I have always believed that the more educated the clients are, the easier they are to work with. Clients with a knowledge of decorating, and an ability to articulate what they want from the finished project, make the designer's job easier.
It is general knowledge for anyone interested in color that subdued value, intensity and hue make for quieter, less adventuresome interiors. Stronger approaches need stronger knowledge, more experience and flair.
You don't have to know anything about a subject as long as you use common sense and imagination, plus enthusiasm! I use all periods of design in my work, for, after all, decorative styles are simply indications of a manner of living.
Even if it's not a style of architecture or period you like, a decorator has to have a feel for a house's personality and try not to fight against it. I like to get the juice out of a house and not spoil it.
Decorators should always remember that letting a client see too many beautiful things is a pitfall.
Birds are so much wiser than we! A robin builds a nest for robins. A seagull builds a nest for seagulls. They don't copy each other - or build themselves nests as described in The Birds' Decorating Magazine.
Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.
The first 10 years of my professional life had only to do with running away from my father. He was a wonderful cabinet-maker, and me being the eldest son, I had to take over his shop, his profession and so on and so on. I tried to escape by going to art school and then going on to industrial design and then interior design.
I suppose the most marked example of color as structure is in the Byzantine use of mosaic decoration that becomes architecture. The decoration of the interiors so related to the form that they fuse. In less elaborate interior design this is always the ideal approach to color - used not only as just color alone.
You can't take it with you. There are no pockets in a shroud.
Too many bright colors make for congestion. Too many bright colors need, above all, contrast in value, to eliminate vibration.
Rich colors are typical of a rich nature.
You just can't beat slip covers for giving that friendly air hospitals need so desperately.
The combination of an individual[i.e., a client] with a positive idea of living and a good designer is the great force in contemporary decoration. I don't care how good the designer is, I am sure that he [or she] would rahter have a person with definite ideas rahter than have to work with a negative figure as a client.
If i were asked to say what is at once the most important production of Art and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, A beautiful House.
...If our houses, or clothes, our household furniture and utensils are not works of art, they are either wretched makeshifts, or, what is worse, degrading shams of better things.
....the designer must be able to see - make a concentrated effort to absorb the essence of the project. Seeing is a very difficult thing to do. Most people "look" at a lot of thing but never "see" anything. Looking is emotional; seeing is an intellectual process.
Decoration can be a state of mind, an unusual perception, a ritual whisper.
When I began designing machines I also began to think that these objects, which sit next to each other and around people, can influence not only physical conditions but also emotions. They can touch the nerves, the blood, the muscles, the eyes and the moods of people.
Decorating in relation to hotels is really nothing more than planned showmanship or the art of attracting attention in a delightful way and thus creating an increased consumer acceptance. It gives the guest the feeling of anticipation, excitement, expectancy, delight, and pride in the management of his favorit hotel.
The cardinal virtue of all beauty is restraint.
I've lived too long and I've lived too well.
...there is no doubt something will be done sooner or later to enable us to put on a house every day, just as we put on clothes or choose a book to read or a theater to go to, like choosing a day to be lived, within the limits grated by other destinies or chances.
A lot of my ideas come from McNally Jackson bookstore. One of my favorite things to do is just go there and look through architecture books and interior design books. Something about the aesthetics of space and beautiful images works with my brain.
It wasn't that I had any great dream of being an architect. I just wanted to make things. Whether it was furniture, painting, interior design, or architecture. I just wanted to create something.
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