Emily Nedell Tuck

Last summer (2023), I decided to take an online “Fundamentals of Interior Design” class at Houston Community College, just to see where things might lead.

Admittedly, it wasn’t entirely out of the blue. Forty years ago, I started out my academic career as an undeclared Interior Design major at The University of Texas, but due to some kind of accreditation snafu, the program morphed into “Interior Architecture,” where it remains today–everywhere in the US (Interior Design means something different in the UK). It seemed more like an architectural specialty, and I wasn’t even sure who hired Interior Architects. Couldn’t a licensed architect also do interior architecture? Who would be interested in hiring quasi architects? It didn’t make sense to me. It also seemed dry, with the things I loved now trivialized by the new program as mere “decoration,” rather than a vital part of our visual culture and also a source of pleasure. But it was what it was then, just as it still is today: “Interior Design” is not what people think it is, and it shares that in common with the Master’s in Library Science, the degree I currently possess. Interior Design today is architecture, space planning, sustainability, CAD, building systems and codes, with a small amount of what people think of when they hear “interior design.”

I was still going to do it, though.

However, when I shared the change and my future plans in order to secure the necessary approvals to move from undeclared to an Interior Architecture, my older-than-average father protested. “Architecture is a man’s world!” my father insisted. “Trust me, Emmy, you will never get ahead in that field! It’s not for you.” How about Interior Design? I was kinda going for that, well, at least initially . . . ” I hedged. “Oh forget it!” he said, exasperated and shocked at my naivete. “That is worse! Interior design is a gay man’s world, and you will never get ahead there, either!”

“It’s not for you” was among my parents’ favorite expressions when the answer was no, but they couldn’t explain to me why not in a way that I would ever agree with or accept. (“Can I have an electric guitar?” was another “It’s not for you.” Can I go to Camp Longhorn? Another “not for you.”) However the reader may feel about “Interior Design” or “Interior Architecture” as viable major for a promising AP / Honors student, it wasn’t completely impractical in my situation. I could draw remarkably well then, and having been raised on Dover books, dollhouses, Town & Country, Vanity Fair and Sotheby auction catalogs, I already had an exceptional knowledge of art, architecture, historic interiors, pattern and antiques upon entering college at 17. 

Apart from magazines and my cherished Dover books, my art history education came from checking out library books and copying the paintings, or else studying the interiors to make furnishings for my period rooms (I made a Golden Dawn / masonic temple out of a wine crate, my favorite). At the time I was pursuing ID at UT, my father happened to own three high-end custom drapery stores which he had initially hoped to franchise, just as he had done with muffler shops. But design trends, fabrics and fashion were definitely not his thing. Dad was more a Hemingway kind of guy, dogs and fishing. He couldn’t tell a black from a brown sock. I don’t know why he ever got into draperies except to keep his close-to-my-age girlfriend entertained. I secretly hoped he was going to leave at least one those drapery stores to me, his artistic and creative daughter, whose passion since childhood was making period vignettes, crafting miniature furniture, drawing and decorating period dollhouses. 

At UT, I aced my Architecture survey courses and “History of Furniture.” I could tell you the likely provenance of any antique chair. 

That year, or shortly thereafter, he gave the failing businesses to my eldest sister and her husband. He said he gave the business to them because they both “studied Business” at UT, and they would know better how to run a drapery store than someone “like me” who studied Liberal Arts. For my fashionable older sister and her talented husband (and his very creative, personable, very artistically-gifted father), it all worked out very well, and it became a launching point for other, even more lucrative ventures in window treatments and home decor long before custom draperies were no longer fashionable. Whenever I returned to Houston, I would sometimes hang out in the backroom of the drapery store and peruse sample books at leisure–Robert Allen was my favorite–and take discontinued books home for dollhouse and other projects. But the opulence of the early 80s would give way to a new austerity, part the bad economy, part big box retail licensing strategies, part online shopping (retail apocalypse), part chromophobia (anxiety going with anything other than black, white, beige or gray) and part the forces of commodification: fast fashion dominating home goods. For whatever reason, drapery and wallpaper stores, as with dollhouse stores, are almost gone from the United States. Even JCPenney’s discontinued custom draperies years ago, opting to use the floor space for mattresses. Without stores to educate and inspire consumers, to show them what is possible and create value, the customers for these goods are unlikely to ever return. Demand falls off permanently and material culture declines. And so it goes, just as the materially rich Mycenaeans, New Kingdom Egyptians and other advanced civilizations fell into a Dark Ages (“Late Bronze Age Collapse”) for no explicable reason. By the time of Homer, great wedding gifts were: a cooking cauldron and tripod, a comb, a mixing bowl, a drinking cup. . .  some goats. . . . reading the Iliad, you get the impression that these people just didn’t have a lot of stuff. (All those decorative artifacts Schliemann excavated from Homeric Troy, which he declared “Priam’s Treasure,” were from 1,000 years before Homer’s time.)

