Once or twice a year, Keith and I get backed into doing a bit of interior design, usually for clients who’ve made a purchase of significant size, either dollar-wise or square-footage-wise, and need our assistance to make the piece articulate with other movables in a particular room. Not too difficult, you say? Sometimes the greatest adjunct we could have, given the size of some collectors’ collections, would be a shoehorn. More likely as not, however, the articulation of one piece of furniture leads to something else- clients always seek our advice, and, as they’ve paid hard money to us, we are hard put not to oblige.
Consequently, what starts as one thing, ends up being much broader in scope, even including whole room changouts. Even the simplest projects of this type end up filling a large three-ring binder, replete with notes, renderings, memo samples of inputs running the gamut from fabrics to door nails. As an example, we’ve sourced a set of 10 white painted Louis XVI style dining chairs for a friend/client. The chairs had a finish that, in the course of a century or so, had become somewhat distressed. The client wanted to keep the distress, but not so much. Contriving faux distress is do-able, but hard. As well, the clients have five small children (read ‘good Catholic family’) who would sit at table, so the upholstery couldn’t be too dear. What we’ve ended up doing is suggesting loose covers in a plaid that, of course, has to articulate with, but not match, sofa covers in a room adjacent. We’ve had our seamstress run up sample covers in muslin- one with a flat skirting without a gusset, the other with a scalloped edge including a gusset, so the clients could choose. The fabric has been reserved- good thing, too, as the loose covers will require 28 yards of fabric, and the fabric house had only 29 yards in stock. Now, to push the clients to make a decision before the time on our fabric reserve runs out. Finally, we will have to take the chairs, after the finish is properly distressed and whilst the slipcovers are being stitched together, to the upholsterer for an application of muslin on the existing seats and backs to consolidate the stuffing. Not to mention, one or five of the chairs will have to make a detour to our restoration studio to tighten the joints.
What I’m saying in my longwinded exemplar gratis is that interior design is a complicated business that we have neither the desire nor the patience to do on a full-time basis. I particularly admire people who are able to do jobs that I never could- that fairly long list includes grade school teachers and police officers. As I think about it, features in these two named professions might be useable in the design trade- patience, of course, and the power to push when required.
Mercifully, we have a number of interior designers who are excellent trading partners. Our business would be the poorer for them, in real terms, because they do occasional place a few bits of our stock in their projects. But less obvious is the interference they run with clients who would otherwise be seeking our advice. Believe me when I say I would rather refer someone to a designer than do design work myself.
How sorry we are to hear that not only is the art and antiques trade having tough sledding, but from what we can see, the interior design trade is in profound distress. Locally in San Francisco, there exists no firm of which I’m aware that has not either reduced staff or the working week, or both. Distress, too, because so much of the good advice, and, frankly, hand holding that the designers provided their clients may not take place and might be- horrible thought- required of the notoriously impatient principals of Chappell & McCullar. The design distress noted in my blog title for today is, therefore, two fold.