Happy World Interiors Day 2023!

I will be celebrating World Interiors Day this Saturday, May 27, 2023, which is an event sponsored by IFI (The International Federation of Interior Architects/ Designers).

This year's theme is "Sustainability, Design & Beauty." And the IFI website says of the theme:

IFI invites you to explore “Sustainability, Design & Beauty” and to share with your colleagues and the world what this theme means to you as a design advocate and enthusiast. Let’s demonstrate how we deliver supportable beauty and vitality to the spaces and environments in our unique contexts and communities.

Working with an interior designer can greatly improve the experience of your home, how you live in it, and ultimately the value of your space. Life is so much better if you love where you live!

Interior designers can help with:
* Floor plans
* Space planning
* Color palette
* Paint selection
* Lighting selection and design
* Furniture and furnishings selection
* Art selection and placement
* Bath and kitchen remodels

In my own practice, I can help with any or all of these steps. If you have unlimited time and patience, you could tackle some of these yourself, but why bother when an educated, knowledgeable professional can save you time and heartache (and heartburn). But most importantly, an interior designer can save you money by helping you to avoid mistakes that would be costly to amend, fix, or do over, which is especially true with kitchen and bathroom remodels. It is not as easy as it looks on HGTV! Trust me.

I am an advocate for my clients, introducing them to products and materials that they might not otherwise know of. I can help to expand design sensibilities into new, exciting areas. And I can bring to the project advantageous relationships with vendors, suppliers, and tradespeople that clients normally would not have.

If you have been a fan of design but have never worked with an interior designer before, or if you have been thinking of perhaps working with an interior designer on a possible project in your home, or if you have started a project on your own but can't quite seem to finish it, I encourage you to contact me. I can help to greatly enhance your home and your life in it with thoughtful design. My business motto is, "Shape your home, shape your surroundings, shape your life."

Click on my business logo to the right to see my website, my portfolio, and to contact me!
Happy designing!

Legends of Design: Dorothy Draper

Who was the first interior designer in the United States? An intriguing question indeed, since there seems to be two answers...

In a previous post here, I wrote about a woman named Elsie de Wolfe who is considered to be the mother of Interior Design as a profession. Born in 1865 (although her Wiki page wonders if she was born in 1859), de Wolfe had many society friends who admired her work in her own home and asked for her services to brighten and refresh their own spaces. But it wasn't until 1905 that de Wolfe became known as a true, professional interior designer when famed New York City architect Stanford White was designing The Colony Club, a women's socialite club on Madison Avenue started by suffragettes, and brought de Wolfe in to design the interior spaces. Based on that success, she opened up her design studio on 5th Avenue.

However, a few years later, another driving force in Interior Design arrived in the form of one Dorothy Draper. She was born into the wealthy Tuckerman family in Tuxedo Park, NY in 1889 who divided time between three homes--a mansion in Tuxedo Park, a Manhattan townhouse, and a summer cottage in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as traveling to Europe for summers. Her class and milieu certainly formed her taste and in a 2006 New York Times article about Draper, Donald Albrecht, the curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York, said her "background not only provided Draper with a valuable network of clients and an innate sense of entitlement and authority, but also offered her a first-hand acquaintance with the historical styles that she would freely interpret and transform."

Dorothy married George Draper in 1912 and began decorating a series of homes they bought and sold. Much like de Wolfe, her socialite friends saw and admired what she was creating and sought her out to design their own homes. And in 1925, she opened up what is considered the first official Interior Design business in the United States, the Architectural Clearing House. Four years and many successful renovations later, she changed the name of the firm to Dorothy Draper and Company.

She championed a very specific aesthetic that was a blend of elements from Louis XIV, the wild ornamentation of Rococo, and a bit of neoclassicism from Louis XVI with contemporaneous elements and silhouettes from the 1920s. Her favorite color palette of red, green, powder blue, and yellow was offset by her penchant for cabbage-rose chintz, bamboo trellis and cabana stripe prints, palm frond wallcoverings, and black & white checked flooring. Her maximalist style came to be known as "Modern Baroque," or "Hollywood Regency" which can be seen in films from the 1920s all the way up to the 1950s. Her style can also be directly traced to the work of current designers like Kelly Wearstler and Johnathan Adler.

Draper's most famous project remains The Greenbrier, a massive resort in West Virginia dating from 1858 (!), that still prominently features her design sensibility. Draper was retained in 1946 to refresh and redecorate the resort, mingling her Modern Baroque flair with a Federalist style appropriate to the area. And while there have been changes over the years, the facility has not abandoned the original candy-colored schemes and details. Dorothy Draper is there in bright, full spirit. You can stay at The Greenbrier and see Draper's iconic work for yourself. Visit their site for information.
All following photos from The Greenbrier.

In 1964, Dorothy Draper sold her company to designer Carleton Varney who had worked closely with Draper for four years. He faithfully continued the legacy and style of Draper until his death in 2022 but Dorothy Draper and Company is still in operation.

Happy designing!