Susan Dickenson — Home Accents Today, 7/20/2011 3:58:11 PM

Canadian designer and shop owner Jane Hall has been described as a “color lady… with a cool storefront/studio in the trendy Beaches area of Toronto.”

Another writer recently described Hall as being known for her “anti-cookie-cutter, colourful interiors and custom furniture.” It was used in June by HGTV.ca during its Original Home Tour segment on Hall‘s “colourfully eclectic Toronto retreat.”

Hall describes herself as an artist, entrepreneur and multidisciplinary designer. She’s designed and licensed collections for Kravet, Mikasa, Sears and Maggie B; done packaging, illustration and mural work for several companies including Nestle, Second Cup (coffee), and Laura Secord (chocolate); produced more than 200 works as a fine artist and illustrator; and, during the 10 years she worked in the fashion industry, sold to 1,600 stores.

In 2007, she opened her shop, Jane Hall The Voice of Style. “I have worked with fabric, color and pattern for 40 years, and my real gift is in knowing how to combine those elements,” said Hall, who edited her paint suppliers’ 4,000 paint choices down to 400, to make it easier when working with clients. “The average consumer is overwhelmed by choice, and in the face of ‘too much information’ they choose neutrals as a way of not making mistakes. I call it Chicken Chic.”

Within the past year, Hall has commenced work on several projects to expand her brand into the United States and beyond. “I have a product that has a global appeal and, in fact, all of the followers of images are from outside North America. My website traffic comes from around the world, and my blog is bringing more traffic to my site every day.”

She’s been working for a year on an online color resource, where designers and consumers can access a databank and information on how to decorate with color and is looking into developing web seminars on the subject. Hall also has a portfolio of her work on the creative platform Behance.net, and sells in the United States through custom home furnishings marketplace Custommade.com.

Describe your store: The store is separated into five groupings around the color themes Flirt, Classic, Passion, Serenity and Spice. If you look at the fashion industry – they merchandise by color, which is what I have done at Jane Hall The Voice of Style. Every grouping has custom-made merchandise in those color groupings, and it changes constantly. The beauty of it is that the customer can see how you put colors together, that colors don’t work in isolation. I call it a beige-free zone.

What makes you different/sets you apart from the competition? Loving color and pattern, taking tradition and turning it into something whimsical, are what set me apart. I look at a room from the heart of an artist. I’m inspired by great films, lush periods in design, and the 20th century adaptors who reinvented them with their own twist: Billy Haines, Billy Baldwin, Dorothy Draper, Tony Duquette, David Hicks.

I love details, the art of decoration where an object exists solely to add beauty and humanity to our lives. I prefer shapes that are round. In the age of mass marketing and globalization it’s cheaper to make things square then it is to make them round. It’s also cheaper and less risky to make them in beige or gray then in a color. I import almost all of my fabric from Europe. As I custom-make to order, the choices are limitless and as far reaching as the imagination will allow.

Describe your average customer: Between the ages of 35 and 65, well-traveled, people who like to be different and want their homes to reflect their personalities. They enjoy being part of the process of creating something that is totally unique for them.

How do you reach your customer? I write about design for our local community paper, and for people who have subscribed to monthly newsletters. I have a great website that is updated weekly with new products in the store and showcases completed projects. I write a blog on subjects related to design and am currently working on a series about the history of interior design which my web stats show people seem to be loving. I will be adding speaking appearances and workshops on design topics in the next few months.

How has business been over the past year?Like all business in the retail sector, sales have been flat, particularly with a long winter and very late wet spring, but sales of the custom products – especially the vintage chairs reinvented – are doing very well.

What is the most enjoyable part of your job? Creatingnew products and concepts is my passion. I would have to say I am an obsessive person when it comes to my work, which is really like playing to me. It is normal for me to come up with an idea or a concept and then spend months working on it with little sleeping or eating. Creative people call it “being in flow.”
The reward is the reaction of people who pass through my doors. They gasp, they smile they sometimes cry, they leave the store feeling better. The comment that I get the most is, “This is like being in Alice in Wonderland.”

Do you see any trends emerging or remaining “hot” in home accents for your area? I believe there is a market for unique and authentic, a result of the shifting of priorities and values following the recent economic events. Consumers are shifting their focus from quantity vs. quality and need to be excited or wowed to part with their money. They value products that are green and locally made.

Approximate size of your store: 1,200 sq. ft

Year opened: 2007

Average annual sales of home accents: Less than $1 million

About what percentage of your sales are home accents? 80%

Key vendors: Designers Guild, Osborne and Little, Pierre Frey

Website: janehalldesign.com

Posted by Alicia Cox Wednesday, June 22, 2011 2:43 PM

Who: Jane Hall, a designer known for her anti-cookie-cutter, colourful interiors and custom furniture (she’s been in the business for 35 years!)

The living room with custom pieces and hand painted ottoman; All photos by Harry Gils

What: The home was built in the early 1940s. What’s interesting is that the homes in this area were designed by woman architects, as all the men were away at war. One of the things I loved about it was it had all of the 40′s detailing, the scalloped window trim, the rounded fireplace, the great molding. It inspired me to think about that period of design.

Where: Toronto’s east end

Why: The most recent design of Jane’s home is a unique, feminine and layered look inspired by Paris, Coco Chanel, texture, colour and fabric. We know that many interiors are all white walls with pops of colour and once we saw Jane’s eclectic home, we had to include it! Plus, Jane shares excellent tips on how to bring colour into your own home below.

Living room looking into the dining area

Living room looking into the dining area

HGTV: Can you please tell us a bit about yourself? How you would describe your style?

Jane: For the past 35 years, I have been championing the use of colour, pattern and texture, using exclusive European fabric lines such as Designers Guild, Osborne and Little, Pierre Frey, Manuel Canovas, as the Europeans use colour and pattern much more liberally then the North Americans do. I play with fabric to create one-of-a-kind pieces out of reclaimed, refurbished and recycled furniture. I am also known for my unique custom draperies, bedding, cushions, signature lamps and shades, painted furniture, as well as one-of-a-kind accessories and original art.

