Billy Baldwin Research Paper
Billy Baldwin's life and work remembered at museum
Interior designer's trademark rooms were comfortable, fresh and never overbearingly formal
May 29, 2010|By Frederick N. Rasmussen, The Baltimore Sun
Billy Baldwin, the noted Baltimore-born interior designer whose clients included Cole Porter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mike Nichols, Harvey Ladew, William S. Paley and Diana Vreeland, among many others of the jeweled glitterati, is reported to have once said that "good taste is the dullest thing in the world."
"Modernism at Evergreen: Baltimore's Billy Baldwin," a recently opened exhibition at the Evergreen Museum & Library, recalls the career of the man that The New York Times described on his death in 1983 as the "dean of American …show more content…
www.HomeDecorators.com
While the vest-pocket show is rich in Baldwin-related material and graphics that take in the breadth of his career from the 1940s until his death, the focus remains on his Baltimore roots and the enduring influences that the city and its artistic heritage had on his life's work.
"Baltimore always continued to inspire him throughout his career. He was never comfortable in Paris or London and always wanted to head home," said James Archer Abbott, director and curator of the Evergreen Museum & Library, the former home of John Work Garrett, and his wife, Alice, who were patrons of the arts. Evergreen has been administered and owned by the Johns Hopkins University since 1942.
William Williar Baldwin was born in 1903 and spent his early years in a shingled Woodlawn Road home before moving in 1906 to fashionable Goodwood Gardens in Roland Park.
A formative influence on the young Baldwin, according to Abbott's thoroughly researched and colorfully written guide, "Baltimore's Billy Baldwin," which accompanies the show, was Charles J. Benson, a Woodlawn Road neighbor who owned C.J. Benson & Co., a fashionable North Charles Street decorating …show more content…
Baldwin had absorbed his mentor Wood's decorating principles of "the importance of the personal, of the comfortable, and of the new."
He ran Wood's firm for two years after her death before opening Baldwin & Martin Inc. in 1952 with Edward Martin, who had been his assistant at his former firm.
"The relationship between a client must be 'we,' " he told The New York Times in a 1965 profile. "The worst thing any decorator can do is give a client the feeling that he's walking around somebody else's house; the rooms must belong to the owner, not to the decorator; and no rooms can have atmosphere unless they are used and lived in."
When it came to decorating concepts, he had strong likes and dislikes.
"The word that almost makes me throw up is satin; damask makes me throw up," he once told the Times.
"He preferred pure cotton and fake leather, but he loathed fake fireplaces and fake books, believing that books were the greatest decorative element that any room could have. Built-in bookcases were a Baldwin staple," the Times reported at his
Interior designer's trademark rooms were comfortable, fresh and never overbearingly formal
May 29, 2010|By Frederick N. Rasmussen, The Baltimore Sun
Billy Baldwin, the noted Baltimore-born interior designer whose clients included Cole Porter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mike Nichols, Harvey Ladew, William S. Paley and Diana Vreeland, among many others of the jeweled glitterati, is reported to have once said that "good taste is the dullest thing in the world."
"Modernism at Evergreen: Baltimore's Billy Baldwin," a recently opened exhibition at the Evergreen Museum & Library, recalls the career of the man that The New York Times described on his death in 1983 as the "dean of American …show more content…
www.HomeDecorators.com
While the vest-pocket show is rich in Baldwin-related material and graphics that take in the breadth of his career from the 1940s until his death, the focus remains on his Baltimore roots and the enduring influences that the city and its artistic heritage had on his life's work.
"Baltimore always continued to inspire him throughout his career. He was never comfortable in Paris or London and always wanted to head home," said James Archer Abbott, director and curator of the Evergreen Museum & Library, the former home of John Work Garrett, and his wife, Alice, who were patrons of the arts. Evergreen has been administered and owned by the Johns Hopkins University since 1942.
William Williar Baldwin was born in 1903 and spent his early years in a shingled Woodlawn Road home before moving in 1906 to fashionable Goodwood Gardens in Roland Park.
A formative influence on the young Baldwin, according to Abbott's thoroughly researched and colorfully written guide, "Baltimore's Billy Baldwin," which accompanies the show, was Charles J. Benson, a Woodlawn Road neighbor who owned C.J. Benson & Co., a fashionable North Charles Street decorating …show more content…
Baldwin had absorbed his mentor Wood's decorating principles of "the importance of the personal, of the comfortable, and of the new."
He ran Wood's firm for two years after her death before opening Baldwin & Martin Inc. in 1952 with Edward Martin, who had been his assistant at his former firm.
"The relationship between a client must be 'we,' " he told The New York Times in a 1965 profile. "The worst thing any decorator can do is give a client the feeling that he's walking around somebody else's house; the rooms must belong to the owner, not to the decorator; and no rooms can have atmosphere unless they are used and lived in."
When it came to decorating concepts, he had strong likes and dislikes.
"The word that almost makes me throw up is satin; damask makes me throw up," he once told the Times.
"He preferred pure cotton and fake leather, but he loathed fake fireplaces and fake books, believing that books were the greatest decorative element that any room could have. Built-in bookcases were a Baldwin staple," the Times reported at his