Keeping on top of design events sometimes feels like chasing an ever-retreating phantom, and how we at Currey & Company love the pursuit! After wrapping our New York City festivities week before last, we’ve set our sights on the Big D for Dallas Design Week. Today, we host a tell-all chat with Chad James, the principal of the award-winning design firm Chad James Group, in our showroom there. Known for his meticulous attention to detail, he crafts tailored spaces that encapsulate a fine balance of technique and personality so it’s no wonder the roster of notables whose homes he designs includes an array of A-listers.
During his talk, he will share how to land a first celebrity client, speak about his insider experience in managing high-profile personalities, share how he has learned to publicize his work while protecting their privacy, and give insight as to how to grow a design business in the digital age. Stop by our showroom, IHDC 1D228 on the first floor, today from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. to see what this talented industry influencer has to say. There are plenty of other events going on, the full list of which is posted on the Dallas Market Center website here.
September, of course, is always the prelude to High Point Market and we’ve planned some phenomenal events for next month, one of which is a book signing for Timothy Corrigan, whose The New Elegance: Stylish, Comfortable Rooms for Today, was just released by Rizzoli. We caught up with him during What’s New What’s Next in NYC and asked him about why he was inspired to write about this particular subject. “I want people’s homes to allow them to be the best versions of themselves,” he told us. “Being comfortable is such an important element of this, particularly at home.”
To rsvp for this and other events during Market, which will swirl around all of our new introductions, visit our Facebook page. Among these new products will be additions to our upholstery program, which has changes in store beginning this market. We will no longer offer custom fabrics on our seating but will stock and sell the upholstery in muslin and in one particular fabric that our design team designates. This will enable us to stock the upholstery so that our customers won’t have to wait eight-to-twelve weeks for delivery. Two of our new upholstery introductions this market are the Janelle Settee above and the Ines Chair below.
Aimee Kurzner, our director of furniture, says her inspiration for the Janelle stems from an Art Deco shell chair she spotted during her travels and the Ines was influenced by vintage Swedish Gustavian pieces. There are many more new introductions debuting that have equal doses of elegance in their profiles so stop by our High Point showroom at IHFC M110 on Main Street, Street Level, to see for yourself just how beautiful they are!
In case you haven’t noticed, the thread running through our post this month is classic elegance—Chad James and Timothy Corrigan are famous for it, and many of our upholstery pieces being introduced have it in their DNA. So does the Shagreen Credenza, which was inspired by a 1920s vintage piece Aimee recognized as having exemplary bones, which, with her usual panache, she brought a classic elegance perfect for today. Clarence Malari designed the Kingali Chandelier, below, which has seriously classic bones. He calls this shape an inverted ziggurat pyramid, which he created with interlocking sections of natural Rattan and wrought iron that has been treated to a New Brass finish.
Aesthetically, this classic design would be right at home in the Villas designed in Palm Beach by Addison Mizner and John L. Volk, both of whom brought their Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival styles with a Bahamian twist to the southern coast of Florida during the early 20th-century. That’s the thing about authentic design: you never know when inspiration will strike, and our team of talented creatives are so aware of this.
Case in point: while in New York City several weeks ago, several of us visited an exhibition at the Frick Collection, which we wrote about here several months ago. Elective Affinities: Edmund de Waal at The Frick Collection was an inspiration indeed, as the images above and below illustrate. The ethereal porcelain constructions seemed to levitate within the spaces they were set, beckoning us to draw closer and see what cleanly conceived treasures awaited within the sumptuousness of the museum’s interiors. Though the lines of these mixed-media pieces were contemporary, they were no less elegant in the setting.
As the influencers we’ve highlighted this month and the pieces by our design team we’ve featured prove, classic elegance comes in many forms, be it formal, contemporary or every style in between. This is what keeps us creating here at Currey & Company and we can’t wait to share our newest releases with you in a few short weeks. In his introduction to The New Elegance, Corrigan writes, “Elegance is misunderstood.” He goes on to say, “Too often, people think of elegance as being stiff or formal, as something that is applied or put on, a pose one strikes and then struggles to maintain…Nothing could be further from the truth. Elegance is not something that adds stress or difficulty to our lives—quite the contrary. True elegance, to me, means confidence in who you are and what you love, grace in how you handle yourself, and openness to the best in others.” We couldn’t agree more!