting driftwood. For many of us in Maine, this isn’t a choice, it’s the way our lives are structured. That such connection needs to be celebrated says a lot about our world. That Bass celebrates it is downright grand.

“Maine Living,” featuring photos by Dennis Welsh and an introduction by Edgar Allen Beem, was published in 2004 by Gibbs Smith in Salt Lake City, Utah. It costs $34.95. “The Cottage Book,” with photos by Dennis Welsh, was released in 2003 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang in New York. It costs $30. Donna Gold can be reached at carpenter@acadia.net.