Zina Glazebrook,
Zina Glazebrook Design
The Primitive Modernist
Raised in Philadelphia and Bedford, N.Y., Zina Glazebrook grew up immersed in the New England aesthetic, which she describes as "a country traditional, perhaps a little bit English country house look that is very comfortable." But what marks Ms. Glazebrook's style is a combination of her New England upbringing and the era in which she came of age: the inquisitive, eclectic and hypercreative 1960s. Glazebrook actually began her design career in the 1980s with a company called Inside-Out, which created window displays for art galleries and New York stores like Kitchen Classics and Mythology. Using folk art, vintage toys and raw elements from nature, Ms. Glazebrook's windows were more narrative than commercial (a 1989 New York Times "Style Makers" piece described her approach as "idiosyncratic and imaginative"), and people who'd fallen in love with her windows began requesting her help with their private interiors. She's not lost her artist's heart; Ms. Glazebrook prefers to keep her company, ZG Design, small and intimate. "I like the personal side of the work," she says. "It's great to have people execute what you do, but I believe that these projects really require you being there."
I was looking at your website, which had photos of some of your St. Louis projects; what was your experience here?
I found that it was really a fun place to work because of the artisans and the local workrooms that I got involved with. What was so nice was that they were family-owned and -operated for the most part — and just had such great history.
So you've done two projects here?
In one case, we totally redid an old Tudor house located in Clayton, and it was a really long, long project ... The other project, I was just coming in after a bad decorating experience. They'd seen the big project I was working on. And we're socially friendly with this other couple. So it was interesting to come at two different projects with completely different sensibilities to them. The first one was a project where my client, who had lived in New York, ended up falling in love, getting married and moving to St. Louis and kept thinking how impossible it would be to bring someone in from the East Coast to work on this. However, we worked it out. It was great. The other couple, who were friends of my clients with the bigger house, had just run out of steam with their decorator. They had two little boys and really wanted to just feel done. So that's how I got involved, and I kind of wove in and out of the work that I was doing on the bigger project.
So the tudor house took two years ... it sounds like an incredibly involved project.
I go back and look at those pictures, and I just feel that I am really happy about that house. That house to me was a triumph, because I can't say that Tudor is my favorite architecture by any means, having grown up around New York and in the Adirondacks, but I began to love that house. It was really exciting to be part of it. To open it up and not just keep the integrity of the old dark paneling but add to it. It's magical.
You used a phrase on your site that I really liked: "Primitive Modernism." Can you talk a little bit about that?
The idea of primitive modernism really came about from a project that I was working on, and I thought this really gets to some of everything ... It's that kind of clean, Modernist approach of wonderful paint colors, simple finishes and beautiful, primitive pieces planted within it. So whether you need to do that in a classical way or a primitive way or a modern way, it's that mix of bringing a little bit of a surprise to the project. It's that mixture of throwing in a wonderful piece, a primitive piece, whether it's folk art or a beautiful old piece of handmade furniture, that's what I refer to as primitive — it can be quite deluxe, but it's the simplicity of it and its simple lines that make it exciting. I think of Shaker as being modern; it's like the epitome of modern.
Marshall Watson,
Marshall Watson Interiors Ltd.
The Spell of the Classic
This Kansas City native founded his design firm in 1985. Since then, he's worked on projects from California to Tokyo, from 30,000-square-foot new homes to historic rehabs. Though he's well-versed in the art of redoing tiny New York apartments and has no qualms about "absolute German Modernism," his line for Lewis Mittman — inspired by French men's club furniture of the '30s and '40s — reveals him as a fan of the luxurious and the traditional. There's always a twist, though: his "Moustache" club chair, for instance, features whimsical curves in the shape of — you guessed it — an old-fashioned handlebar moustache.
How many projects are you working on here locally?
I'm counting right now — I'm working on one, two, three ... four, five ... six ... seven. Seven projects in St. Louis right now. I have been working there almost 15 years, and I have discovered a number of terrific resources. There is an upholsterer in St. Louis that I send around the country.
I was curious to know what you see in St. Louis that's unique — whether it's architecture or funny little interior details.
I have worked in suburbs all over the country, from California, across the Midwest, Greenwich, Long Island and out in the horse country of New Jersey. And what St. Louis has that very few places have is this astonishing, well-preserved cache of residential architecture. It's so extensive. Your Central West End is one spectacular mansion after another; it's something you can't take for granted, because it doesn't exist in such a well-preserved state in many places. Then you bounce from there to Clayton, and you have these beautiful, almost estate-like homes that were built in the 1920s and '30s, and some in the '40s.
So the predictable question: What have been your most memorable projects here?
We restored a wonderful 1920s home that was built by a lumber baron. It was just a pleasure to try to imagine the original architect's intention and to take that a step further by developing the entire second floor, especially making bathrooms with all the conveniences that we have now in the next millennium. We wanted them to feel like they were always there, like "Good Lord, they were so clever at that time." Because the owner was in lumber, there was a particular library we restored with very, very thin pine veneers from a tree that had been diseased, so it had all of these gnarls. It was incredibly curly, and nobody could figure out what the wood was because it was so highly figured! Then someone figured out, "Well, this was just a very sick old pine." You do a lot of archival work; we found some of the original photographs, and though we did not restore the rooms to that point, what was wonderful about this particular house was that it was certainly large enough for them to live in. Many of these houses are large enough without adding on a large great room. What I like to do in St. Louis is to work within the framework of these houses, as opposed to saying, "Well, we've got to add on something."I've never wanted to add on, and that has been the hallmark of my work.