My mother’s once thriving advertising agency, the only one in greater Houston, which had just moved uptown into the art deco Transco Tower, closed around the same time due to Houston’s oil crash, which is also when most of Houston’s landmark establishments also closed. Her original Alphonse Mucha (I loved that piece!) and her other art went to my older sisters or were sold at auction, just as they had been acquired; but I was away at school and fairly insulated from the changes that were happening at home. By the time I graduated from college, or maybe it was graduate school–it all runs together in my mind at this point, like looking though a keyhole–there was nothing left of home. 

No impressionist art, no rugs, no antiques, no home to return to. My drawing pads, my paintings, my journals from living with a family in England at 16 and traveling through India at 17, my dollhouses and room boxes–my books–everything was lost, except for a very thick file of photos of smooth fox terriers, other people’s dogs, which my father kept locked in a mahogany Louis XVI style writing desk in order to study bloodlines and plan potential matches. After the death of my mother–really bad timing for me, for that morning I was interviewing for a faculty Cataloger position (my “Latin & Greek were a plus”) at Bryn Mawr College–I don’t know why they could not have told me after the interview–I flew home and made a small pile of things I wanted from the house, my stuff, nothing of monetary value; but all of my things were discarded anyway. Everyone was too busy with their adult lives to be bothered. I was completely unaware I was entitled to certain things of value, like that magnificent writing desk. But I was the youngest and didn’t own a house or anything. What would I do with furniture, art or household “stuff?” They said it wasn’t appropriate for me; it did not fit my lifestyle. The jewelry which came my way were, as they predicted, just pawned off at a fraction of their value. But I needed to pay tuition another semester (“Why didn’t you auction them at Sotheby’s,” my sister asked, disgusted at my lack of business acumen).

When my father passed fifteen years later, I took his file of show dog photos and beautiful old pedigrees. By then he had sold the antique desk for money to live on, even though it was technically mine, and there was absolutely nothing but an empty apartment, couch and bed. After his heart transplant, he went blind, so he had no use for nice things. Last year, when I was 58, because I had no family photos, I was surprised when my sister sent me a photo of my mother standing in the kitchen with me in the foreground, before everything collapsed.

Wow! I didn’t remember that we had Morris’ “The Strawberry Thief” for window treatments over the sink! How could I have forgotten that? I was blurry, but the shades looked really crisp and great. I loved the juxtaposition of the traditional with modern to create a sense of warmth. 

At the end of “Fundamentals of Interior Design,” students are given two design challenges (one client per week) where they must design from scratch two master bedroom suites for two clients.

It is kind of fun, you know, to the extent that you are given a prospectus (one paragraph description) of each client and their needs, and then you knock yourself out for one week to search for each and every item to go into the room(s), from flooring to faux beams to window treatments and wallcoverings, faucets and fixtures, vanities and sinks, and put it all together into a PowerPoint.

Every surface in the room must be accounted for, just like when I was making room boxes out of wine crates.

In class, everything you come up with MUST be a real product capable of actually being sourced. If you have a vision, but you cannot translate that vision into saleable products and services to make your vision reality, too bad! It’s a lot of searching for products online, which is, I suppose, an important part of what an ID ends up doing, after they take 60 hours of Technical Drawing, Architectural Drafting, Rendering, AutoCAD, Revit, Sketchup, Lighting, Costing, Presentation Drawing, Kitchen and Bath, Textiles, and Professional Ethics for Designers, apprentice under someone and pass the NCIDQ exam. It isn’t all sitting around making mood boards.

It is a lot like being a research librarian, in fact, which I already am, or have been. It is a lot like decorating dollhouses, which I still do.

