on Saturday and Sunday, and will stop bringing clients to the event at 3:30 p.m. You will be shuttled from the Bratenahl Center at 11404 Lakeshore Blvd. So you can be out of town.This collection is housed within a gated community. I just want to wish you the very best of Birthdays. What a treasure it is to have visited it with you! The famous “Yellow Room” with the interior designed by John Fowler which has been a huge influence on Mario’s work and his signature color. Most notably we visited the famous and now I think renovated Colefax & Fowler premises on Brook Street. It was quintessential Mario, decorative rabbits, cabbage plates and quirky small pieces of painted furniture. What an education! We visited Stephens Long’s Antique Shop on Fulham road which was a haunt I believe for John Fowler. I remember one time going thru a fair with him and being enthralled with a piece of furniture and he whispers it’s a fake. When I moved to England in 1998 to work for Arthur Brett as Director of Design we would meet up in London and visit Fairs and Antiques Shop. I really don’t think I would have designed my British India Collection for John Widdicomb if I was not steeped in his influence of English furniture and interior decoration. Mario loves to tease me about my Russian Furniture Collection that I designed for John Widdicomb, “Chad that Russian Furniture is just rushing down the river”. Mario with his wonderful book of interior designs. I learned so much from him about furniture, fakes, and friendship. We would frequent Park Avenue sweet shops, client homes, bookstores, antique shops, fairs, and showhouses. Mario and I would continue to meet when I was in New York. His extraordinary talent for interior design second only to his irreverent sense of humor on full display. Mario who I consider to have one of the worlds greatest sense of color captivated the throng of press and John Widdicombs clients. With Mario working with Diane on both the showroom design and new furniture pieces. The first furniture collection in 1989 in High Point was an immediate success. The kitchen was big enough to make a cup of tea. Many years later I would study its history while I was working in England. Culminating with the magnificent English Regency lacquer four poster bed with its twin in the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. Black lacquer export furniture spread throughout. The famous Red Lacquer Secretaire with its pigeonholes stuffed with glazed cabbage ornaments. The apartment was amazing with the living room dressed in signature Buatta yellow with a swirl of coral and floral chintz. furniture in Marios’s casual English country house style that would run for 10 years. There wasn’t! That was the start of a wonderful collection of English 18th and 19c. Mario’s office was overflowing, working with one assistant across the desk from him we looked at each other for a place to sit down. We rang the buzzer and garbled speaker blared who is it? Who! Don’t let anybody in it sounded again. My colleague Diane Granda and I stood nervously at the entrance to his townhouse on E.80th St. I was first introduced to Mario in New York in 1988 to discuss the development of his first signature furniture collection for John Widdicomb, in Grand Rapids. Mario Standing on his desk in his office in New York On this day October 20, 1935, the history of Interior Design would be changed forever.
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