PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: interior design

40 Biographies
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Robert Adam

Scottish architect

Robert Adam, Scottish architect and designer who, with his brother James (1730–94), transformed Palladian Neoclassicism in England into the airy, light, elegant style that bears their name. His major architectural…...
Philippe Starck

French designer

Philippe Starck, French designer known for his wide range of designs, including everything from interior design to household objects to boats to watches. He has also worked as an architect. Most likely…...
Giulio Romano: Palazzo del Te
Giulio Romano

Italian artist and architect

Giulio Romano, late Renaissance painter and architect, the principal heir of Raphael, and one of the initiators of the Mannerist style. Giulio was apprenticed to Raphael as a child and had become so important…...
Vase of Favrile glass made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York City, 1896; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Louis Comfort Tiffany

American designer

Louis Comfort Tiffany, American painter, craftsman, philanthropist, decorator, and designer, internationally recognized as one of the greatest forces of the Art Nouveau style, who made significant contributions…...
Elsie de Wolfe.
Elsie de Wolfe

American interior designer

Elsie de Wolfe, American interior decorator, hostess, and actress, best known for her innovative and anti-Victorian interiors. De Wolfe was educated privately in New York and in Edinburgh, Scotland, where…...
William Kent, engraving
William Kent

British architect

William Kent, English architect, interior designer, landscape gardener, and painter, a principal master of the Palladian architectural style in England and pioneer in the creation of the “informal” English…...
Charles Le Brun

French painter

Charles Le Brun, painter and designer who became the arbiter of artistic production in France during the last half of the 17th century. Possessing both technical facility and the capacity to organize and…...
Andrée Putman

French designer

Andrée Putman, French designer, known for her Minimalist, avant-garde furnishings and interior designs. Putman was educated in Paris at the Collège d’Hulst and studied piano at the Paris Conservatory,…...
Rosso Fiorentino

Italian painter

Rosso Fiorentino, Italian painter and decorator, an exponent of the expressive style that is often called early, or Florentine, Mannerism, and one of the founders of the Fontainebleau school. Rosso received…...
Francesco Primaticcio

Italian painter

Francesco Primaticcio, Italian Mannerist painter, architect, sculptor, and leader of the first school of Fontainebleau. Primaticcio was first trained as an artist in Bologna, under Innocenzo da Imola and…...
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel
Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine

French architect

Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine, pair of French architects and interior designers who carried out many building and decorative projects during the reign of Napoleon I and helped create the influential…...
André-Charles Boulle

French cabinetmaker

André-Charles Boulle, one of France’s leading cabinetmakers, whose fashion of inlaying, called boulle, or buhl, work, swept Europe and was heavily imitated during the 18th and 19th centuries. Multitalented,…...
Germain Boffrand

French architect

Germain Boffrand, French architect noted for the great variety, quantity, and quality of his work. Boffrand went to Paris in 1681, where, after studying sculpture for a time under François Girardon, he…...
Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Scottish architect and designer

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect and designer who was prominent in the Arts and Crafts Movement in Great Britain. He was apprenticed to a local architect, John Hutchinson, and attended evening…...
Etching of a design for a table from his book, Ornamens Inventory, by Jean Berain the Elder, c. 1670–1700.
Jean Berain, the Elder

French designer and painter

Jean Berain, the Elder, French draftsman, engraver, painter, and designer who was called by his contemporaries the oracle of taste in all matters of decoration. Trained under the great French decorator…...
Duncan Grant

British painter

Duncan Grant, innovative British Post-Impressionist painter and designer. He was one of the first English artists to assimilate the influence of Paul Cézanne and the Fauves. The son of a military officer,…...
Asam, Cosmas Damian: The Ascension of Christ
Cosmas Damian Asam

German painter

Cosmas Damian Asam, German fresco painter and principal late Baroque exponent of illusionist decoration. He, along with his brother Egid Quirin Asam, produced works notable for their profound and dramatic…...
Fritz A. Breuhaus

German architect

Fritz A. Breuhaus, German architect who specialized in interior design, particularly for transportation. Breuhaus trained at the Polytechnic in Stuttgart and was a student of Peter Behrens at Düsseldorf’s…...
Steinhausen: pilgrimage church
Dominikus Zimmermann

German architect

Dominikus Zimmermann, Bavarian Baroque architect and stuccoist whose church at Wies is considered one of the finest accomplishments of Baroque architecture. Zimmermann was taught stuccowork by Johann Schmutzer…...
Gerhard Dagly

Flemish artist

Gerhard Dagly, royal Kammerkünstler, or chamber artist, who, as one of the greatest craftsmen in European lacquer, was an important force behind the Baroque style. After importers brought goods from the…...
Mark Iredell Hampton, Jr.