My extensive experience in textile design, fine art, interior design, colour and fashion is reflected in my singular aesthetic approach. I have built a reputation for whimsical, exuberant design. It continues to grow and it reflects ever-increasing consumer disenchantment with mass produced, cookie-cutter goods for the home, and an escalating appetite for enduring — and eclectic — pieces. I have always stepped outside the box, and I provide people with items that are made locally by my talented elves, and you can have it in any colour in the rainbow.

Looking into the living room

Looking into the living room

HGTV: While your home is very colourful, your living room is black. But with the hot pink dining nook and lime and pink accents, it doesn’t seem dark. How did you decide on your colour scheme?
Jane: I love the drama of black set off against a white. It’s a great foil to colour, pastels, saturated passionate colours or clear “flirt” colours. You can never go wrong with a colour scheme that starts with black and white. It’s timeless and yet totally modern at the same time.

I was also totally inspired by the fabric, which is often how it starts. The absolutely most exciting thing about fabric is it is all about colour, but it has the added dimension of pattern and texture. I have used a mix of cut velvets, printed silks, and the most incredible piece of Designers Guild heavy, ballroom gown weight embroidered silk and cotton mix on the antique settee, that makes me drool every time I touch it.

The antique settee

Jane: The living room black is a Sherwin Williams warm matte black called Black Magic, and the attached dining room and accent wall is Sherwin Williams Exuberant Pink. A colour never has to be dark, if it’s adequately light, and set off with right fabrics and accessories. I have six lamps in the room and no overhead lighting. I also use lots of sparkly crystal and mirrors for the light to reflect in.

HGTV: You design custom furniture, which pieces are yours?
Jane: Actually all the items in the rooms come from my store or from one of my favourite vintage stores where I source the pieces I restore or collect. The ottoman in the living room has been covered in canvas and hand painted. The side tables, display case and dining table are all vintage finds that have been hand painted.

The dining room chandeliers come from a supplier in Montreal who uses antique chandeliers and custom dyes the piece with the crystals to your specification. The candelabra is 1920’s Parisian, and the black and white carpets are part of a collection are designed by a Canadian designer Judith Gueth which are available at the store. The black lacquered furniture came out of an estate of a Canadian artist and was designed and made by a Canadian company in the 1950’s.

Lots of reflective surfaces keep the room bright

HGTV: Who are some of the designers you look up to? Were you inspired by anyone or any style in particular?
Jane: I have always been inspired by [British designer and founder of Designer Guild] Tricia Guild, who has the sense of colour and pattern as I do which is why I love her fabric so much. We have been in the design business for about the same amount of time and we both started out working with designing and making our own fabric.

I am also very inspired by the designers of the past have recently been doing a History of Interior Design on my blog, and somehow through osmosis I found out that my style has elements of all the early 20th century pioneers without knowing it.

The Coco-Chanel inspired bedroom

HGTV: The bedroom is also pink and black, but in a softer palette. And that rug looks so luxurious. What do you enjoy about this room the most?
Jane: I am often inspired by great visual movies and often design collections around them. With a trip to Paris last year and three films out about Coco Chanel, I was inspired by her signature black white and pink classic colour scheme, and her use of different scale and patterns in [those colours]. A mix of different stripes gingham checks, damasks, and polka dots are used on the drapes, settee, cushions, and lampshades.

I also found these fantastic large scale lamp bases with gilded gold leaves which brought in the touch of gold which is also a very Coco Chanel element that she used in her accessories. I made the lampshades out of pink gingham and plain black silk with gold and black pompom trim. I love the soft pink colour and the Parisian feel of the room, as I love Parisian style in general. Pink is calming, gentle, and the style is feminine, yet it’s got a sophisticated feel to it to. That I think was the essence of Coco Chanel.

The settee in the bedroom

HGTV: What advice would you share for people who may be afraid of using colour in their homes? Are there any hard and fast rules about mixing and matching?
Jane: I am always surprised why Canadians don’t use more colours in their interiors. We live in an environment that lacks colour seven months of the year. Think for a moment of how you feel on a grey cold November day and how you feel on the first day that spring firmly takes hold. That is what painting your rooms the right colour can do for your sense of well being. It can transform your sprit from the way you feel during those long days in February to how you feel during those first weeks in May.

If you look in your garden you can see how colours work. Did Mother Nature get it wrong? When you look in your garden in bloom, does it clash, is too much? Colour inspiration is everywhere you look, in fashion, at the beach, on the web.  I personally love European design magazines for inspiration.

Because colour is like sound and it travels on waves, it therefore affects our subconscious in a very profound way. It helps clients take emotional possession of their homes, and infuses them with their own personalities. Not the latest trends in the magazines, or their neighbours or the previous owners. Many people move in with the boxes but not emotionally.

Dressing room

HGTV: What are some of your favourite colours?
Jane: It’s hard for me to dislike any colour, except for non-colours. Beige just doesn’t do it for me. I adore spring green as it represents the colour of renewal from a grey environment to one filled with life and growth. Green is really the “neutral” as it is the colour of nature. Green goes with everything.  Shades of turquoises, reds, pinks, purples, browns and grays, the right shade of green can go with any colour as long as you have the right undertone and value.

Dining area

HGTV: What is your favourite thing about your home?
Jane: I love that it’s totally personal and every item has a story, or is a manifestation of an idea. Every item has been collected and reinvented or inherited from my family — from the 60-year-old white and pure edged gold Minton china I inherited from my mother, to the cut crystal glasses I found at one of my favourite shops that I have discovered on my magical mystery tours of Toronto. I also love that it’s all made with the help of local artisans and workrooms, and that I am supporting other local businesses such as the amazing vintage stores I find my furniture at.

I also feel, that I am somewhere else, in another time, when it was more about form and beauty, and less about function and utility. Here I could be living in an apartment in St Germain des Pres or a flat in London in one of the brightly coloured flats in Chelsea.

Wow, let’s hear it for colour!

Syrie Maugham Interior for Lady Diana Manners

Before abdicating and leaving England for a their life of exile, Wallis and David surrounded themselves with a group of English aristocrats and their collection of  avant garde friends  called “The Bright Young Things”  whose lives revolved around drinking too many martini’s listening to the new jazz, hanging out in exclusive clubs, and having affairs with one another  and generally doing what the young do, rebel.

From the series Upstairs Downstairs set in 1936 designed by Eve Stewart, a scene showing the social set at party one might expect to attend in the the mid 30's in London. Glamorous and decadent, this was a generation who were testing the limits.

