We always enjoy an event at Ed Hardy’s eponymous showroom adjacent to the San Francisco Design Centre and Ed is a wonderful host: openhanded in the best tradition, and always has in attendance a cadre of fascinating people. And, if failing in actual fascination, catty here, at least fun to look at.
Ed played host to all of us a couple of evenings ago, honoring the release of Stephen Salny’s new book Michael Taylor: Interior Design. 
A busy man, Stephen has now released three books in about as many years, the first a monograph on architect David Adler, the second on Adler’s celebrated sister, interior designer Frances Elkins. Appropriate, then, that Stephen’s most recent book chronicles the working life of Elkins’ ardent protégé, Michael Taylor.
Stephen is doing important work, not so much as a keeper of any particular flame, but to make certain that aspects within the ephemeral world of interior design are documented. With our societal mania for fashion, design obsolescence is perceived by modern fashionistas within, not decades, not years, even, but often over matters of months. Too many fine interiors survive, woe betides, only in books. I wish this country would adopt a mandatory listed buildings scheme akin to that in England. Keith McCullar and I are, just at the moment, particularly mindful about if not historic then at least aesthetic preservation. Our favorite Frances Elkins interior, the lower lobby of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, is, as I write this, undergoing renovation, along with the rest of the facility and scheduled to reopen in the next couple of weeks. What will we find when we return? I am by nature replete with trepidations, but this one does point to something worthy of consideration. Specifically, Elkins, in her work at the Royal Hawaiian, was doing something important in endeavoring to develop an aesthetic that coordinated a number of influences, and not all of them visual. In the first instance, her brief was to create an impressive, comfortable, functional space in a luxury hotel. Doubtless her own experience informed her use of European palace hotel prototypes; although not the Georges V, her commission was the Royal Hawaiian. And, as the Royal Hawaiian, Elkins sought to integrate local motifs into her decorative scheme, including floor screens with overscale cutouts in brass of tropical vegetation, and wall lights in their imitation of curling vine tendrils, utilizing the same theme, albeit in stucco. The effect could have been kitsch and quickly become as dated as Bing Crosby’s singing Mele Kalikimaka, but Elkins’ deft handling of cultural disparate motifs yields a successful synthesis. Overall, Elkins’ execution is more successful in capturing an Hawaiian aesthetic than that of her brother in the Mission Revival design, replete with bell towers and arcuated porticoes, of the hotel’s exterior architecture.
As with Elkins, Michael Taylor’s interior spaces beg accessible documentation, and, over 2 decades since his death, the timing might be considered appropriate for their critical assessment. Though I might be accused of aesthetic simplism, my own criterion for success is to gauge how fresh the design appears, by which I mean, in cruder terms, how well it’s aged. This is probably unfair, because the flip side of this methodology would term design that, at first face, appears emblematic of the time it was created, as less than successful. I have to remind myself that originality that was a conscious reaction to and a rejection of what went before is an important phenomenon. Michael Taylor’s bold use of color and the introduction of a only a very few key pieces in an interior was as innovative in its way as the movement in the fine arts away from recondite abstract expressionism to intellectually accessible pop art.
An interesting irony here, in that, with all the peripheral discussion at Ed Hardy’s about the effect of the economy on the art and design trade, I was reminded of the brooding pessimism of a Rothko painting. What a bright spot it was, amidst this, to find Stephen Salny signing his new book. Sympathetic magic, perhaps, but I’d like to think of Michael Taylor: Interior Design as portending brighter days ahead.