My Interior Design Challenges (A Memoir and Online Portfolio)
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, in fact (Interior Design means something different in the UK), housed in Schools of Architecture. 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? From the presentation we went to, it also seemed dry, with the things I loved now trivialized, by the new program director as mere “decoration,” superficial, surface ornament, rather than a vital part of our visual and material culture, a form of expression, and also an important 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, building systems, emphasis on safety and codes, with an unreflective bias toward modern design, with a small amount of what people think of when they hear “interior design.” It’s CAD, not so much culture or couture. In fact, it seemed when Interior Design went over into Architecture, things philosophically changed, drastically. Textile design and art, ornament, aesthetics, all historically-inspired design, went out the window. 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 Liberal Arts / Undeclared to an Interior Architecture, my older-than-average father protested. “Architecture is a man’s world! 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 particular situation. I could draw remarkably well then, and having been raised on Dover books, dollhouses, Town & Country, Vanity Fair and Sotheby auction catalogs which I mined for inspiration for my dollhouse mansions and paintings, I already had an exceptional knowledge of art, architecture, historic interiors, pattern and antiques upon entering college at 17. I even had books on historic interiors which I mined for inspiration for period rooms. I studied art in high school and at the Glassell junior school. I was handy with an exacto knife and resin; I had drawers of min-wax stain, testors enamel paint, and 00 brushes, dollhouse electrical wire and tiny light bulbs. I made things, including furniture to scale. My visual literacy was (and still is) high. Apart from magazines and my cherished Dover books, the bulk of my art history education came also from checking out library books and copying the illustrations, 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 one). Now, at the time I was pursuing ID at UT in the early 80s, my father happened to come into possession of three high-end custom drapery stores which he had initially hoped to franchise, just as he had done with muffler shops in the 70s. But design trends, fabrics and fashion were definitely not his thing. Dad couldn’t tell a black from a brown sock. I don’t know why he ever got into draperies except to keep his favorite girlfriend entertained, a woman irritatingly close to my age. During this time, I secretly hoped he was going to leave at least one those drapery stores to me, which was also compelling me to pursue interior design. At UT, I aced my Architecture survey courses and “History of Interiors.” I could tell you the likely provenance of any antique chair. That year, or shortly thereafter, he gave the three failing businesses to my eldest sister and her husband. He explained to me that 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 art–or whatever I was studying these days. Anyway, I was too young, inexperienced, and still in school. For my fashionable older sister and her talented husband (and his very creative, personable, very artistically-gifted retired father), it all worked out well, and it became a launching point for other more lucrative ventures in window treatments and home decor. When in Houston, I would sometimes hang out in the backroom of the drapery store and peruse sample books–Robert Allen was my favorite back then–and take discontinued books home for dollhouse and other projects. Seeing draperies were not in my near future, I changed my major to English Literature with Classical Languages, a move which met with parental approval. “Teaching is a good profession for a woman,” my father said. He had often shared with me that he benefitted from a Catholic education in high school, which he recalled favorably, except for failing French several times. He respected and encouraged my passion for British literature, philosophy, history, Latin, Thomas Aquinas and Étienne Henri Gilson. But I still loved art and design, which to me was rooted in spirituality. I still admire Augustus Pugin, William Morris and John Ruskin. For whatever the reasons, drapery and wallpaper stores, as with dollhouse stores, disappeared even from big cities. (Interestingly to me, though, tile and flooring stores are now everywhere, but in homes today windows and walls are bare.) Even JCPenney discontinued their custom draperies department years ago, opting to use the floor space for higher profit mattress sales. Without stores and salespeople to educate and inspire consumers, to show them what is possible and create a sense of value around them, demand for these goods are unlikely to ever return. Online doesn’t do it. People want to see and touch, experience it in their spaces, and putting it all together requires visualization skills many people lack. 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 lithograph (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 for most of the 80s I was away at school and fairly insulated from the dramatic changes that were happening at home, including her dying, alone (dad had moved out to be with various my age girlfriends) in an empty but well decorated townhouse. 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 absolutely nothing left of home. No minor art, no rugs, no antiques, no home at all to return to, not even a couch to sleep on. My drawing pads, my own paintings, my journals from living with a host family in England at 16 and traveling through India at 17, my dollhouses and room boxes–my books–everything was discarded, 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 (my mother bought the desk) in order to study bloodlines and plan potential matches. After the death of my mother–which was really bad timing for me, for that morning I was interviewing for a once-in-a-lifetime Cataloger position (my “Latin & Greek were pluses”) at Bryn Mawr College–I should not have revealed that my mother had just died that morning, which probably freaked them out; but I was only 23 and felt guilty/sinful being there (How could you go for a job interview at a time like this?)