Helen and George Hay Whigham, and was located on Upper Grosvenor Street in Mayfair, London. Syrie was hired to decorate their home in 1935

Helen and George Hay Whigham, and was located on Upper Grosvenor Street in Mayfair, London. Syrie was hired to decorate their home in 19351. It has a touch of the Hollywood Regency Style of Billy Haines. She loved the use of simple lines and mirrored furniture.

The difference was they had lots of money. Britain like most of the world was in a deep depression and 2 million were unemployed. Stuck between 2 wars this generation a youth rebellion of a sort attracted a fascinating group of people. The well known novelist Evelyn Waugh who was a part of the group would write and publish a book which was originally titled  Bright Young Things. It was published under the title Vile Bodies’ the novel’s most famous passage, endlessly quoted in social histories of the 1920s, panoramically defines the scope of the Bright Young Person’s world: “Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood . . . – all the succession and repetition of massed humanity . . . Those vile bodies.”

The Bright Young Things in Character includes Steven Tennant and Cecil Beaton in drag upper right and bottom left corners.

Stephen Tennant was considered the most beautiful of all male or female and was Beaton's muse. Syrie Maugham decorated his home with bolts and bolts of cream satin

The Bright Young Things liked nothing better then "themed" dress up parties where they could break all the rules and do some gender bending dressing up in costumes.

Members included Dame Edith Sitwell, Noel Coward, rackety young society women such as the morphine addict Brenda Dean Paul and Elizabeth Ponsonby, whose father, the Labour leader of the House of Lords, died of drink on the eve of World War Two at the age of 39. Steven Tennant the youngest son of Lord Glenconner. He produced four sons, only one of which was to be stable enough to take on the family business. He would later sell out to ICI (the paint company) and make a fortune, retire to Martinique and spend his fortune till there was nothing left.

Actress, drug addict and “It Girl” Brenda Dean Paul (1907–1959, centre) leaves court after facing drugs charges, July 1933. She is holding a tin of large Sub Rosa cigarettes. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The poster boy to what many see as the very first youth movement was Stephen Tennant, son of Scots peer, Lord Glenconner and Pamela Wyndham, one of The Souls. His mother was also a cousin of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's lover and a sonneteer. Tennant's androgynous looks and flamboyant style led sculptor Jacob Epsteinto describe him as the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Tennant’s outfits ranged from indulgently luxe over-the-top opulence to theatrical, gender-blurring fancy dress. The gossip column from a 1927 edition of The Daily Express described Tennant’s headline-making style in this way: “The Honourable Stephen Tennant arrived in an electric brougham wearing a football jersey and earrings."

A gloriously decaying interior at Stephen Tennant's Wilsford Manor. Tennant was a Bright Young Thing, great friends with Cecil Beaton and Rex Whistler, and a client of Syrie Maugham.

Cecil Beaton portrait of Dame Edith Sitwell. She would be a key supporter of Beaton's and introduce him into society where he would go on to photograph most of London society woman

Two infamous members were Diana Mitford and her Irish aristocratic and heir to the Guinness fortune Bryan Guinness Husband. Diana considered one of the great beauties of the day, was one of the equally infamous Mitford sisters, 2 who would become ardent Nazi supporters, one a communist, one a duchess and Pamela who married a millionaire scientist and 3 would become successful writers.

Diana caused quite a scandal by having a very public affair in 1932 with the married British Fascist Union Leader, Lord Oswald Mosley .Lord Mosley’s refused to leave his wife and even when she passed away he began a relationship with her younger sister and her stepmother. Diana had left her husband when then met and waited for Mosley  to commit to her , and in the 1936 they were married secretly in Berlin at the home of Joseph Gobbles with Hitler himself in attendance. In 1940 they were both arrested for their alliance to Hitler and were interned at the prison Holloway.

After leaving England after the war and moving to Paris the Wolsey’s became neighbours of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and would become lifelong friends. Her sister Unity, who would become Hitler’s Example of the perfect Aryan woman, would devote her life to him and when he declared war on England she shot herself in the head!

An important figure amongst this group was the enormously talented and sometimes considered camp photographer Cecil Beaton. Son of a wealthy timber Merchant, Cecil was from an early age fascinated by the fashion images he saw on the early postcards he saw in the era of the early century and he acquired is first cameras and the age 11 which his nanny taught him how to use , and she also taught him to manipulate and develop film in the darkroom. His early subjects were his mother and sisters Baba and…. which he experimented …..with would become his famous signature style. He was as most young men of a particular social standing sent off to Harrow for undergraduate to study and then to St John’s College at Cambridge where he lasted for 3 years before he departed to work on his own ideas in 1925. While there he had already sold his first image to Vogue.

Cecil Beaton The Art of The Scrapbook cover image

Pages from Cecil Beaton's Scrapbook

Syrie Maugham's was famous for doing the first all white room. It actually showed many shades of cream, and the drapes were in a shade of the softest shade of pink satin. This room in her own own home on Kink's Road and was thought to be the inspiration for many movie set designs in the 30,s as it showed do well on black and white film.Cecil Beaton used this room many times as a backdrop for his portraits. Its been written that this room was more of a publicity stunt and that she did many jobs that used colour.

A visit to New York at the end of the 1920s and an introduction to Elsie de Wolfe  led to photographic contracts for Vogue and, subsequently, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar. Beaton’s work focused on the cultural icons (both social and artistic) of his day, providing a record of its famous, beautiful, fashionable, and eccentric figures. His appetite for travel enabled him to build up a body of work that had international significance. Hollywood stars captured by his camera included Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katherine Hepburn, while painters ranged from Salvador Dalí to Francis Bacon. His portraits spanned parts of six decades and reflected successive generations of the new and avant-garde, from Stravinsky, Cocteau, and Picasso to Warhol and Jagger. In the 1930s he was commissioned to take a series of pictures of Queen Elizabeth, and this proved to be a prelude to further royal photographs and the eventual status of official family portraitist. During the Second World War, in a phase of his career far removed from its usual glamorous milieu, he documented air-raid damage in London and served as a war photographer in Africa and Asia.