I can do this! And better, much better, than my young peers.

My first client, Ryan Humphrey, wanted a bedroom suite (“suite” means it includes a master bath). He “collects vintage cadillacs and leans toward modern.” He races cars for a hobby. Mid-century modern was the obvious choice for Mr. H, a “confirmed bachelor,” but I mixed it up with modern Italian, a sturdy Nella Vetrina leather storage bed, so it didn’t look like a period room or too matchy.

I hypothetically acquired a few original but impeccably restored pieces off of 1st Dibs, including a low boy and Adrian Pearsall chairs, whose authenticity a collector like Mr. Humphrey would surely appreciate, as they were made around the same year as his vintage cadillacs. I also found some retro mid-century modern wallpaper, which was really not easy because even today, the major wallpaper design houses are British, and MCM was strictly an American design phenomenon. (The Euro equivalent of MCM is “Scandinavian design.”) Chevron tile in the bathroom echoed the cadillac logo and its vintage upholstery. I hit all the points for that project. 

My second clients in week 2 of the design challenge were Cindy & Rita Davidson, “two women expecting a baby,” same last name, so I inferred they were a lesbian couple in need of bedroom suite. It had to be “functional and relaxing.” There were other parameters involved with that one. . . they each have their own sleep and work schedules (clue: the space had to be designed for each to wake and dress without disturbing the other, so task lighting and a walk-in closet). The bedroom was outfitted with pocket doors and a bump out (I put them there, it wasn’t part of the specs) which could be used for a nursery and a home office. The couple like to travel. Not sure to where and I couldn’t ask them.

I chose an eclectic Southwest theme for them, finding a wonderful “Los Rios” fabric from RM COCO to use as the basis for the color palette and I spun everything off of that; plus a pinky “mink” color that is feminine, but not too feminine. They also got a corner fireplace and zellige tiles in the bathroom. . . a walk in closet, for two women would have a lot of clothes. . . a chandelier over the bathtub . . . glider rocking chair. . . art on the walls. I really got into it, probably crossing the line from interior design into decoration.

Putting it all together using PowerPoint was fun. As one moves up in the ID program, one learns software techniques for rendering which will be better than Power Point for project boards and making virtual rooms.

Now, the very first assignment in ID (we had less than one week to do this, but I had 2.5 days because I signed up late for the class) is to make a collage to explain “who you are as a designer.” I created this composite based on images I already had on my computer, things I had downloaded because I liked them or some aspect of them. I dragged them over to PowerPoint and voila! Assignment done.

and this:

But she didn’t like mine, particularly. She said (ouch!) it wasn’t enough of “me,” of who I am. Oh, but it is totally me! Ask anyone who knows me!

She deducted 10 points for its “not being me.” It was absurd. I disliked her already and it was only my first week of class.

The truth is, as time went and I got to see what she liked, I also think she saw my passion for tradition and historic decoration as irresponsible, and opposed to her spare aesthetic of “sustainability,” which I associate in my mind with Western cultural decline and slipping into a new Dark Ages. Who wants to live in a container or pod? An old friend of mine in Dallas would be quick to call it “Cultural Marxism.” Interestingly, though, Cultural Marxists (like Bernie Sanders or Robert Reich) I am sure would would blame “post-capitalism” and greed for the sorry state of things today. 

I like American and British Arts and Crafts, Glasgow School, Art Nouveau, and Vienna Secession. . . Roycrofters . . . . Greene and Greene. Whistler’s Peacock Room. Stuff like that. I like Edwardian-style. . . . C. F. A. Voysey. I like antiques, dark walls, natural wood grains, jewel tones, moody spaces, tonalist painting, rich interior fabrics and wallpaper. Chocolate, teal and mink. Purples and golds (my husband calls them “Methodist church colors”), olives and its complementary coral oranges; velvets and roughened silk. I like GP&J Baker and British-inspired designs. I love the organicism and nouveau vibes of the 70s.

“How do you buy a French chateau and hang grommet top draperies?” I overhead myself saying in a nasally tone to my best friend a few weeks ago. I despise grommet top drapes, but I suppose I sounded fairly obnoxious saying so. 

In design school, one must suck up criticism. It’s part of the design process. In the end, I made an A in the class, but I had to watch a movie on global warming and write an essay on sustainable design to get that A.