–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 personal affects were discarded anyway. Everyone was too busy with their adult lives to be bothered sending me my things from the house, which was my house to the extent that I had actually lived in it, bedroom and all, and they did not, possessing houses of their own. Not that it matters, but I was unaware I was entitled to certain things of value. Being the youngest, and didn’t own a house, or anything, and had no money of my own, having just graduated with my MLIS with an emphasis in Rare Books and Manuscripts. What would I possibly do with antique furniture, fine art, or rugs? I overheard them say it wasn’t appropriate for me; it did not fit my lifestyle. The few pieces of jewelry which came my way were indeed, just as they anticipated, pawned off for a fraction of their value within a few years rather than being kept in the family. But I needed cash to pay tuition another semester (“Why didn’t you auction them at Sotheby’s,” my sister enquired, astonished by my lack of business acumen) at a private Catholic university. I regret it now, especially having never finished that second Master’s degree. At that time, I saw no other way to get on in life but to continue to take classes until I landed a university job. I worked low paying (but oftentimes prestigious) jobs. People knew me back then; I went to gallery and museum openings. Many also knew I came from “a good family.” But what they did not know was that for a long time, I was surviving by ordering a coffee and eating the free bread at La Madeline and on the meals dates bought me (I was careful to eat half and bring the other half home to stretch it). I was barely keeping it together; they said that was “just me” . . . I was a free spirit. What happened was, by 1991, a few months after I graduated, my MLIS was no longer sufficient to be employed as an academic librarian anywhere. The MLIS was no longer considered an academic degree: it was downgraded to a vocational degree, like Education. Columbia University led this charge, closing one of the oldest library schools in the county, including its famous Rare Book School, and that had a domino effect. At that time, universities began requiring a second Master’s for entry-level employment, and schools (even in Texas) were requiring a teaching credential and two years teaching in the classroom in addition to the MLIS just to be a school librarian. Public libraries strongly favored bilingual or minority candidates and were doing more outreach to the functionally illiterate and homeless. My Latin and Greek, English literature, Art and European History, and background and work experience in rare books and special collections were fairly worthless without another academic credential to back it up. When my father passed fifteen years later, I took his thick file of show dog photos and beautiful old hand-penned pedigrees from England. (He had been invited to judge dog shows in Westminster, various terriers, a great honor for an American.) By then he had sold the antique desk for money to live on, 14K, even though it was technically mine (I later discovered the codicil to my mother’s will), and there was absolutely nothing left 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 holding a drink with a blurry profile of teen me smiling in the foreground. Funny, I didn’t remember that we had Morris’ “The Strawberry Thief” for window treatments over the sink! How could I have forgotten that? The shades looked really crisp and great, as did the wallpaper, a perfect complement. I loved the juxtaposition of the traditional with modern to create a sense of warmth. Seeing the photo also frightened me so badly for some reason, I hid it away in a cigar box. 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 librarian, in fact, which I already am. It is a lot like decorating dollhouses, which I still do. I can do this! And better, much better, I realized, than my young classmates. 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 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 V 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, eagerly 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.” 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 socially irresponsible, and opposed to her spare aesthetic of “sustainability,” which I associate in my mind with Western cultural decline and slipping into a 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. Conservatives blame it on Neo-Liberalism and the loss of religious values. Left or right, people sense we are in decline, the middle class is shrinking. I try to take care of myself spiritually, which I do, oddly, through collecting beautiful fabric swatches. I have bins and binders full of them. I order samples and one day I will be prepared to help someone looking for just the right thing, that special fabric which will magically pull the whole room together. 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. Gable roofs. Tudor revival. 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. I love prints, real prints with texture and dimension and actual works on paper; jacquard fabrics; real furniture made from real trees with fine wood grain; oil-based stains and paint. I like darkness and warm lighting, intimate spaces. I do not like white walls and chandeliers without shades; I don’t want to look at light bulbs. I hate LEDs. It is ugly cold, unnatural light. The human eye and our mammalian brains have evolved to respond to warm, burning light (I have stockpiled incandescent bulbs, even for the Christmas tree. . . I want gentle glinting light, not glaring diodes! I myself cannot paint under LEDs, the colors are just not right . . . ). I am obsessed with the Arts and Crafts Revival in all its forms. I feel validated, thrilled, by the glossy magazines I occasionally find in Barnes and Noble dedicated to “the revival.” In my own way, I feel like I am part of the revival whenever I buy the magazine. “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, something