Collection of portraits of some of the worlds most famous beautiful woman, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Munroe and the middle picture is one of his earliest pictures of Marquesas de Casa Maurey 1928

Cecil Beton photographed some of the most well known personalities of the arts both stage, film. Photographed here are Orson Wells, Gary Copper Fred and Adele Astaire The Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin. Pictured also is the artist Francis Bacon.

Cecil Beaton photo of Charles James gowns for Vogue 1948

Beaton’s abilities extended beyond photography. He was a writer and illustrator (with a talent for caricature), and won recognition as a costume and stage designer. Published collections of his photographs included The Book of Beauty (1930), Cecil Beaton’s Scrapbook (1937), Cecil Beaton’s New York (1938), and Persona Grata (1953), in which text to accompany the portraits was supplied by the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. He also wrote a historical study, British Photographers (1944), an early autobiography (Photobiography, 1951), and published a series of extracts from his diaries. (The unexpurgated versions that appeared posthumously were considerably more caustic.) His set and costume designs for plays, ballet, and opera were in demand on both sides of the Atlantic, and he served as costume and production designer for a number of films, winning Academy Awards for his work on Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964). In 1968 a retrospective of his work was mounted by London’s National Portrait Gallery, and in 1972 he was knighted. A cerebral haemorrhage in 1974 resulted in frailty and partial paralysis, but in his last years Beaton taught himself to write and use a camera with his left hand.

Cecil Beaton portrait of Aubrey Hepburn dressed in a costume he designed for her in her role in My Fair Lady for which he won an Oscar. He photographed Hepburn many times over the years, but would complain that she was to thin and quite ordinary looking. He had an acidic tongue and he had something to say about most woman he shot, even the what the world considered the most beautiful. An exception would be Greta Garbo who he had an occasional fling with although he was always infatuated with her. There are many photographs of her in his collection over a long number of years.

From Cecil Beaton's Scrapbook a page devoted to Greta Garbo

Cecil Beaton photographed Queen Elizabeth's Coronation

Portrait of Princess Margaret and Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth

Portrait of Princess Margaret

Syrie Maugham,Born in Hackney, England in 1879, Syrie was the daughter of the renowned reformer, Thomas Barnardo, above, founder of the Dr. Barnardo’s homes for destitute children. Barnardo was devoutly evangelical, a strict taskmaster and Bible-thumper, and advocate of the temperance movement. Young Syrie however (she shucked her unwieldy birth names Gwendoline Maud) wanted nothing to do with this sheltered life and showed little interest in her father’s charity work. . While he hoped she would become a missionary and go to China, she longed to establish herself in London’s lofty circles and to escape the suffocating life she had known.She found her means of escape in Henry Wellcome, above, a self-made man, some 25 years her elder, whom she’d met in Khartoum on a trip with her father. Wellcome, who’d been born in a log cabin in Wisconsin, had made a fortune in pharmaceuticals with his company Burroughs Wellcome (now part of GlaxoSmithKline.) They were married in 1901.the marriage was a disaster from the outset. Wellcome was as cold and strict as her father and expected Syrie to be a simple, dutiful wife, traveling with him to remote sites in Europe, rather than the social hubs she craved, while he conducted business or bought arcane medical instruments for his vast collection. Two years later, they had a son, Mountenoy, who is said to have had learning disabilities.Wellcome, who had been strikingly handsome in his youth, as a brutal boor with a walrus mustache and a paunch who had sadistic tendencies in the bedroom. In 1909, while the two were traveling in Ecuador, Wellcome accused Syrie of adultery and they soon separated upon their return to England. It was during this period as a wealthy married woman on her own that Syrie met and fell in love with W. Somerset Maugham, below, who was already a successful playwright on London’s West End. Syrie became pregnant, and Sommerset met her in Rome where she gave birth to a daughter Liza. Wellcome sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery and Maugham , feeling pressured to do the right thing married Syrie in 1917 in New Jersey, even though he was involved in a relationship with Gerald Haxton a man 20 years his junior an emergency Red Cross Volunteer he had met as an ambulance driver .  The relationship was a desperately unhappy one as Maugham was a man that was considered to have married out of obligation, and to hide is homosexuality and they divorced in 1929.

Her new life as a designer began when she and Somerset moved into a Regency mansion at 2 Wyndham Place in Marylebone. She channeled her restless energy into refurbishing the spacious house. When that was completed, she approached her friend, designer Ernest Thornton-Smith at Fortnum’s, asking him to take her on as an unpaid apprentice, something women of her class at that time would never dream of doing. “It quickly became apparent,” Hastings writes, “that Syrie had found her vocation, not only in decor but as a businesswoman, tough, tenacious, and with a keen eye for a bargain.” She’d inherited something of her father’s zealotry, and her ex-husband’s marketing skills, but used these to help the rich improve their lives, rather than the poor.

In 1922, Syrie Maugham opened a shop with capital she borrowed herself. Called Syrie Ltd, at 85 Baker Street, it was stocked with the contents of the Maughams’s previous residence in Regent’s Park. “With the strength of a typhoon,” Cecil Beaton wrote, Syrie “blew all colour before her… turning the world white…White sheepskin rugs were strewn on the eggshell surface floors, huge white sofas were flanked with white crackled-paint tables, white peacock feathers were put in white vases against a white wall.”In 1922, Syrie Maugham opened a shop with capital she borrowed herself. Called Syrie Ltd, at 85 Baker Street, it was stocked with the contents of the Maughams’s previous residence in Regent’s Park. “With the strength of a typhoon,” Cecil Beaton wrote, Syrie “blew all colour before her… turning the world white…White sheepskin rugs were strewn on the eggshell surface floors, huge white sofas were flanked with white crackled-paint tables, white peacock feathers were put in white vases against a white wall.”

Syrie actually first conceived of her innovative all-white decors after visiting the house of Mrs. Ralph Philipson, one of her main investors. The white motif may have been Philipson’s idea, but it was Syrie Maugham who saw its potential. Part of the legend of Syrie Maugham is that she would “pickle” and bleach rare antiques, such as black lacquer Coromandel screens, or valuable Louis Seize pieces, stripping them until they were as pale as sun-blanched bones.this part of her legend is probably apocryphal since Syrie more often than not used period reproductions that gave the same effect, yet generated a sizable profit.

