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Jewel Votive image is for FPO Cyan Magenta Yellow Black PMS179 Printer will foil stamp Angle@C Angle@M Angle@Y Angle@K SOLID Pantone 179 strip in the bleed area is for the printer to use for spine color use for to the printer is for in the bleed area strip 179 Pantone 115973BK_r1_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 1 9/5/08 5:34:45 PM PMS 179 C Angle@K DECORATING Is NOT A suRfACE pERfORmANCE. IT's A spIRITuAL ImpuLsE, INbORN AND pRImORDIAL. –t d 115973BK_r1_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 2 9/5/08 5:40:23 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black PMS 9040 C Warm Gray 4 Angle@C Angle@M Angle@Y Angle@K SOLID Angle@K Fr o m t h e t i m e h e w a s d i s c o v e r e d in 1941 until his death in 1999, American artist and designer Tony Duquette was known and admired for his exuberant signature style. Considered by many as an American design icon, Duquette left behind an artistic legacy that inspires fantasy and stirs the imagination. The Selected Works of Tony Duquette for Baker Furniture is the result of a close collaboration between the Baker creative team and California designer Hutton Wilkinson, business partner of the late Duquette and president of Tony Duquette, Inc. For these selected pieces, Baker has reverently and accurately reproduced Duquette’s original works— most of which were one-of-a-kind pieces created exclusively for his international clientele. 115973BK_r1_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 3 9/5/08 9:30:47 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@C Angle@M Angle@Y Angle@K Photo: Tim Street-Porter 115973BK_r2_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 4 9/8/08 4:51:23 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black PMS 9040 C Warm Gray 4 Angle@C Angle@M Angle@Y Angle@K SOLID Angle@K The drawing room at Dawnridge, Tony Duquette’s home in Beverly Hills, c. 1995. Following a free-spirited childhood, Tony Duquette began his formal training at the distinguished Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles, California, in the early 1930s. During this time, the young Tony was hired by Bullock’s department stores to create interiors that would set the mood of changing seasons. He continued working in display and advertising for department stores postgraduation until he was discovered by Elsie de Wolfe in 1941. De Wolfe, also referred to as Lady Mendl through her marriage to Sir Charles Mendl, was known as the “First Lady of Interior Decoration” and perhaps the first professional interior designer. Duquette assisted de Wolfe with the interiors of her new Beverly Hills home and went on, with her sponsor- ship, to a successful international career in design. 115973BK_r2_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 5 9/8/08 1:00:14 PM Black PMS 9040 C Warm Gray 4 Angle@K SOLID Angle@K In these early years, Duquette’s work impressed the influential film director Vincente Minnelli, who immediately hired him to create extraordinary costumes and sets for his films. Duquette contributed his artistry to various Fred Astaire musicals and other Arthur Freed productions at MGM Studios, including Ziegfeld Follies, Yolanda and the Thief and Kismet. Over the following years, he continued his work in the film industry with MGM, as well as 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios. With his entry into Hollywood, Duquette gained many friends and clients, including Mary Pickford, Marion Davies, Agnes Moorhead and Robert Cummings. In addition to costumes, sets and interior décor, Duquette frequently designed jewelry for friends and family. Soon he was creating pieces for patrons such as the Duchess of Windsor and Palmer Ducommun. He often mixed gemstones with natural materials such as sharks’ teeth and rattlesnake vertebrae to construct these highly sought-after accessories. In 1951, Tony Duquette became the first American to have been honored with a one-man exhibition at the Pavilion de Marsan of the Louvre, Paris. His Neo-Baroque works were chosen by the Louvre to represent the decorative arts of the mid-20th century. Duquette’s creations for the program fell into one of five categories: décor, jewelry, aquarelles, bas-reliefs and theatre. Duquette’s work astonished and amazed those who attended. The great French poetess Louise de Vilmorin wrote of the exhibit, “The works of Tony Duquette are no more preconceived than dreams, these works are dreams caught in the net of reality.” After the Louvre exhibition, Duquette went on to exhibit his works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the de Young and California Palace of the Legion of Honor museums in San Francisco, the Museum of the City of New York, as well as museums in Texas, Hawaii and Rio de Janeiro. He traveled the world extensively to gain inspiration for these shows, returning home from each trip with many containers of treasure, which he would then “assemble” to form his ornaments or ornament his forms. In 1956 Tony and his wife Elizabeth—whom he lovingly nicknamed Beegle—acquired the old Norma Talmadge film studio, a giant sound stage they would convert into 115973BK_r2_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 6 9/8/08 6:40:13 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@C Angle@M Angle@Y Angle@K In 1951 Duquette was invited to present a one-man exhibition at the Pavilion de Marsan of the Louvre, Paris. This was an unprecedented exhibition, as it was the first time an American had been honored in this way. Duquette was chosen to represent the decorative arts of the mid-20th century. 