The Decorators Club Lecture Series

Several of my New York friends are involved in the Decorators Club and each year, they host a series of lectures on the decorative arts. In fact, I saw Mitchell Owen speak on Ruby Ross Wood last year and it was excellent. Click here. I recently got the notice of their Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 lectures and they’re great!

The upcoming series celebrates four 20^th century creative talents who illustrated that design knows no bounds in “All the World’s a Stage…” in IV Acts

Schedule of Lectures:

Wednesday, November 5, 2014    Joseph Urban: Architect of Dreams

Joseph Urban (1872-1933) was one of the most creative and prolific architects and designers of the early twentieth century.  He received his first architectural commission at age 19 when he was selected to design the new wing of the Abdin Palace in Cairo and designed buildings around the world from Esterhazy Castle in Hungary to Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. His work includes nearly two decades of spectacular Ziegfeld Follies productions, opulent sets for fifty-three Metropolitan Opera productions, Hollywood film design, hotel, nightclub, department store design, and book illustration.

John Loring is Design Director Emeritus of Tiffany & Co. after serving as its design director for thirty years. He is the author of twenty-two books on art and design including Joseph Urban (Harry N. Abrams, 2010).

Wednesday, November 12, 2014   Oliver Messel: In the Theater of Design

Oliver Messel (1904–1978) was one of England’s foremost designers of the twentieth century whose work spanned the worlds of stage design, film, and architecture. Born into a creative family of wealthy bankers, his career began in 1925 designing for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Romanticism and eccentricity were hallmarks of Messel’s style. His sets were famed for their exquisite delicacy, impossible detail, subtlety of color, and inventive use of materials. From the 1930s to the postwar period, Messel explored the fields of interior design and architecture, eventually designing numerous houses built on the islands of Mustique and Barbados for the jet set of the 1960s and ‘70s, among them Antony Armstrong-Jones (Earl of Snowdon) and Princess Margaret.

Thomas Messel is the nephew of Oliver Messel and an acclaimed furniture designer. Messel edited Oliver Messel: In the Theatre of Design (Rizzoli, 2011), winner of the 2012 Spear’s Book Award.

Wednesday April 8, 2015   Christian Bérard, Artist, Set Designer and Fashion Illustrator

Christian “Bébé” Bérard (1902-1949) was an artist and designer at Paris’ epicenter of stage, fashion, and café society in the 1930s and 40s.  He invented sets and costumes for plays, movies and ballets for the Ballets Russes, Jean Cocteau (notably La Belle at La Bête), Jean Genet, and others. His fashion illustrations were featured in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and inspired the couture collections of designers including Christian Dior, Elsa Schiaparelli and Nina Ricci. Bérard experimented with textile design and interior decoration (collaborating with Jean-Michel Frank and a devotee of Madeleine Castaing).

Jared Goss is an independent scholar and former associate curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum Of Art.  He is the author of French Art Deco (Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2014).

Wednesday, April 29, 2015   Tony Duquette: More is More

Tony Duquette (1914–1999) was an American artist and design legend known for his over-the-top style in interiors, jewelry, costumes, and set design. His clients included Elizabeth Arden, the Duchess of Windsor, and Herb Albert.  The multi-talented Duquette designed sets for MGM musicals with Arthur Freed and Vincente Minnelli, and designed Tony Award–winning costumes for the original Broadway production of “Camelot” and was the first American to exhibit a one-man show at the Louvre in Paris.  Wilkinson will discuss Tony Duquette’s personal design philosophy and the artistic credo that inspired him to create his fanciful artwork, sculptures, jewelry, gardens and interiors.

Hutton Wilkinson is the owner, creative director and president of Tony Duquette Inc. where he continues the jewelry, interior design, and home furnishings business begun by Tony Duquette. He is the co-author of Tony Duquette (Abrams, 2007) and the author of More Is More: Tony Duquette (Abrams, 2009) and Tony Duquette Jewelry (Abrams, 2011).

 

To Order Tickets: www.thedecoratorsclub.com

The Decorators Club Education Fund, Inc. was established in 1960 to support interior design education. The fund sponsors an annual portfolio competition for students in six colleges in the New York metropolitan area that offer BFA programs in Interior Design. Awards in the form of monetary grants are made possible by proceeds from these lectures and the generous support of corporate sponsors, members, friends, and colleagues.