American interior designer

Mark Iredell Hampton, Jr., American interior designer (born June 1, 1940, Plainfield, Ind.—died July 23, 1998, New York, N.Y.), decorated the homes of such luminaries as George and Barbara Bush, Jacqueline…...
Egid Quirin Asam

German architect

Egid Quirin Asam, late Baroque architect whose work, often produced in collaboration with his brother Cosmas Damian Asam, utilized illusionist decoration and exhibited great religious sentiment. Asam,…...
Daniel Marot

French architect and designer

Daniel Marot, French-born Dutch architect, decorative designer, and engraver whose opulent and elaborate designs contributed to European styles of decoration in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.…...
Edward Godwin

British architect and writer

Edward Godwin, British architect, designer, and writer notable for his contributions to the English Aesthetic movement in design, which drew its inspiration mainly from East Asia, particularly from Japan.…...
Robert de Cotte

French architect

Robert de Cotte, influential French architect who created mansions now regarded as the epitome of early Rococo residential design. De Cotte was a pupil and assistant of the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart…...
Donald Deskey

American designer

Donald Deskey, American industrial designer who helped establish industrial design as a profession. Deskey attended the University of California at Berkeley, the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (now San…...
Art Nouveau initial
Henry van de Velde

Belgian architect

Henry van de Velde, Belgian architect and teacher who ranks with his compatriot Victor Horta as an originator of the Art Nouveau style, characterized by long sinuous lines derived from naturalistic forms.…...
Henry Holland

British architect

Henry Holland, English architect whose elegant, simple Neoclassicism contrasted with the more lavish Neoclassical style of his great contemporary Robert Adam. Beginning as an assistant to his father, a…...
Grinling Gibbons.
Grinling Gibbons

British sculptor

Grinling Gibbons, British wood-carver known for his decorative woodwork and for much stone ornamentation at Blenheim and Hampton Court palaces and at St. Paul’s Cathedral. After a childhood in the Netherlands,…...
Thomas Hope

English author and furniture designer

Thomas Hope, English author and furniture designer who was a major exponent of the Regency style of English decorative arts. Hope was a member of a rich banking family that had emigrated from Scotland…...
Etching of a design for a counterpane by Pineau, c. 1740
Nicolas Pineau

French sculptor and interior designer

Nicolas Pineau, French wood-carver and interior designer, a leader in the development of interior decorating in the light, asymmetric, lavishly decorated Rococo style. After study with the architects François…...
Achille Castiglioni

Italian architect and designer

Achille Castiglioni, Italian architect and interior designer (born Feb. 16, 1918, Milan, Italy—died Dec. 2, 2002, Milan), produced modern furnishings and accessories that were noted for their functional…...
Juste-Aurèle Meissonier

French architect and goldsmith

Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, French goldsmith, interior decorator, and architect, often considered the leading originator of the influential Rococo style in the decorative arts. Early in his career Meissonier…...
Giacomo Serpotta

Italian sculptor

Giacomo Serpotta, the outstanding member of a family of Sicilian sculptors and stucco workers. His methods for creating the illusion of perspective and his asymmetrical arrangements of two or more independent…...
rocaille decorated doors
François de Cuvilliés the Elder

French architect

François de Cuvilliés the Elder, chief architect and decorator in the Bavarian Rococo style. He was trained in Paris before his appointment (1725) as court architect to Duke Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria.…...
Alfred Stevens

English designer, painter, and sculptor

Alfred Stevens, English designer, painter, and sculptor notable for the Michelangelesque vigour of his work, particularly in his interior decorations for the dining room of the Dorchester House, home of…...
David Nightingale Hicks

British interior decorator

David Nightingale Hicks, British interior decorator known for his use of bold, vibrant colours, for his mixture of antique and contemporary furnishings and modern art, and for the large number of aristocrats…...
Sir Osbert Lancaster, 1960
Sir Osbert Lancaster

English cartoonist and author

Sir Osbert Lancaster, English cartoonist, stage designer, and writer, best-known for his suave cartoons that appeared from 1939 in the Daily Express (London), which gently satirized the English upper class,…...
Gustav Stickley

American designer

Gustav Stickley, American furniture designer and maker who largely created what came to be known as the Mission style. Stickley learned basic furniture-making skills in a Pennsylvania chair factory owned…...
Gio Ponti

Italian architect

Gio Ponti, Italian architect and designer associated with the development of modern architecture and modern industrial design in Italy. Ponti graduated in 1921 from the Milan Polytechnic. From 1923 to…...
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