The Great Lady Decorators: The Women Who Defined Interior Design, 1870-1955 traces the history of privileged women known as "Lady Decorators," and is accompanied by illustrations from Jeremiah Goodman, whose work has appeared in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With a foreword from world-renowned interior decorator Bunny Williams, designer and author Adam Lewis brings us the first book to focus on the extraordinarily talented women who helped shape the interior-design world since the 19th century.
Though it was designed by well-known Atlanta architect Philip Trammell Shutze in 1928, Mr. and Mrs. Edward H. Inman's Swan House in is still one of the most recognized and photographed landmarks in Georgia's capital.
Atlanta History Center
In the book, Bunny Williams showcases a Park Avenue living room she created in New York City. "Rooms should never be boring, yet nothing should hit you over the head," Williams writes. "I think a room comes alive when there is a spontaneous mix of different periods, raw materials, and high-quality design."
Pieter Estersohn
Silent motion picture star Hope Hampton showed her wild side with a zebra-print staircase in the corner of the living room of her New York City apartment.
The New-York Historical Society, Mattie E. Hewitt Collection
Legendary interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe was deemed one of the great Parisian hostesses of her time. The dining pavilion, Villa Trianon, at her Versailles home held numerous affairs in the 50-plus years she lived there and continues to be a landmark of 20th-century taste.
David Massey
The central loggia at the Ocean Boulevard residence of Mr. and Mrs. Wolcott Blair in Palm Beach had a Caribbean-style feel perfect for the Florida locale.
Mark Hampton, courtesy of Duane Hampton
This guest room at the Hampshire House on Central Park South in New York is emblematic of interior designer Dorothy Draper. She was one of the country's first female decorators and was often called the queen of texture and color. "Draper was to decorating what Chanel was to fashion," fellow designer Carleton Varney once said. "She brought color into a world which was sad and dreary."
Courtesy of Dorothy Draper, Inc. and Carleton Varney
Draper also designed the luxuriously ornate Coty Cosmetics Salon in New York"s Rockefeller Center.
Courtesy of Dorothy Draper, Inc. and Carleton Varney
In one of his many illustrations for the book, Goodman brings a sense of vibrancy to the loggia in the Beverly Hills home of Romanian-born actor Edward G. Robinson. This glamorous space contrasts with the griminess for which Robinson was best known due to his many gangster roles, most notably as Rico Bandello in Little Caesar.
Jeremiah Goodman
Another image of Robinson's Beverly Hills home—the living room of the gangster actor's house.
Courtesy of Katherine E. Boyd
Another beautiful apartment in New York is the drawing room in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Russell Cecil. One could imagine the beloved man in the world of American medicine would have enjoyed working in such a beautifully designed space.
Wendy Hilty
Known for her elegance and recognized for her understanding of business, Rose Cumming was known to leave the lights of her Upper East Side shop on at night to heighten the visibility of her unique aesthetic.
Harold Haliday Costain
British interior decorator Syrie Maugham popularized rooms designed entirely in shades of white in the 1920s and '30s. But with this enfilade entrance hall in her King's Road home in London, Maugham abandoned the pristine look for a shocking pink.
Millar and Harris Archive, English Heritage, National Monuments Record
French decorator Madeleine Castaing played a prominent role in the Parisian design aesthetic for more than half a century. "She had a mad eclecticism that was very 19th-century in concept but that managed to be fresh and unstuffy," New York interior decorator Miles Redd told The New York Times of the aesthetic shown here in an apartment salon Castaing decorated at Paris' 19th-century Hôtel Particulier.
Alexandre Bailhache
A pioneer in the interior-design field, Eleanor Stockstrom McMillen Brown combined her sense of style with her brain for business. The founder of McMillen Inc. studied design at Parsons and in Paris and fought to be respected as a decorator. "I thought if I was going to do it at all, I'd better do it professionally," she once said via The New York Times. "That"s why it's McMillen Inc. and not Eleanor McMillen. I wasn't one of the ‘ladies.'" The un-lady ladylike Brown's apartment on Sutton Place in New York showcases her keen eye.
Michael Dunne
Elsie Cobb Wilson, pictured here with her sister Zaidee, was a lesser-known lady designer largely due to her demure nature being overshadowed by the louder Elsie (de Wolfe) and Dorothy Draper. Still, Wilson was a notable tastemaker through the 1920s and '30s and also left her mark on politics. She has been pegged as the catalyst for the collapse of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's marriage after reportedly convincing the future first lady to hire one of her decorating-shop assistants, Lucy Mercer, as a private secretary. Mercer was rumored to have caught FDR's eye and the two are said to have secretly met at Wilson's New York apartment for rendezvous.
Bliss family archives
Ruby Ross Wood (pictured left) was often the voice behind decorator Elsie de Wolfe's byline. She wrote fiction, poetry, and articles about interior design under de Wolfe's name for The Delineator, a popular women's magazine. Wood's words helped de Wolfe complete her decorating manual The House in Good Taste and she also ghostwrote the designer's articles in Ladies Home Journal.
Private collection
Long before Betty and Don, New York City had Dorothy Draper. She was not only one of the interior-design industry's first women, but also the name behind the first interior-design company in the United States. She believed in color as a mood lifter and deviated from the dark color schemes that dominated the Victorian aesthetic of the time. It's been said that she was the one who suggested hotel chain Howard Johnson use the orange and blue color scheme they're still known for today.
Courtesy Dorothy Draper, Inc. and Carleton Varney
Soon after Rose Cumming arrived in New York from Australia in 1917, she became widely recognized for both her extraordinary talent. Cumming was known for juxtaposing different interior-design styles in the rooms she created as well as the bold colors she combined. "Parrots are blue and green," she once remarked according to Architectural Digest. "Why shouldn't fabrics be?"
Wilbur Pippin, Collection of Albert Hadley
Parisian designer Madeleine Castaing's sense of style helped her maintain a prominent role in the interior-decorating industry for more than 50 years. She began her career in the 1940s as a result of empty-nest syndrome—her children were grown and the war had prevented her from entertaining. Eventually, she earned the nickname in her home country of France as "The Magician." "She used colors and patterns that make you wince when you hear them in the same sentence," New Yorker Esther Brodsky told The New York Times. "But when you see this house in person, you realize how perfect her taste was."
Antoine Bootz