In my retirement, or next career, whichever comes first, I would really like do so something more creative than be a librarian.

It isn’t that I do not like being a librarian per se, but the academic library I knew and loved is mostly gone, and it fills me with anguish to see it so diminished. It was a beautiful thing, the work of many hands, with the collection embodying cultural knowledge, community interests and intellectual achievement, the best of the best. You see, the whole of the academic library at most schools, even very large ones, can now be reduced to a web page with links to subscription databases each year, prefixed by a Google-like search box we call “discovery.” And even discovery is not as customizable as it once was. It is a subscription index fed by subscriptions, scholarly database publishers and aggregators. It’s a black box, only white. Colorless, uninspired and uninspiring, just like the rest of the vacuous spaces being built (at fantastic public expense, I might add) as “new” libraries. The new library has all the appeal of a Staples store. We are even encouraged to say, “Welcome in!” when someone enters the building, intruding on their thoughts. The library doesn’t project the right mood or atmosphere. It does not inspire academic intimacy. It is just a building “about” its own progressive design. It’s awful. Nothing of interest meets the eye in these monotonous, pretentious spaces.

Sadly, we must embrace this new reality of the invisible library, this Emperor’s New Clothes, as progress in the field or be accused of “failing to evolve,” even if we object on perfectly reasonable grounds as to what we are evolving to. I have done both library technical services and public services, but either way, academic libraries have become thoroughly commodified by architects and vendors.

For thirty years, I have ridden the wave of automation in libraries and museums. I have even been a museum curator. But I am not seeing too many waves these days. All I see are hospitals and clinics springing up all over all around me, and freeways and cars going nowhere. I have no idea why the traffic here in Houston is so bad. The more freeways they build, the worse it gets. Where is everyone going? Probably to their second jobs, my husband offered.

However, I was very pleased and surprised to discover, when I took my husband to the new UTMB hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery, that UTMB has pretty good taste in art. Throughout their new hospital, they have reproduced the paintings of Galveston artist Rene Wiley and painted the walls to enhance the experience of the art, just like museums do. I wandered the entire hospital admiring the art, hunting for more and more Rene Wiley pieces. I even took one son on a gallery walk around the hospital and he too was impressed with the decor. UTMB’s medical offices also have surprisingly good art, too. I recognized reproductions of the work of commercial artist, Norman Wyatt Jr, at my own doctor’s office. Well done, UTMB! I could do that job, buying art for hospitals and doctor’s offices. 

I got my MLIS degree before the Internet, more than a decade Before Google. My expertise was in metadata, special collections, historic prints and descriptive bibliography. English Lit. Art History. Rare books. Also Unix. Also Perl. C++, too. VB and VBA. JavaScript. Latin and Ancient Greek. I have a collection of rare books which I acquired back in the day, and a large classics library consisting of discards from academic libraries who no longer teach Classics. I have of a bookcase dedicated to New Testament Greek, and two books just on Greek verb tenses (one is specifically on The Greek Participle). One amazing thing about ancient languages, and counterintuitive, is that they have far more words in their lexicon than we moderns do, even though, of course, we have many more things than they ever did or could imagine. They have words for abstract concepts and emotional states (and reflected light) which we lack. They also have more verb tenses, if you can imagine that. It is a deep and poetic language. Very strangely, the words can be in any order in a sentence and a sentence in Greek is long, really long. It is like some alien language, no fixed word order. To decode it, one must find the verb, then the subject, then tackle phrases and dependent clauses, working backwards like a puzzle. The founding fathers wrote really, really long sentences, called “long periods,” to emulate the convoluted and complex sentences of the ancient Greeks, where a sentence really was a complete thought in every which way. In contrast to Greek, Latin is more compact, epigrammatic, good for chiseling in stone. So many words and concepts from Greek, even from Latin, have faded away. The world comes to us through language, and if the word no longer exists, can the thought? 

In library school, I specialized in descriptive bibliography, aka “Cataloging.” Essentially, cataloging seeks to preserve to preserve knowledge for the future by establishing a permanent record for an intellectual / cultural object, to let people know of its existence, its context and significance. Museums have a similar, but less descriptive record which is called a “tombstone record” (as in, what basic information is preserved on a tombstone). A number of years ago, the Getty Research Institute (Art & Architecture Thesaurus) tried to promote a new descriptive cataloging standard for art museums, which would also necessarily make their vocabularies more purposeful. 