about them embodies what is wrong with our economy, 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 being a librarian. It was all a big mistake, as far as I am concerned. Honestly, at the end of the 1980s, the very height of publishing, who could have anticipated Google? Who would have anticipated the demise of a middle class? It isn’t that I do not like being a librarian per se, but you see, the academic library I knew and loved, and devoted a large chunk of my life to, is mostly gone now, and it fills me with such anguish to see it so diminished. It was once a beautiful thing, the work of many hands, a cathedral built with care, a very different kind of user experience we offered, with the primary service being a collection embodying cultural knowledge, community and intellectual achievement, the best of the best, what educated people ought to know. Yes, indeed, I did eventually become an academic librarian even without the second MA, and I had enough graduate credits to teach, which I loved. For me personally, a reader, the library was a creative outlet because I could turn people on to titles they might like. I kept my faculty aware of new and forthcoming titles and this kept their research interests from fizzling out. Being familiar with the collection made me effective. But that was short-lived. The collection almost everywhere, even at big State schools, has been eliminated, because it is thought to no longer be cost-effective and, well, because as we all know, students do not read books anymore. Collections have disappeared. The whole of the academic library at most schools can now be reduced to a search engine, a web page with links to subscription databases each year, prefixed by a Google-like search box we call “discovery.” We are not expected to educate students, we just expect users to come along and extract needed information to complete assignments from our app. This app is fed by license agreements, not title-by-title acquisitions. Nothing of interest meets the eye in these monotonous, pretentious and vacuous spaces, with its assorted custom chairs. Why, you cannot expect people to sit and read without a custom-designed chair! Sadly, we librarians must embrace this new reality, 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. The new library could be so much better! I have so many ideas for a new “new” library! But now, there is no sense of respect for scholarly publication; for to respect something, in the Latinate sense of the word, is to place it into public view where it might be seen and considered again and again by others. That is what it means, literally, to “respect” (spect = see, re = again) something. Before, we created a learning environment, an aesthetic experience, a world. Now, we place nothing into view and curate nothing, preserve nothing, share nothing, know nothing (except what comes into our feed), and do not offer an expansive, functional experience of a library. The interiors being designed by design firms are uninspired, just meeting spaces with a variety of seating. For thirty years, I have ridden the wave of automation in libraries and museums, both. I have even been a Museum Curator, a job I loved and was very good at but it didn’t pay a living wage. I was good not just because of what I could do with empty spaces, almost no budget and bare walls, but because I had the ability and tenacity to raise money for my own exhibits. I also knew the art world and special collections, dealers and other curators. But I am not seeing too many waves these days. Truly, 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 (and why are people here so sick or clumsy that we need urgent cares on every corner?). The more freeways they build, the worse the traffic 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. As mentioned, 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 and Manuscripts. Latin Paleography/Medieval and Neo-Latin poetry/Church history. Also Unix. Also Perl. C++, too. VB and VBA. JavaScript. 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 libraries at universities who no longer teach Classics. In library school, I specialized in descriptive bibliography, a.k.a. “Cataloging.” People misunderstand cataloging as data entry. Let me explain. Essentially, cataloging seeks 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 or epitaph). 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 own vocabularies more purposeful. I worked on this project at the MFAH, although many curators there were ideologically opposed to description. “Description is interpretation. Who are we to interpret a work?” they said. I thought that is what Curators did. The biggest stumbling block was the necessity of supplying a title (in [ ]) if a work is untitled; the point of this descriptive title was to be able to uniquely identify the work through its object record. I mined art history publications for metadata to allow for a good CCO/CDWA record and an apt descriptive title in the absence of one. The project was a success, I worked hard to normalize and embellish about 3,000 records; but then it was over. My position was grant-funded. I also helped to launch the Americana Exchange, and online auction site for collections of Americana started by Bruce McKinney, whom I met in San Francisco. I was a “bibliographer.” I wrote a few articles for them to help promote the new site. Then I went to work for an Art Institute in San Diego where I set up both a new campus library and a design library to support their Interior Design program. I was a library director, but then I got married and pregnant; back to Houston we came so my husband could pursue his career. While in California, we travelled around and took photos of old mission-style churches and historic homes. I even wrote an article for American Bungalow. 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: librarians organized titles into collections so culture could be experienced and knowledge could become known. It is about context, meaning, creating value, not just “access to” books or information. We sustained an environment is which knowledge seemed important to know, since a collection is what gave titles a sense of importance. “Access to” does nothing to stimulate demand. 