Designers' Favorite Things

Juan Pablo Molyneux
Photo by John Lei.

"Selecting The One Object They Could Not Live Without" is the subtitle of the article in the September, 1996, issue of Architectural Digest.  Whether it was truly the most appreciated possession, or one that was chosen for image value, that will be left up to you, Devoted Reader.



The silver tape measure engraved JBK
bought at the April, 1996, auction by
NYC interior designer Juan Pablo Molyneux.
Photo:  People Magazine.

Juan Pablo Molyneux is pictured with a pair of Anglo-Afghan campaign chairs that he had owned for over a decade.  He restored the inlaid mother-of-pearl marquetry, disabled the collapsible feature to make them more stable, and covered the seats in zebra silk velvet, vowing never to sell them.  In the first image, he's holding the silver Tiffany's tape measure he famously bought in the April, 1996, Jacqueline Kennedy auction.  Engraved with her initials, he paid $48,250 for the souvenir.  "I like to think she was measuring the White House with it," said Molyneux.


Mario Buatta.
Photo by Feliciano.

Mario Buatta is shown with a few creamware plates.  "It's difficult to pick out one, because the whole set of botanical plates is my favorite," Buatta is quoted in the article.  At the time, he had about one hundred dishes made between 1790 and 1870 with decoration based on botanical drawings, collected over 30 years.  Fans of the decorator will recognize the same designs, painted on cushions, that often serve as accessories in his interiors.


Robert Denning.
Photo by Scott Frances.

Robert Denning, who died in 2005, relates that the first thing that he and his late partner Vincent Fourcade, who died in 1992, bought together was a 19th century Copeland Spode monkey.  "It cost fifteen dollars, but there was a decorator discount of two dollars," he said.  Denning added the bronze feet to the base.


Bruce Gregga.
Photo by Russell Ingram.

Bruce Gregga is pictured with a 19th century Rococo-style clock supported by an enamel elephant and topped with an enameled Chinese man sitting on a gilt, lacquer and enamel seat.  He had admired a similar clock in France 6 or 8 years before happening to find this clock in a New York store.  He says that the clock has moved around to several locations in his Chicago residence before occupying the perfect spot "on a console in the living room with a Botero painting hanging above it and delft vases set on either side, so it fits in with the kind of things that I like."


Clodagh.
Photo by Daniel Aubry.

Clodagh, the Irish-born designer who goes by her first name only, often incorporates Feng Shui and Chromotheraphy in her international projects.  She first saw the Buddha in 1971 in the apartment of photographer Daniel Aubry who would later become her husband.  An 18th century Kmer statue, Aubry's aunt had given it to him from her husband's collection of Asian antiques.  "I'm not covetous of things.  Everything in our house could go.  But this statue, not any other Buddha, is the spirit of our house," Clodagh said of the statue that had traveled to nine different residences with the couple up to that date.


William 'Bill' Hodgins.
Photo by Richard Mandelkorn.

William Hodgins found the 19th century cast-iron statue of Hercules in the early 1990s in the beloved London garden centre, Clifton Little Venice.  Placed on a fluted, marbleized truncated column pedestal in his Boston living room, Hodgins says, "He's kind of wonderful.  I'll always like this one."


Juan Montoya.
Photo by Feliciano.

Juan Montoya's grandfather bought the alabaster urn, thought to be 300 years old, in the 1870s in Florence, Italy, and had it shipped back home to Columbia.  It occupied a prominent spot in his parents' small chapel and Montoya had admired it since he was a child.  When he changed the décor of his apartment in the mid 1980s, he had it shipped to New York.  "It is the texture, the feeling, the element itself that makes me happy.  I would never be able to live without it," he says in the feature.  "But someday it may go back to Bogota, to my sister."

Devoted Reader, do you have a possession (a non-living thing, of course) you would be particularly sad to lose?