Syrie Maugham room recreated by House Beautiful in exact detail. The wallpaper is now available for sale through

Home of Somerset Maugham in France where he carried on his affair with Gerald Haxton a relationship that lasted for 30 years

 

It was a look that was visionary and inspiring, and soon, contagious. Everyone who was anyone wanted a Syrie Maugham room. Wallis Simpson, Marie Tempest, Mona Williams, Rebecca West, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Tallulah Bankhead all relied on her good taste. Even Belle Poitrine, the star of Little Me (a literary spoof by Patrick Dennis) brags about hiring Syrie. Evelyn Waugh immortalized her as Mrs. Beaver in his 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust.

Syrie Maugham later moved her establishment to Duke Street, then opened satellite shops in New York and Chicago. Along with Elsie de Wolfe, whose style was a bit more theatrical and camp, and Sibyl Colefax, the classic English decorator, Syrie Maugham set new standards for chic. Beaton, a devoted fan, took his pal Stephen Tennant, below, to Syrie’s. The exquisite aesthete was smitten with her plaster-cast palm trees, artful rugs by Marion Dorn, and whimsical ornamentation. He hired her to redo Wilsford, his grand country house, as well as his rooms in London. “She made great use of Regency furniture, often decorated with shell motifs; and Venetian grotto furniture, with its bizarre gilded oyster and barnacle-encrusted rococo forms,” according to Philip Hoare’s biography of Tennant, Serious Pleasures.

 

Look still available in London on Fulham Rd in Chelsea

Clients home with old world feel

Look still available in London on Fulham Rd in Chelsea at Valerie Wade and Pilmblico Rd just around the corner from kings Road where Syrie Maugham lived.

My interpretation of 1920's and 30's simplicity and glamor for clients home

In this clients home I took a nod from Syrie in my colour palatte and my use of mirrored furniture and lush upholstery.

Look still available in London Kings Road where they call Worlds End in Chelsea at an antique shop called Genevieve which has been there for 60 years

Babe Paley in a backdrop of Maugham interior in the 1950's

 

 

 

 

 

Find Your Own Style

At Jane Hall Hall Design my goal is to assist you in finding your decorating style, and bringing beauty into your life. My style could be called Bohemian Chic. I am influenced by the classical design of the past with a modern twist. I produce custom

made lampshades, cushions, drapes and reinvent vintage furniture using European fabics

 

 

Contact me at info@janehalldesign.com to book an appointment in your home or on line via Skype and visit www.janehalldesign.com to view my products

•Note To Readers… For the ultimate viewing experience on my linked web albums, download Cooliris. You will be able to see all your photographs in a moving 3d wall. It’s free and it’s amazing!

 

 

The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. There is no doubt that the British know how to do pageantry better then anyone.

With so many fascinating topics to write about in this endlessly fascinating topic of decorating styles, design history and design icons trying to make a decision on who and what would be the focus of my next post was a challenge, as the more I research the more I am fascinated by the not only what the innovations of the these periods were, but the characters who were intertwined with the creative’s who were creating these glittering lifestyles for them.

Recently with the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middledon, we have had our eyes turned towards England and all things Royal and English style

The King's Speech 2010 Oscar winning film about King George V overcoming speech impediment and becoming the reluctant king.

In the last years both small and large screen have graced us with us with some great stories of English historical drama and what BBC and then PBS then shares with us the period costume drama telling us of the trials and tribulations and idiosyncrasies of life in the British upper classes . The award winning Kings Speech, and the recent updated version of the PBS much beloved Upstairs Downstairs sets, were designed by Eve Stewart, who does a brilliant job in both productions

In the King's Speech the set designer was given the brief of showing Britain in the 1930's. Like the rest of the world it was in deep depression. The therapy room of Bertie's speech therapist showed a crumbling wall that had such texture and colour it was the perfect backdrop for the times and the story.

Working on a small budget in the Kings’ Speech and a short production time she is given the challenge of showing a Britain in a midst of a worldwide depression. The therapy room and the masterful use of the crumbling wall was genius in an otherwise empty space.

Another BBC drama South Riding set in Northern England in 1936 shows the other side of life in England during the 30′s. In episode two during a town planning meeting of building public housing to replace the local slums called “The Shacks”with clean sanitary homes the famous modern architect Corbesiur was mentioned along with the Bauhaus group, as examples of how to build affordable housing.

Upstairs Downstairs set in 1936 tells the story of an aristocratic family living at 165 Eaton Square . The sets were designed by Eve Stewart who also did The King's Speech. Both films use colour as they did back in this time, where it was used to great effect to show off the architecture.

A scene showing a meeting with the future King of England. Eve Stewart has recreated a Art Deco interior of a swanky hotel lobby.

Her work on Upstairs Downstairs does a brilliant job of showing the other side of life in Britain in the 30’s of the upper classes. This generation of wealthy heirs to Britons fortunes and titles were shown in both projects as the caring sensible Elizabeth and slightly fragile and insecure Bertie , compared to the fun loving, self centered and irresponsible David who abdicates the throne to marry a twice divorced American Wallis Simpson.

In real life the famous society photographer would take sensible Elizabeth in hand and transform her from a short rather dowdy woman used to wearing sensible shoes and country tweeds in muddy colours to QUEEN Elizabeth in pretty pastels in clothes designed by dressmaker

The transformation of Queen Elizabeth

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth by Cecil Beaton who would photograph the royal family for 50 years. He had a special relationship with the Queen Mother and kept a scented hankie of hers.

The royal family photographed by Cecil Beaton, shows the young princess's Margret and Elizabeth, and the queen Mom. The middle photograph is a portrait of the Queen Elizabeth , the upper right shows Bertie and Elizabeth before becoming king and queen.

The Royal Family, Bertie and David as children, family portrait of Queen Mary and King George

In fact The Duke and Duchess of Windsor came up as story lines in 3 of current films and series that have been produced. The Kings Speech ( clink on link to hear the real Kings speech), Upstairs Downstairs, and Any Human Heart, indicates a renewed interest in the love and marriage that challenged the foundation of the British Monarchy. None have shown the couple in a particularly flattering light as the royal family raised their first born son to be the future King of England and were stunned that he gave up his duty and obligation to his county for a love a woman thereby putting his own happiness first

The King shocked the nation – already reeling from the King’s scandalous behavior of appearing in the society pages with Mrs. Simpson - by announcing that he planned to marry Mrs. Simpson.