Descriptive bibliography is describing a cultural or intellectual object according to a formal set of rules and with an eye to fitting the object into to the larger cultural or intellectual context. In academic libraries, the objective of cataloging is not just to make the item discoverable (accessibility was part of it), but to describe its contents succinctly and in such a way that knowledge might be preserved, appreciated and known by others, especially by other scholars and educated people. To me, descriptive bibliography and librarianship are inseparable, and always will be. These days, catalogers are thought no longer needed by universities and most have been let go, even though they were often the smartest and most interesting people in the library, even the whole university (depending on the school, of course).

They may not always have had advanced degrees, but they read and knew things, more so than other types of librarians who feel they cannot read on the job. Catalogers really never had that problem. They had to “read the book” to catalog it, right? Every single item had passed through the cataloger’s hands. They were the masons, the bricklayers, of the library world. It wasn’t serendipitous discovery or higher power which enabled the patron to find that item on the shelves, it was the work of a librarian.

The organization and representation of knowledge and culture was once held to be vital to our sacred mission as academic librarians. I took that culture-bearing, knowledge-preserving mission very seriously. I also studied computing to customize library systems and develop websites. Through collection development, organization and display, the library was the mouthpiece for the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age, the collective unconscious which gives rise to culture. Culture is always a collective. We once organized knowledge into collections so culture could be experienced and knowledge could become known.

Now, presumably, no one is needed to organize anything for anyone else because we have search engines. And despite our best efforts to preserve texts and the records of them, the books are all gone. They are not online either, as many people assume. 

They are all at my house, because I took them home when my library got rid of them.

I was forced to weed about 300,000 titles in the name of progress, which is the librarian’s Baatan Death March. Once my comprehensive academic library only wanted to preserve “what was needed” to support its programs, I knew it was all over. A “learning center” has no need for library professionals or educated people to work in them.

I brought home books on the history of interiors and design, art and art history, including some beautifully illustrated books with engravings and chromolithographs for plates. I have collected books on illustration and art as long as I can remember, drawing from the pages. Architects who became successful illustrators and artists have a place of honor on my shelves. Many designed textiles, wallpaper and furniture.

I am also fastidious in my own way, just like an ID. I recently ordered two Hinkley light fixtures and was bitterly disappointed, just as any real interior designer would be. I want my antiqued bronze fixtures to look like antiqued bronze, not black. Black is not “antique bronze.” Is bronze the new black? No! I told Hinkley so, that their descriptions of color online are misleading, but I kept the black light fixtures out of sheer practicality, meaning I liked them better than anything at Lowe’s or Home Depot. 

No, despite losing major points on my design projects, I think I would really make an excellent ID. I know the difference between “ecru,” “taupe” and “beige.”

I used to be a whiz at furniture provenance (as mentioned, I took a “Furniture Appreciation” course in my first semester at The University of Texas in 1979, but my years of dollhouses and Dover books gave me a real leg up in that class). I am a walking Grammar of Ornament, another Dover book I own, along with Speltz’s The Styles of Ornament, and Projective Ornament by Claude Bragdon, so mysterious and beautiful! Not like those Wayfair people who insist on lumping everything with a pattern or more than two colors into the fake category of “boho.” I know suzani and ikat, for example. Not that I can define these necessarily, but I know them when I see them. 

Another challenge–or an assignment with a short deadline–I had in that class was one where we had to research two architectural design companies in Houston who hire IDs, one commercial and the other residential, and compare them.

My prof hated my choice of David Weekley. . . she took off major points for that. . . but it isn’t like she provided the class with a pick list. I myself live in a DW home. Everyone in my neighborhood does, too. She said that David Weekley is not an architectural designer of residential homes. I don’t know why not. He hires architects to design his homes, I would assume. He (it is family-owned, there is a David Weekley) sometimes hires Interior Designers, as I showed on Indeed.com. I thought that was the whole purpose of the assignment, to identify where we were potentially going to work after design school. She also asked us to “describe the culture” there, but I didn’t know how to do this because Glassdoor was forcing me to rate my university before I could get in to see the reviews, and I didn’t want to do that. What was I supposed to do, call up random people at David Weekley and Gensler and say, “Tell me. How do you like working there? What’s it like? How do you like your job and your coworkers?” 