115973BK_r2_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 7 9/8/08 12:50:31 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@C Angle@M Angle@Y Angle@K Loretta Young wears her Tony Duquette mask at the bal de tête in Los Angeles. Here Tony and Loretta accept first prize for her mask. 115973BK_r2_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 8 9/8/08 2:24:51 PM Black PMS 9040 C Warm Gray 4 Angle@K SOLID Angle@K their own home/studio—one of their many homes over the years. This vast building consisted of work rooms, creative studio spaces, dining rooms, offices and bedroom suites. Perhaps more important, the home boasted a ballroom that was 100 feet long, 25 feet wide and had 28-foot ceilings, with a stage at one end and a double Venetian staircase at the other. The room, referred to as the “big room,” was the perfect setting for Duquette’s famously extravagant private parties. The historic Tony Duquette Studios on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles became a haven of grace and charm, and a favorite destination for Duquette’s legendary clients and friends. Among these friends was Hutton Wilkinson, who began working with Tony as a teenager, forging a creative partnership that lasted until Duquette’s death in 1999. Wilkinson now serves as President and Creative Director of Tony Duquette, Inc. The team’s private clients have included Doris Duke, J. Paul Getty, Norton Simon, David O. Selznick, Jennifer Jones and James Coburn. Commercial clients for whom Duquette and Wilkinson have worked include Elizabeth Arden, the Hilton Hotels Corporation, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Sheraton Hotels and the Music Center of Los Angeles. International commissions include Barretstown Castle in Ireland, an 18th-century apartment on the Place du Palais-Bourbon in Paris, and the interiors for the 12th-century Palazzo Brandolini on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. Duquette’s goal was to inspire individuality and creativity in others. He never duplicated any of his work. Each job was custom-inspired by the client, the architecture and his own distinct vision. Said Wilkinson, “His attitude was that the last definition of luxury was that it’s just for you.” Though Duquette’s style could hardly be defined, he liked to refer to his work as “Natural Baroque” because of his use of shells, antlers, coral, bones and feathers. Tony drew inspiration from countless periods and styles—from Victorian to Moroccan to ancient Chinese. 115973BK_r2_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 9 9/8/08 6:44:02 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@C Angle@M Angle@Y Angle@K Duquette in his New York studio, sketching costumes for the original Broadway production of Camelot. 115973BK_r2_67007_TDuquette_v19.indd 10 9/8/08 5:14:46 PM Black PMS 9040 C Warm Gray 4 Angle@K SOLID Angle@K The designer authoritatively mixed his custom-made pieces with ancient and modern art, fine and decorative art. He combined his scholar’s knowledge and appreciation for the fine and decorative arts with his acute sense of scale to make the whole of his work greater than the sum of its parts. Duquette felt as comfortable working with gold paper as he did with solid gold, often saying, “Beauty, not luxury, is what I value.” In the 21st century, Tony Duquette’s design legacy is more relevant than ever. In a March 1999 article, Amy Spindler, style editor of The New York Times magazine, wrote: What makes Duquette the first designer for the 21st century is his ability to re-imagine, recycle and regenerate. It’s the prototype for how people will have to approach design in the future … It’s also apparent that Duquette is more than just a jeweler-artist-interior designer; he made his name in a time in which living was an art, too, and the parties he threw with his wife, Elizabeth … regularly made headlines right out of “L.A. Confidential.” Tony Duquette, Inc. preserves the late designer’s legacy, encompassing the arts of living and the living arts, designs for the theatre, and fine jewelry. Through his collaboration with Baker Furniture, Wilkinson continues the Duquette tradition of luxury and handmade decoration that is so closely associated with his firm and its founder.