#parish-hadley

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“Parish-Hadley - Tree of Life”

The parlor of Julia Reed’s house in New Orleans featured in Parish-Hadley - Tree of Life. We created a scheme based on Julia’s memory of her grandmother’s house in Nashville, decorated by Herbert Rogers with a young Albert Hadley as assistant. 

The amazing legacy of Parish-Hadley is in the spotlight with the publication of a new book of reminisces of Sister Parish and Albert by their “colleagues” (as they called their employees) who went on to have careers of their own. The firm was always keen to hire the best talent without fear of future competition. Philosophically, Albert always felt that everyone in the end should “go out on their own.”  

Excerpted here is a passage I wrote for the book which speaks of the type of growth and mutually beneficial transition he encouraged. I have also included the last photographs of Albert’s legendary apartment that I published in The Finest Rooms, a collection of rooms that represent American refinement, something I learned a great deal about at Parish-Hadley.

From my section in Parish Hadley - Tree of Life

Albert taught me how to go about making a comfortable room, and having an object of quality as a focus. I have never been in a Parish-Hadley room that did not have a work of art—usually the object of focus that a room is arranged around. It may not have always been valuable, but there was art. And there was always thought given to the room’s arrangement. This is what makes a fine room.

Not long ago I wrote The Finest Rooms in America, a personal selection  of American rooms that I consider fine, all created by designers other than me. I asked to feature the sitting room of Albert’s apartment as the last room in the book, and he gave me permission to photograph it. Then, the day before the shoot, he called to say he had changed his mind. “This room is not grand enough,” he said. I paused, then asked to go ahead with the photographs, offering to show him the layout for his approval. And I emphasized that the point I wanted to make in the book is that a fine room is not just a room of extreme luxury, it is a room with a focus and thought about its arrangement. His room epitomized how a relatively modest space can be a fine room, and in the end he blessed the manuscript.

As I showed him the layout, he was talking about closing his firm, and about the people who had most recently worked for him. He said, “You know, I did what I always do. I encouraged them to go out on their own.” That was his way, and likely why there are so many Parish-Hadley “alumni”.

It turns out that my photographs of the living room and the sitting room are the last photographs taken of his apartment. The living room has that great, of-the-moment holographic paper on the ceiling. The Italian crane lamp with colored shades had been in his apartment since the 1950s, and he just moved it forward. You can see certain pieces he carries over, and new pieces he adds. He had a great eye for arrangement, and he was very editorial about his own rooms. Not all of us can live up to that standard, but it is highly inspirational.

  And here is the passage I wrote on Albert’s apartment from The Finest Rooms in America:

Albert Hadley was reticent for his New York apartment to be represented here because he felt it was not grand enough. But, while it is not a large space, Hadley’s sitting room encapsulates the notion that refinement is not about size. In fact, the success of Hadley’s room is created by its intimacy as well as by the play of patterns and voids that come together in a complete and artistic picture. On one wall there is an alcove with a day bed under a mirror. Opposite, a framed panel of turquoise serves as a centering device. All of the walls are covered in one of Hadley’s signature patterns and the shiny brown lacquered ceiling highlights the regular geometry, uniting all the parts of the room and injecting a sense of expansiveness into the small space. The white-painted chairs and lacquered work table are light and effortless to rearrange, making it easier to move about the room and to use the space for different occasions. Hadley has also set the visual center relatively low, making the room welcoming and commodious. His works of art, many of them associated with some of the most important figures of twentieth-century American decoration, including Elsie de Wolfe, Van Day Truex, and Eleanor Brown, represent the continuum of great decorators among which Hadley can easily be counted. What makes this or any room fine? It is the sum of parts, whether elaborate or simple, novel or well-known, that in the end, as Hadley so remarkably demonstrates, is the tangible genius of its maker.

 (Above photos show Albert Hadley’s sitting room, and below his living room and entry. Photos by Kerri McCaffety)

Further reading:

See Architectural Digest’s review of the book.

My own tribute to Albert from 2012 in TMagazine’s blog.

And, Albert’s obituary from the New York Times which illuminates his life and achievements.

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Nice People Have Curtains: "Capricious Fancy: Draping and Curtaining the Historic Interior, 1800-1930" by Gail Caskey Winkler

A plate from The Decorator’s Portfolio (1885) shows the whimsy and somewhat illogical taste of the late 19th century, featuring everything from a Japanese fan to Medieval weaponry.

