What is the spark that begins a career?

My passion for design began in Brooklyn, of all places, while traipsing after my mother’s decorator, a woman named Vinnie, who decorated for Roma Furniture.

It was the 70’s and we were descendants of recent Italian immigrants so you can imagine what the finished look was – velvets in red wine colors, cupids on lamps, and gold everywhere. I distinctly remember the custom made plastic slipcovers that encased the velvet sofas in my, and all of my friends’ living rooms.  The plastic dried out and cracked rather quickly, pinching our legs as we sat down. Someone must have made a fortune on this upholstery oddity and thankfully it was a trend that passed.

One thing that gave me bragging rights with my friends was the wallpaper selected for the kitchen – the very same mustard and avocado green wallpaper that The Partridge Family had in their TV kitchen.  I now know that the 70’s was not the best decade for design but at the time it seemed that a door was open a crack into a very special world.

The other thing that really solidified it for me was my exposure to what lay just over the bridge in ‘The City’.  My schoolteacher mother, who was well traveled for her day, took the four of us kids on outings to every museum and historic house we could reach by public transportation.  She would extol the notion that it was a big, beautiful world out there and to be cultured was a very important task of growing up.  Teddy Roosevelt’s boy hood home particularly stuck in my mind, most likely because of all the dead animals strewn around the brownstone on East 20^th Street off Park Avenue. To this day, I am still a bit iffy on the use of dead animals as decoration.

I have continued the tradition with my own family, dragging my two daughters and husband to every historic house we could reach by a car ride away from our home in Dorset.  The Berkshires holds a wellspring of historic houses. Most memorable is Edith Wharton’s house, ‘The Mount’, in Lenox, MA, which brought her philosophy of design to life as written in the book she co-authored with architect Ogden Codman, Jr. called The Decoration of Houses. Her mansion positively sparkles in the sunlight due to the marble dust she insisted be put in the white exterior paint.  She didn’t just concentrate on the house design but also created elaborate exterior rooms in her gardens, which are accessed by cleverly designed sod covered steps. This home must have been her laboratory to explore her innovative ideas.

If someone asked me how to be a good decorator, my advice would be to live fully, travel often, ask questions and never stop learning.