Right. No, I wasn’t going to do that. . . She counted off points!

Gensler was my commercial AD. I know of Gensler only because they design and build libraries. But I suspect from their website that Gensler hires only beautiful people to work for them. My presentation is below.

Also during this class, I had to design a kitchen. That was the first project, actually.

I loved the kitchen I designed, because of the rippled opaque glass in the upper cabinets which would add fire and movement through reflected light, but I was uncomfortable not knowing how to calculate the amount of light needed for the space because my walls and finishes were dark, like a small playhouse theatre.

It was an intimate, cave-like space with slate (porcelain emulating slate, because we know real slate has durability issues) floors for cooking over fire with glinting, reflected light in the glass and copper. The palette was green, charcoal and copper with some ivory tan enamel trim. I haven’t taken lighting yet, so I wasn’t sure how many recessed lights, pendants and central fixtures were needed so the eye could discern that the color of the island was a dark green, not charcoal grey or black, and that there was enough light on the countertops. I wanted a warm, burning light, not soupy and diffuse LEDs, with their poor CRV (Color Reflective Value). That people see the true color of the island was important to me. I’m sure there are algorithms for light which can be applied in these situations. Or maybe designers use software and the program figures it all out for them. I asked my professor, but she did not respond.

I got dinged on the light fixtures, not because I didn’t put enough in, but because I couldn’t source them. I broke a cardinal rule of design class.

I tried, and in all honesty, I deserved to be dinged. But they really made the space! 

The problem of illuminating a small dark green kitchen was solved by this designer by just taking off the ceiling (I think there is a glass dome). The kitchen I designed had a lighting problem I did not know how to solve because I did not know how light would be absorbed by dark surfaces. I haven’t taken lighting yet.

I offered alternatives, but this prof doesn’t like choices.

“Don’t provide me with your choices! Present me with your vision!”

My greatest interior design challenge will be to get on with a company with a product or service I love. I am ambitious, but I have been known to chase unicorns.

That is also what I like best about me, however. I consider it to be my best quality.

For example, I have written to a few companies who sell historic wallpapers and textiles, companies I like, asking them if they could use a local Sales Rep. in the Houston area. Most of the companies whose products I like are headquartered or have showrooms in Dallas, not here. RM Coco and Loloi are not here. One company I discovered a few years ago you probably haven’t heard of is Bradbury & Bradbury.

Bradbury & Bradbury is so great!

Even though they are not open to the public, I’ve been inside of their workshop in Benicia, CA where wallpaper is still made by hand through an elaborate silk screen process. I have seen this with my own eyes. It isn’t a ruse; they put down one color at a time, moving frame by frame. I took pictures of this old workshop with bays of carefully ordered wooden silkscreen frames, then painted from the photo so I have a painting of my husband and sons standing in front of their workshop. Historic neighborhoods which have Victorian homes and bungalows would make excellent B&B customers. Realistically, though, I would need to work for Morris & Co. who is similar, but more commercial. Maybe one day I could represent Bradbury and Bradbury and Morris & Co. In my gypsy caravan of samples of everything good from everywhere in the world, I could travel to St. Pete where there is a new museum dedicated to the Arts and Craft Movement, and as I discovered to my delight, historic neighborhoods full of bungalows. Step this way to my gypsy caravan Toyota Highlander to order museum-quality reproduction wallpapers, friezes, window treatments and interior fabrics! I might think to put postcards or sample books in Sherwin Williams locations, because, astonishingly, SW is the only place left in many cities to actually see any wallpaper sample books.

For a start, I could meet clients and sell right out of Sherwin Williams.

This is another unicorn scheme of mine. I’m convinced that Sherwin Williams retail locations could sell more paint and compete with Lowe’s and Home Depot–after all, Lowe’s now sells Sherwin Williams paint, so why does anyone bother going to SW?–if they pushed wallpaper and window treatments, a neighborhood design center, right there in their stores, becoming a one-stop shop for interior design and DIYers. They even have a coffee maker and a large table seemingly designed for looking through oversized wallpaper books, an excellent start. They just need the vision, the marketing, sample books, and someone to manage the space and the sale of custom order products. That could be me one day. I can see it all in my mind’s eye.