Wallis Simpson and the future king were having a relationship for 3 years before his abdication in 1936

The British people and the government would never have accepted Mrs. Simpson as their queen. Divorced people were not accepted at court, especially ones with two living ex-husbands. Although the King was not forbidden to marry Mrs. Simpson, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin advised him, on religious and political grounds, that he must make a choice between the throne and marrying Mrs. Simpson – or the government would resign.

Early photographs of Wallis Simpson. Her first wedding was to an army man who was said to have been abusive, her second was to a wealthy American in the shipping business. The couple was living in London and were introduced into the right social circles where she met David., future king of England. The photo on the right shows the Simpson's be introduced at court.

Wallis and King Edward's relationship was kept secret by the British press at the request of the Royal family and the government for fear of a constitutional crisis. In America however Wallis made the cover of Time as woman of the year.

Photographs of Wallis Simpson in the 30's. She famously coined the phrase " You can never be too rich or too thin"

By December 1936, King Edward had made his decision. He used his power to expedite Wallis’ divorce from Ernest Simpson [divorces took years back then] then, declared to his kingdom – the United Kingdom, Canada, and India - that it was impossible to carry out his duties “without the help and support of the woman I love,” and gave up the throne. Edward became the only monarch in the history of Great Britain to voluntarily abdicate. Edward’s younger brother, King George VI, then ascended the throne. Edward did marry Wallis and they became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, settling in France until World War II began.

The King would be given the title His Royal Highness The duke of Windsor and 6 months later they would marry. No one from the Royal family would attend the nuptuials. Wallis would have her dress made in Paris by the designer Mainbocher and it was a shade of lavender. White for a third marriage was probably deemed inappropriate. The picture in the upper left shows her in a dress designed by Elsa Scaperelli and the motif was designed by Salvadore Dali. The photographs were taken by Cecil Beaton.They held their wedding ceremony at the Chateau de Cande in Mont, France, the home of Nazi collaborator Charles Bedaux.

7th May 1937: The Duke of Windsor (1894 - 1972) at the Chateau de Conde with Wallis Simpson (1896 - 1986), after their marriage. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Within months, Bedaux had arranged for them to travel to Germany to dine withAdolf Hitler. It was widely believed that Hitler planned to install the Duke back on the British throne after the Germans had conquered England. The Duke was desperate for a kingdom and made no secret of his fondness for fascism.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor are welcomed by Dr. Robert Ley and Nazi officials at Berlin's Friedrickstrasse Station, Berlin.

The city of Paris leased out the property at for a nominal rent. The design house Jansen and the famous American society decorator Elsie de Wolfe would help her decorate it.

Windsors first home in Paris designed by Jansen

They were given the new but hollow titles of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and given an allowance from King George’s personal accounts as the government took him off the royal warrants .  Accustomed to a lifetime of adulation and privilege yet denied a kingdom, the Duke (and the Duchess), set about creating an imaginary realm of their own that would given them the validation they craved as royals. This new kingdom began in Paris surrounded by a  glamorous social set of fashion designers, Nazi sympathizers, American heiresses, British ex-pats, and assorted other idle rich people welcomed the Windsors and became a sort of parallel court for the displaced royals. This French upper-crust group was dubbed ”the Windsor Set.” The press buzzed about them like bees around a hive. All  their comings and goings, designer clothes, fancy homes, and elegant soirees were endlessly photographed and reported in the society columns of the day.

The people who congregated around the Duke and Duchess were dubbed the ”Windsor set.” They were all-consumed with the photographic image. According to Andrew Bolton, the curator of ”Blithe Spirit” [a past costume exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum," “They arranged those lives to suit the lens. Voluntarily estranged from the real aristocracy, the Duke of Windsor, with the aid of his wife, the former Wallis Warfield Simpson, set up a parallel court composed of people like Elsie de Wolfe, the interior decorator and social arbiter; Mona Bismarck, a gorgeous adventuress who was the daughter of a stableman on a Kentucky horse farm; and Daisy Fellowes, whose fortune derived from sewing machines and who had the distinction of being one of the first people on record to alter her nose surgically.”

Book cover of Windsor Style written by Sue Menkes

At the outbreak of the war the government and King George put much thought into what to do With the Duke and Duchess. This subject was the dramatized in the BBC  series of any Human Heart.   A post in Wales was considered but was rejected, and eventually they were sent off to govern the islands of  the Bahama’s  where they felt they would be out of the way. From here they would many trips to Florida and set up a new social set in Palm Beach meeting  America’s version of royalty.

The Windsor's in the Bahama's

The Windsors spent the war years in the Bahama's. I love how they used the British flag for decorative cushions. The Duchess looks positively girlish in this outfit.

The only home they owned after they left England this country home was located 25 minutes outside Paris.outside

The Windsor Style, contents of the Sotheby's auction and John Galiano Fall Collection 2010 inspired by the Duchess

2010 fall collection by John Galiano inspired by the Duchess. This is a photograph from 1934 of what she wore to be presented at court.

During the 1950’s & 60’s, the couple looped constantly around the international social circuit. The duke’s faintly flashy clothes and her severe elegance became fashion standards. When she stopped wearing hats, so did everyone else. Wherever they went, with their large personal staff, mountains of luggage and pet dogs, they were accorded the regal status denied them in Britain. In return they offered the world a romantic fantasy of elegance and wealth.

The Duke and Duchess, the tiny tiny couple, were included on the best dressed list many times. The Duke had a sense of style as refined and sophisticated as the Duchess.

The duke and Duchess's home in Paris featured in Vogue. They returned to Paris after the war and took up residence in a home that was leased. They remained there for over 40 years.

The Duke and Duchess effectively took on the role of minor celebrities and were regarded as part of café society for a time in the 1950s and 1960s. They hosted parties and shuttled between Paris and New York; many of those who met the Windsors socially, including Gore Vidal, reported on the vacuity of the Duke’s conversation. The couple doted on the pug dogs they kept. In June 1953, instead of attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London, the Duke and Duchess watched the ceremony on television in Paris. The Duke said that it was contrary to precedent for a Sovereign or former Sovereign to attend any coronation of another. The Duke was paid to write articles on the ceremony for the Sunday Express and Women’s Home Companion, as well as a short book, The Crown and the People, 1902–1953

Cecil Beaton's portraits of the later years

The Later years 1960's and 70's

After almost 25 years in 1965, when the Duke and Duchess visited London as the Duke required eye surgery, the Queen and Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent visited them. Later, in 1967, the Duke and Duchess joined the Royal Family in London for the unveiling of a plaque by the Queen to commemorate the centenary of Queen Mary’s birth. Both the Queen and Prince Charles visited the Windsors in Paris in the Duke’s later years, the Queen’s visit coming only shortly before the Duke died. the Duchess would hang on for another 15 years and she died alone having lost the ability to speak and having been taken advantage of by her lawyer who manged to get power of attorney.