“Nice people have curtains,” was often mentioned in my first days of decorating at Parish-Hadley, followed by, “nice people do not have draperies”. Furthermore, the term “drapes” was deemed déclassé.  

At Parish-Hadley we were also required to trim curtains with a complement of tapes and fringes so that they would be properly weighted, and hence fall more beautifully, along with eliminating any rough edges. In short, the rule was, and remains in our sphere that, “No curtains should be delivered untrimmed.”

This advice from Parish-Hadley reflects the role of Sister Parish and Albert Hadley as decorators working at the end of the golden age of curtains in interior decoration. Their imparted wisdom resonates with me and predisposes my admiration for a new book by Gail Caskey Winkler, Capricious Fancy: Draping and Curtaining the Historic Interior, 1800-1930.

Well illustrated with images from antique sources, it is a visual delight and extremely informative. Her thesis is that curtains evolved through the technological advances made during the Industrial Revolution. Mass production allowed for a more affordable and wider range of fabrics, while an increasing number of print sources, especially those able to render images in color, disseminated the ever changing fashions in draping windows, beds, rooms, etc. She also writes that Paris, the traditional  epicenter of luxury goods, was the source or influence of almost every curtain design throughout this period.  

Today, at Jayne Design Studio, we usually make simpler curtain panels that offer little evidence of the grand designs that preceded ours. Only occasionally do we make elaborate pelmets, or valances, with swags and jabots.  The curtains we made at Drumlin Hall were based on a design from a book that, in fact, Winkler illustrated other plates from. These curtains are some of the handsomest we have ever conceived.

The drawing room curtains at Drumlin Hall are shown, right. Left, the source image from which these curtains were adapted. 

The stenciled window shade was also adapted for these windows by artist Lucretia Moroni’s studio, Fatto a Mano.

A more expansive view of the drawing room at Drumlin Hall

Our more typical curtain designs resemble these which were created for a Pennsylvania bedroom. However, be assured, we maintain, as much as taste and circumstance will bear, the rich tradition Capricious Fancy records and almost all of our curtains are trimmed.

Simple (but trimmed) curtains in the bedroom of a Pennsylvania house

The following is a link with further information on Gail’s great book from the University of Pennsylvania Press website. Bear in mind that the few plates shown below cannot fully convey the book's beauty and I suggest you also use the link to buy this grand piece of scholarship now.

And, here is a selection of plates from the book.

Percier and Fontaine’s bed design for “Mme. M” published in Recueil de décorations intérieures (1801) was highly influential throughout the 19th century.

Le Mésangère’s diluted copy of Percier and Fontaine’s design, as published in Meubles et Objets de Goût (1804), made it a more accessible commodity.

An exuberant French Empire bed with an asymmetrical arrangement of curtains and giltwood elements as published by Hallavant and Osmont (circa 1810-1815).

An American design for “continued curtains“ after a French prototype from The Repository (September, 1815)

Another design for continued curtains from Rudolph Ackermann’s A Series, Containing Forty-four Engravings in Colours, of Fashionable Furniture; Consisting of Beds, sofas, Ottomans, Window curtains, Chairs, Tables, Book-cases, &c &c. , 1823

Designs from The Cabinet-Maker & Upholsterer’s Guide, 1826

Examples of geometric valances from The Upholsterer's Pocket Collection of Fashionable Designs, c. 1835

A plate from Desire Guilmard’s Le Garde-Meuble ancien et moderne, 1850. Illustrating Winkler’s thesis about the dissemination of French prototypes, this design was copied in black and white and published in Godey’s Lady’s Book in October, 1851.

Two examples of elaborately draped fireplaces from the Album de la tenture (circa 1850) define mid-19th century French taste.

Jules Verdellet’s Manuel Géométrique du tapissier (1851) was an invaluable resource to drapery workrooms throughout the mid to late 19th-century, being republished continuously from 1851 to 1883. This particular illustration is the earliest depiction of “square” pleats and “cup” pleats.

Another illustration from Verdellet which shows methods for cutting covers for chandeliers, sconces, and clocks.

A "Salon de repos" from La Disposition des appartements, written by E. Maincent and published around 1885. The original series includes eighteen double-page plates with “exploded” room views, four of which illustrate the exotic taste popular in the latter part of the 19th century, including the design above. This room shows a hammock along with many other Middle Eastern elements.

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