There are many designers who cater to the 1% who can afford Schumacher, Thibault, Lee Jofa, Scalamandre and GP & J Baker. (I still “study” fabrics and have bins of samples at home for absolutely no reason.) We are talking, hmmm, $300 to $500 a yard or more. Even their fabric scraps on eBay are exorbitant. Who is buying them off eBay, I wonder as I myself browse remnants and samples for black market sale. Rich quilters? Frustrated decorators?

How many others like me are there out there?

Houston has no shortage of lux showrooms, which is surprising to me, since most of the city is a slum, at least compared to how Houston used to look when I was growing up.

Houston also has a decorator center open to “members of the trade.” I went in anyway, no one stopped me. I wanted to see other Arts and Crafts-inspired wallpaper books by GP & J Baker after I came across one memo boo at High Fashion (now closed). But I am more a woman of the people. Or more realistically, I have no desire to sell what I myself would or could never conceivably buy, which I realize is a bit limiting from a Design Sales perspective. But Sherwin Williams already has the paint store locations where the 99% live. I know the product lines in the price point of the people who shop at Sherwin Williams. Middle class DIYers whose home is all they have. RM Coco and Robert Kaufman, not Lee Jofa. The working classes have no knowledge of Lee Jofa or Mulberry or Schumacher. People around here are not spending over 4K for two custom draperies by Carole, whose books you will find at Ethan Allan. But I know who would be in that mid range of $30-65 / yard. 

I could be really good at this, I think. I could really do something good here and help a lot of people, if only I had the chance and some ID credential to back me up! 

The store manager at the SW location by me, who looks like a scruffy John Goodman and sort of knows me by now, was skeptical when I pitched to him my concept for “Sherwin Williams Neighborhood Design Centers.” In my idea’s defense, I said, “Hey, if I bought my ‘Dover White’ paint from you for almost $100 a gallon because it perfectly coordinated with the A Street ‘Anemone’ wallpaper I found in this wallpaper book in your store, other people will do the same.”

No one but you ever looks at those books, he informed me. Most other stores have gotten rid of them. People just come in and buy paint. No, I said, explaining his business to him. Contractors are buying your paint. But guess who is picking out the paint colors and telling the contractors what to buy? Whenever I come in here, more and more wallpaper books are missing (Did you know your best book, your Vincent Van Gogh wallpaper book from BN wallcoverings in the Netherlands, has walked?) and they are always all flopped over. Other people are using them. And no one else has them but SW! Lowe’s doesn’t have them! No one else in Houston who sells paint has wallpaper sample books. But guess what? Now Lowe’s is now selling your paint. So, you should at least put out a sign letting people driving by on Hwy 3 know that you sell wallpaper. Get more books in here. Then, branch out into widow coverings! Offer a samples library. Make this area into a functional design center!

He couldn’t see the potential of an in-store design center, and it probably wasn’t his call anyway.

He walked back to his post behind the paint counter and vacantly gazed out the store front, cars whizzing by on Highway 3, a road to Galveston lined with tank farms, vein clinics, vape shops, auto repairs in total disrepair, bail bondsmen, dog kennels and boat storage places. I could tell, and not just from this conversation, that he wanted nothing to do with wallpaper or home décor, or that little corner of his store which made him feel just a bit uncomfortable. If a customer headed in that direction, he would bark defensively, “If you need help with wallpaper, call the 1-800 number! I can’t help you with that!” He just wanted to sell paint and paint supplies. Like my father, he could only sell what he understood. He understood paint. That was his whole world.

I really wondered what he really thought about Lowe’s now selling Sherwin Williams paint. If I were in Cleveland, I might walk into their home office and make my case for Sherwin Williams Neighborhood Design Centers. I fell in love with that idea.

“But what would you get out of it?” my husband inquired, meaning, as always, how would it benefit us financially. He is an accountant/CPA, and always asks those kinds of practical questions, completely ignoring the big picture. “I don’t have the details all worked out yet,” I reassured him, even though, as with many of my unicorn schemes, money had nothing to do with it. I was, as always, lamenting the degradation and loss of our material culture, and thinking a design center with wallpaper and fabric sample books, a design resource library, would be a great thing for our area. 

But I live in Houston, and realistically, I myself can only do so much to keep our visual, intellectual and material culture from completely. . .  slipping. . . away . . .