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 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, historic design and art as long as I can remember, often drawing from the pages or incorporating motifs and patterns into my paintings. Architects who became successful illustrators and artists have a place of honor on my shelves. Many designed textiles, wallpaper and furniture. Stickley gets way too much credit. It was the work of American architect Harvey Ellis who designed the pieces which are most sought after today by collectors. 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 still 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. Of course, I love British-inspired design most of all, and most things built, written, published, created or designed ca. 1890 to 1925. 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, too, but I didn’t know how to do this because Glassdoor was forcing me to rate my current employer 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! Unbelievable. 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 on paper (because we haven’t gotten into rendering yet), 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 year, we still had a choice. 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 to my email about calculating light in a room. 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! 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 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, for example. I like Graham & Brown wallpapers, although their custom draperies leave a lot to be desired, quality-wise. I love many of the carpet designs by Momeni, an over overlooked source for Arts and Crafts / Revival rugs with a modern styling. One company I discovered a few years ago which you probably haven’t heard of is Bradbury & Bradbury. Bradbury & Bradbury is so great! They even make dollhouse versions of their historic wallpapers. They’re my heroes, just like the two former antique dealers at Archive Editions who, at great expense, revived authentic jacquard fabrics to be able to recover antique chairs. I have samples of just about everything of theirs, for one reason that I have quite a few authentic Morris chairs I’d hoped to flip. Even though they are not open to the public, I’ve been inside of the B&B 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 because we used to live in Vallejo, next to Benicia, and I showed up there one day with my family (standing way in the distance just to not be in that particular photo, but then they came close to watch). One color is put down at a time, carefully moving frame by frame, to make a wallpaper frieze. At the end, it looked like this: We loved the tour and seeing the beautiful samples on their walls. They have many lovely designs, and the silkscreen process gives their wallpapers a sense of dimension. Some patters are complex, requiring layer upon layer of perfectly stenciled silkscreen to get it right: Historic neighborhoods which have Victorian homes and bungalows would make excellent B&B customers. Maybe one day I could represent Bradbury & Bradbury and Morris & Co. In my gypsy caravan of samples of everything good from everywhere in the world–and I know, for I keep up with these companies despite American Bungalow magazine folding–Arts and Crafts Revival hasn’t, as I bought a copy yesterday–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 great delight, historic neighborhoods full of historic bungalows. Step this way 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. That’s right, Sherwin Williams. This is another unicorn scheme of mine, but really it is more about Sherwin Williams than me. I’m truly convinced that Sherwin Williams retail locations, which are everywhere, 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. Many locations even have a coffee maker and a large table seemingly designed for looking through oversized wallpaper books, an excellent start. It is as if they started to move in that direction, but stopped. They just need the vision, the marketing, sample books, and someone to manage the spaces and the sale of custom order products. (Also, I don’t understand why the Amish furniture store in Houston sells mission furniture and not soft furnishings and lamps to go with Arts and Crafts style. Seems they’re missing out on a whole lot of potential sales by selling just the furniture and not the whole concept.) From what I have seen in Houston, 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 memo samples at home for absolutely no reason, sort of crazy I know.) We are talking, hmm, $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? And how many others like me are there out there, I wonder, as I see GP&J Baker memo samples with gromets in them selling on ebay for ridiculous sums. Maybe lots of people, perhaps most people, like what I like. 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 Design 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 intriguing memo book at High Fashion (which I think is closing, or they are getting rid of fabrics). 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 myself conceivably in a million years 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 (I know, they have their pricey lux stuff too) and Robert Kaufman, not Lee Jofa, probably not GP&J. People around here are not spending over 4K for two custom draperies by Carole, whose books you will find at Ethan Allan and one other place I know, a spritely widow who runs a legacy drapery store which these days mainly sells motorized blinds. Carole would not be my first choice for our demographics. But I know exactly who would be in that mid range of $30-65 / yard. I know a workroom too, a run down place never open on Saturdays. They do good work. 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 in Houston 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 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 ever 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 impatiently, 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 absolutely 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 inside of Sherwin Williams, 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. |