The holidays’ magic maker
EVERY day was a holiday for Tony Duquette. The legendary Hollywood designer was obsessed with beauty, devising exotic sets for screen and stage, as well as glittering interiors for movie star mansions, Los Angeles department stores and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. A painter, sculptor and hot glue gun fanatic, Duquette was an early recycler, mixing cheap industrial products with luxurious fabrics and natural materials to build ornate furnishings and environments.
“He outdid Hollywood at its own game,” says Wendy Goodman, coauthor of the weighty, vividly illustrated “Tony Duquette,” released this month from Abrams. “He created fantasies of joyful, colorful and sensual texture. There was a sense of celebration in everything he did. His childlike sense of magic and wonder about the world never stopped.”
Co-author Hutton Wilkinson, chief executive and chief designer of Tony Duquette Inc. since Duquette’s death in 1999, reminisced about the master in a recent interview and recalled Duquette’s distinctive take on holiday decor.
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What are the signatures of a Tony Duquette interior?
Gold, coral, abalone shells, malachite, crystals, sunbursts and mirrors. Tony was a master of placement of mirrors to reflect light and expand vistas. He used clear jewel colors -- nothing muddy or dark or monochromatic -- and layered paint, fabrics and paintings on walls. The fifth wall was the floor, where he usually put antique Oriental carpets. And he always said the ceiling is the sixth wall. They are not to punch holes in for can lights. He liked ceilings painted, draped and decorated.
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Wasn’t that expensive?
Tony used to say, “Beauty, not luxury, is what I value.” He often used nontraditional materials to gain traditional effects. He had no snobbery; he didn’t care if something was glass or plastic, solid gold or gold paper. As a young man, he made costumes and sets for Fred Astaire movies; in the ‘80s he made jewelry for Tom Ford at Gucci. He was always of his time and very modern.
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At the L.A. store Downtown, Duquette-inspired Christmas windows feature red pipe cleaners simulating coral. Why do contemporary designers worship him?
Tony’s work will always appeal to the people with the self-confidence to express their personalities through their environments. His is also a uniquely American story: a boy born in Los Angeles to not very rich parents and raised in Three Rivers, Mich., who achieved his goal of living with -- and like -- the movie stars and European nobility he admired. Tony’s place in 20th century design is as a beacon of individuality and creativity.
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What was his secret?
The New York designer Jeffrey Bilhuber recently said: One coral branch on a table does not a Tony Duquette make. It’s the repetition of pattern that creates an effect. You can throw a skateboard up on a wall and people will think you’re crazy, but if you put 500 skateboards around the frieze of a room, all of a sudden it really looks like something.
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Descriptions of the Duquette look almost always include the phrase “over-the-top.” How far did he go when December rolled around?
In the late 1930s and early ‘40s, Tony worked at Bullock’s and Robinsons. His job was to make the entire store change seasons. And he used to say, “You know, working in those stores ruined Christmas for me, because I had to work six months in advance and by the time it came, I was so exhausted when I got home there was no point in decorating anymore.” He gave us all these wonderful ornaments: crocheted bears in sailor suits and giraffes and tigers dressed in capes and top hats. I’ve got a warehouse of antique Christmas decorations that he collected, and I don’t think he ever used them.
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So how did he celebrate?
On the Twelfth Night of Christmas, Jan. 6, Tony and his wife, Elizabeth, gave a huge party at his old studio on Robertson Boulevard, between Santa Monica and Keith, which was once owned by Norma Talmadge. It had a ballroom that was 150 feet long, 28 feet wide and 28 feet high with a stage at the end. He had all of his collections, antiques and treasures and workrooms in that building.
Before anyone was doing those little white lights all over the exterior of the buildings, Tony did it. You had to go through a garden gate on Robertson and go quite a distance, walking through a tunnel of light in his jungle of plants until you reached the porch with mirrors on the ceiling and 16th century Spanish front doors.
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What was going on inside?
It was extremely dressy, usually black tie. For Tony, that meant having his clothes made from brocades and velvets at a place where they tailored vestments for priests. Everyone was invited to bring their children. They would have square-dancing and a parade of puppet shows with Tony’s collection of antique 18th century Sicilian puppets that were at least 3 feet tall. There was always an orchestra and some kind of divertissement, whether it was Balinese or Indian dancers or gambling on the balcony.
Tony always put out a groaning board with turkey and a ham, mulled wine, hot cider and a punch bowl filled with champagne punch that you could get drunk on in a second. The food might be served buffet style, but the tables were set with gold cloths and wonderful centerpieces. One year, Tony made them from Victorian glass domes with taxidermy birds on branches. He’d dress them up in costumes and have pearls coming out of their beaks.
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Did people fight over who got to take them home?
They didn’t need to. Tony always made things for his guests. He’d fill beautiful blue and white Chinese porcelain ginger jars with honey from the bees he kept at his Malibu ranch or get little Japanese wicker shoes and tie fabric around the edges and put silk crocuses in them. He loved artificial flowers, believe it or not. He thought that if you had to sniff it or touch it to know if it was real or fake, it didn’t make any difference.
One year he gave plastic cymbidium orchids, and about six or seven months later, the actress Irene Dunne called him and said, “That orchid is amazing. I give it a little water every day and it never stops blooming.”
When he came to dinner at someone else’s during Christmas, there would always be a present, like a whole bowl of China lilies in a Ming dynasty bowl, which was yours.
The way he passed out jewelry was like a maharajah. Tony spent money like a drunken sailor. He’d never have a dollar on him, but he’d give you 18th century furniture and dishes. His currency was things.
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Were you a beneficiary of his generosity?
Oh, yes. I had wanted to work with him ever since the seventh grade, and I met him in 1972 when I was 18. I worked for two years for free and then three years for $50 every two weeks. When I was 21, he gave me 19th century Regency Wedgwood seashell-shaped plates for my birthday. I thought it was the stupidest present I’d ever gotten, and then I was in an antiques store and I found they were $1,500 each, and I had a set of 24. Now we use them for holidays.
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Are there other ways his presence is felt at this time of year?
Tony used to do garlands all around the room, decorated with bows and musical instruments and sunbursts. He’d also build a tower of poinsettia plants. When his Malibu ranch burned down, he painted a bunch of dead branches a bright coral red. My wife and I have them now, and I prop poinsettias in the crooks of the branches and wire them into place. And then we hang Austrian raindrop crystals that hold water in them, which came from a 1960s Duquette chandelier.
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What is the story behind those little dolls on your table?
Tony originally made them for [legendary interior designer] Elsie de Wolfe. Anything to do with the romance of the Far East and “Arabian Nights” was his thing. He called them ashtray men, but it had nothing to do with ashtrays or smoking. They were hand-painted, molded-plaster decorative figurines that might hold a candle or a seashell. He also made them for women’s dressing tables to display their jewelry. Tony managed to buy back most of the things he made for his clients, but Elsie willed these to him and he presented them to me. That’s the kind of gift Tony gave.
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