In a cruel twist of fate, it would be Al Fayed, Dodi Fayed’s and Princess Diana’s companion would take over the lease of the house after her death, and on the evening she died Dodi took her to the house where he had organised the decorating of a nursery. He got the contents of the house with the lease and would put the items that remained up for auction at Sotheby’s and donate it to childrens’ charities.

Items up for auction and the inside of the Duke's closets.

At the end of the day one of the biggest ironies is that in reality Wallis Simpson didn’t want King Edward to abdicate. Academics agree that she ascended a precipice that left her with fewer alternatives than she had anticipated. Somehow she thought that the Establishment could be overcome once [Edward] was king, and she confessed frankly to her Aunt Bessie about her “insatiable ambitions” … Trapped by his flight from responsibility into exactly the role she had sought, suddenly she warned him, in a letter, “You and I can only create disaster together” … she predicted to society hostess Sybil Colefax, “two people will suffer” because of “the workings of a system.”

From the Esoteric Curiosa

I have been immersed for weeks in reading about this amazing creative genius Tony Duquette. He ‘s a kindred spirit, the ultimate  renaissance man. Like myself  during his career he worked in many artistic disciplines. In fact we have so much in common, our mutual love of design inspirations such as the use of  decoration,colour, historical design and global influences , it is quite amazing that until recently I didn’t know he existed. We have both worked in jewelry and fashion design, fine arts with gallery showings, illustration and packaging, mural and hospitality, display, and in interior design, we both custom make and design the products for the client.We view interior design from the perspective of an artist not as a designer. Interiors are magical and the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred.

We even have similar backgrounds , my family also had a  long history of creative talent that began outside my native birth place. My grandfather spent time in Paris after World War 1 with Hemingway and the impressionist artists and started the first advertising school in Australia. My father was an artist and could play piano without reading music and, as my sister can ( she is also an artist) who went on to be a successful ad man in the 60′s and 70′s. My mother studied acting and my other sister had a voice that sounded like Ella Fitzgerald. Her two sons have gone on to be gifed musically, and one now studies at Pratt, and I have a son who is a better artist then myself.

Tony ‘s family was also genetically inclined towards creativity . As he told the LA Times his mothers family were highly educated hippies involved in Pre Rapaelite  Movement in England,and his great uncle had been a partner in the William Morris Studio. “They left England in the late 1800s for the wilds of Canada with their opera glasses and libraries in tow, but the forest fires and Indians there eventually drove them south and they relocated to San Francisco, where the earthquake of 1906 drove them further south again. They arrived in L.A. in 1907, and we lived in a house on Rampart Street until I was 4, when my grandfather died and my father took us back to his hometown of Three Rivers, Michigan, to run the family business.” ( source LA times article April 2 1995)

The family spent time in LA during the winter, and Tony describes his childhood as an imaginative on where his artistic family allowed him the freedom to express his creative spirit. His mother and sisters were all musical. In the 1995 interview he  talks about his childhood in Michigan.

“I’ve always created fantasy worlds,” he continues. “Next to our house in Three Rivers was a vacant lot where I was always staging Chinese coronations or crossing the Great Plains in a covered wagon. I don’t know where that impulse came from, unless it was the stories my family told–the discussions at our house were always about ancient and international things, and I read a great deal as well.”

Tony received two scholarships to prestigious schools to Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Yale School of the Theatre. The design world and schools not unlike today were being swept up in the new modern movement and he  felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. As he puts it:

After graduating from Chouinard he he began working in promotional advertising, creating special environments for the latest seasonal fashions. He also began to free lance for well-known designers such as the legendary William Haines, James Pendleton and Adrian. He tells the story of  making centerpiece displays for a large Hollywood party , which Elsie de Wolfe was attending. She immediately took him under her wing and together they created her home Far Away. She introduced him to the Hollywood movie crowd.

On the verge of the big time, Duquette found his progress interrupted by World War II. He enlisted in the Army in 1941 and was stationed at Ft. McArthur in San Pedro.

“Being in the Army wasn’t traumatic–it was just unbelievably boring,” he recalls. “I’d already sown the seeds for my career by then, so whenever I got a leave I’d rush back to L.A. and do work for the movies. I made screens, chandeliers, furniture, sets, costumes and worked with every material imaginable. I stopped working in movies because they’re no longer doing my kind of thing–no director needs me.”

Leaving the Army in 1945, Duquette toured Europe in 1946 with Elsie de Wolfe helping her restore her beloved Villa Trianon which she had left in 1939 with the invasion of France. It was occupied by the Nazi’s and then by Eisenhower and it was in a terrible state when she returned. As in LA she set about introducing him to her A list contacts which he would continue to do work for years to come.   The next year had his first solo show, at the Mitch Leison Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard. In 1951 he had a one-man show at the Louvre Museum in Paris, which traveled to the L.A. County Museum of Art (then located in Exposition Park) the next year.

While on leave, Duquette also courted Elizabeth Johnstone, whom he’d met while at Chouinard. “She was a marvelous painter,” says Duquette of Johnstone, whom he married in 1949 at Pickfair in a wedding given to them by Mary Pickford. “We became a total team and did everything collaboratively.” They bought Dawnbridge after they married.

In 1954, Duquette bought the space on Robertson Boulevard that was once Norma Talmadge’s studio and now houses the Margo Leavin Gallery. Two years later, he opened a gallery there but quickly discovered that “running a gallery took too much time, so we converted it into a salon where we entertained brilliantly. The Europeans were in L.A. because of the war, and everybody came–Arthur Rubinstein, Aldous Huxley, Jascha Heifetz–all ofthem.