Ann Ferguson,
Ferguson Associates
Master of the Mix
Ann Ferguson is based in Maryland, but you can still hear the lilt of a Southern accent in her voice; a graduate of the University of Georgia, she began her career designing commercial interiors and ran a large architecture firm in Atlanta before founding Ferguson Associates. Though she grew up in a house full of antiques, currently lives in a historic house and studied English country houses and French architecture in Provence, Ms. Ferguson will tell you that the magic is in the mix. That is, though you ignore the established rules of design at your peril, a really lively and comfortable interior comes from a mix of both the modern and the traditional."It's harder to do than people think," she says of mixing styles.
So what projects have you been working on here in our neck of the woods?
The project I have just finished was an English house in Ladue. It was a renovation, but they had to tear the whole end of the house off. The wife, when she was in her early twenties, lived in London. She became the hot artist, and she would go out to these people's country houses and photograph their animals, and then she would go back during the week and do a portrait. So she was in a lot of English country houses and knew that was what she wanted. We worked with the architect, and he did a lot of the exterior, but we did a lot of the interior drawings, for the paneling, the fireplace. We worked with the kitchen designer to make sure the kitchen had the right feel of an English country house. We did the paneling as light as we felt like we could, so that it didn't seem dark. And then we put in dormers so that it has the feeling of the skylight. The colors that we used were rich, but still earthy. I guess we worked on it for 2 1/2 years.
How long have you been working here, and what have you noticed while working in St. Louis?
I've probably been doing projects in St. Louis for 15 years. In the early 1900s, St. Louis was the third largest city in the country. So there is a wealth of beautiful architecture from that era. I think it has left a lasting impression on the people there. So even when they build new houses, a lot of them want that classical style, whether they want a French house or an English house. Now, I like to do an eclectic mix, but I think [what you need] if you are going to do that is to make sure you have the scale correct. Because the principles of design still apply, even if you are pulling from different eras. We did a French house, which was new construction, on the St. Louis Country Club grounds. The owners' direction was to make it look like it had always been there, from the time that neighborhood was developed.
I know that sometimes making new construction true to period can be pretty tricky.
Well, on the French house, we had a mock-up of the brick done ... We painted the bricks beige to try and communicate what we were thinking of, because a picture is worth a thousand words in design. And then the painter said, "Yes, I can do that," and did a sample on the end of the house. I just wanted to make sure it was accurate.
You've mentioned that your clients appreciate your work even more after living with it for a while.
It's been great when I've had clients who travel and then come back and say, "I love the house even more now." The best client compliment I ever got was someone who said, "I get up every morning, and I walk through the house on the way to the kitchen, and I think, 'This is so beautiful, I can't believe I live here.'" Her life was transformed, it is happier because of design. People don't believe that until they actually experience it.
Thomas Britt,
Thomas Britt, Inc.
Color Theorist
When he was just in his twenties, Tom Britt was hired to redecorate New York society matron Jeannette Solomon's apartment — even though she could have used, and previously did use, legendary designer Rose Cumming. Ironically, it was this East Coast connection that eventually brought this Missouri boy to St. Louis to work: "Jeannette's son, Peter, was married to Evelyn Newman's daughter, Linda," Mr. Britt remembers. "And I did things for Linda and Peter." Born in Kansas City, Mr. Britt first studied design in Parsons' European program and founded his own design firm in 1964; his clients have included the Woolworths, Count and Countess John Forgach and Her Highness Rajmata of Jaipur. As impressive as these facts may be, just listen to him talk about color, and it's clear that Tom Britt is, fundamentally, an artist.
Did you want to talk specifically about one st. louis project that was especially exciting?
Well, everything's exciting — or I wouldn't be doing it! Write that down. And I don't care if the jobs are a lot of money or a little money. What I care about is the people and whether you can really give it a look of style. And my look is style.
Do you approach design from a more European frame of mind, do you think?
Well, it depends on the client. We do what works for the job, and where it is. The Newmans was traditional, clean and upbeat. And their home is very much of the late 20th century; I'd describe it as traditional with a contemporary beat. These things, they're like music or a ballet.
I would think that most of your jobs here are more traditional — St. Louis is like that.
It all depends on the person. [Caryl Sunshine and I] went to a demolition place and gathered all these old French doors and things, so we were able to do the house with a lot of character. The hall is lacquered ivory white, and it bisects the house. To the right of it is a master bedroom that's in yellow, like jonquil yellow. There is a study that's a deep, wonderful kind of magnolia-leaf green. The living room is a marvelous kind of blue, like the sky on a clear July day. It's a wonderful blue with definition, like a beautiful blue sky. Not pale blue — blue. It's like the French flag. Then that has a chintz played against it that has a red background with blues and greens. Then the dining room has red lacquer walls. Really red. The family room and kitchen are in black lacquer. We have wonderful black background chintz in there. The floors are stripped, bleached and stained, off-white just like the scrubbed floors in Sweden, throughout the entire house. If you look at these various jobs I've done there, some cost a lot of money, some didn't cost a lot of money, they're all different things. It depends on what people had to use and the size of the space. [There is] a big project we are working on now. It's in Ladue. We found some wonderful antiques that I wove into it — what I did, again, was took a very fresh approach with color, very definitive color. And again, some of my signature antique Dhurrie rugs, mixed with some contemporary rugs. I wanted to give it some drama.