“The art of entertaining as we did then is finished,” adds Duquette of his salon, which closed in 1981. “We spent hours dressing for the evening, but everybody went to that much trouble, so going out was beautiful. It’s now reached the point where you come as you are, get a drink yourself and flop down in a chair. It isn’t fun anymore, and although people are much wealthier now, I don’t think they get as much out of life.”

The year the Duquettes opened their salon, they acquired 175 acres in Malibu and began to develop a fantasy environment they dubbed Sortilegium, which is Latin for “enchantment.” Including 11 structures and several gardens, Sortilegium was a treasure trove of ancient artifacts, (a Venetian gondola, 16th-Century wrought-iron Spanish gates), bits of Hollywood history (a window from Greta Garbo and John Gilbert’s love nest) and original artworks by the Duquettes. Tragically, it all went up in smoke in the Malibu fire of 1993. In fact 3 of his amazing creations would succumb to fire.  His home in San Francisco Cow Hollow, and an amazing abandoned synagogue he  bought in San Francisco “The Duquette Pavilion of Saint Francis,” a tribute to San Francisco’s patron saint composed of massive sculpted angels and jewel-studded mosaic tapestries that were installed in an abandoned synagogue Duquette bought and restored.

Over the 65 years Tony Duquette was in the business of being an artist he achieved amazing things and worked with some of the most recognizable names of the 20th century. He designed for the stage in Broadway were he won a Tony award for his costume design in Camelot. He also worked for the San Francisco ballet and opera company. In film he worked with Vincent Minnelli and is godfather to his daughter Liza. Also in film he worked on Kismet, and Ziegfield Follies, Can Can, Lovely To Look At,Four Horseman, and the Grace Kelly Cary Grant film To Catch A Thief

His residential  interior design included Mary Pickford, David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones, Doris Duke, J Paul Getty, Elizabeth Arden, Mrs Ann Woolworth, James Colburn, Elsie de Wolfe and Billy Haines. On The commercial side he did work for the Original Sands Hotel in Vegas in the 50′s, Pierre hotel in New York, Elizabeth Arden salons internationally, The Dorthy Chandler Music Center, Park Sheraton Hotel in Washington and the Hilton in Honolulu.

Tony’s Dear wife Beggle  passed away in 1995 from Parkinson’s Disease, after a 50 year happy relationship.

Fire is perhaps a curse I’ve been afflicted with,” said Duquette in 1995, “There’s absolutely nothing left in Malibu. At first I couldn’t face it, and trying to save some of the It’s a hideous thing. In fact, it was the fire in San Francisco that first prompted me to start making jewelry. So it was in that last decade that he created in collaborated with his partner Hutton Wilkinson,  although he worked in the medium throughout his 65 year career in the decorative arts.

In an introduction to the first book on Tony Duquette, fashion designer John Galliano, quotes Diana Vreeland’s famous dictum, “Never fear being vulgar, just boring.” In actuality, Duquette was neither—he was a modernist visionary with an insatiable curiosity, an extraordinary eye (he likened himself to the phoenix, “the bird of one thousand eyes”), and an uncanny knack for almost divine juxtaposition. In a lecture titled “The Enchanted Vision” delivered at UCLA in the early 1970s, he cites a simple object from nature, a starfish: “Add a precious stone, and viewed truly it becomes the natural object it really is and effortlessly subordinates itself to what Blake has called the ‘cosmos of the shell.’”

Almost all his jewels (he called them talismans) contained an alluring combination of the precious and the humble. Duquette says he found magic in shells, antlers, feathers, “the carapace of turtles,” and “the skins of lizards and snakes and leopards,” just to name a few. He felt that a “piece of rock crystal” (which he used a lot) had as much “serenity as the lotus palmed hand of Buddha.” But he used no material as much as the sublime emerald green malachite. His printed cotton malachite fabric is now available from Jim Thompson fabrics; the Duquette company sells consoles covered in the stuff and much of the jewelry still incorporates it into objects He abhorred “lifeless traditional symmetrical arrangement,” which he found “dead in its perfection.”

Tony passed away in 1999 from congenial heart failure. He passed his legacy on to his trusted friend and business and business partner of 30 years Hutton Wilkinson who has kept his legacy alive. He has published two books on his life, the latest being More Is More. He  has restored Dawnbridge to its original glory  filling it with Tony and Beggles original works, and now recreates many of those magical evenings that were held at the Studio in its it glory days. There are now licences of some of  Tony’s iconic pieces with Baker Furniture,  a line of fabric for Jim Thomspson, and line of fine jewelry. More importantly he keeps Tony’s and Beegles ‘s memories alive by sharing his stories about them.

Six months before he died Tony was featured in the New York Times Style section. In fact in my research he was written up four times over the decades. What was written in 1999 I believe still holds true today and in fact held true when he was art school in the 1930′s. I came across this sentiments over and over again when reading about the great Tony Duquette and the people he has inspired. This  is quote from that article.

Not long ago, a French television crew came to Los Angeles to do a segment on contemporary local designers and architects. They found a bunch of of midcentury modern types, who practiced a stark minimalism, and they found Tony Duquette, who practiced whatever it is that’s on the opposite pole of the planet from that. Or, as Duquette put it when told who else was in the segment, ”the other side of the forest.”

The other side of the forest is what fashion and home design need right now. When a Banana Republic catalogue starts to look like the trendy, vacuous pages of Wallpaper, and Club Monaco is indistinguishable from Prada, you know it’s time for high style to move on. And some of the most influential designers and decorators are looking to an 84-year-old wizard named Tony Duquette to lead them to a less chilly and more mischievous place, beyond bare walls and blank canvases.Designers wishing to be modern can learn a lot from Duquette. Just take a look at the rich looking ”Chinese” screen in the background of one of the Gucci ads. It is made from those brightly colored baskets that hot dogs are served in, and it is a perfect reflection of Ford’s new vision for Gucci: flash and trash made into high culture. Ford says that Duquette has the ability to see beauty in everything, ”to look at a piece of junk and turn it into a Chinese pagoda. And he’s got an amazing sense of color and pattern. He’s the Christian Lacroix of decorating.”What makes Duquette the first designer for the 21st century is his ability to reimagine, recycle and regenerate. It’s the prototype for how people will have to approach design in the future. ( source New York Times )

To sum it up we need more designers with the hearts of artists like Tony Duquette.