Mario Buatta | Emily Evans Eerdmans
Intro: Welcome to the one and only interior design book podcast, Decorating by the Book, hosted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
Emily Eerdmans: Hello, I'm Emily Evans Eerdmans, and my latest book is Mario Buatta: Anatomy of a Decorator.
Suzy Chase: On the heels of Mario Buata 50 years of American Decoration, the “Buattapedia” you went above and beyond with this new book, Anatomy of a Decorator. It includes fantastic photos of Mario designed rooms and never seen before, images from Mario's childhood, and a peek into his personal life. Talk a little bit about discovering these images, sifting through them, and the process of choosing the ones included in the book.
Emily Eerdmans: Well, as you and others may know, Mario had a book that came out before this in 2013 that I helped him write. And it's a very different book. And it became apparent while we were working on that book together that he was disorganized, to say the least, and couldn't access some of the things that he wanted to have in that first book. As I got to know him, and I got to know him very, very well over 2018. And when he died and I actually visited his apartment, which we could never visit while we were working on the first book, I understood what an avalanche of things and papers that he had and that it was just mountains and mountains of stuff. And really, this book couldn't have happened to be the book that I wanted it to be and that I hope everybody thinks it is. If I hadn't been entrusted by Mario's brother to clear out all of his spaces, and that's where we made discoveries. Not many people would look at every single thing before they threw it away to make sure, is this important? Is this going to be revealing? Here's a pile of letters with this scrawling hand and looking closely and discovering, like, oh, my gosh, this is from John Fowler to Mario in the 70s. So I feel so grateful to his brother for allowing me to do that. And I talk about the Mario archives. Well, they were archives I created from sifting through his things. This was the book I thought Mario and I would do together, and that wasn't what he imagined. And the first book is wonderful. And you're like, it's almost his entire body of work. Nearly everything that was ever published of his is in that book, and this book couldn't be that. But what interests me, and I think what interests other people is how did this young man from kind of an immigrant family who didn't finish college, grew up on Staten Island. How did he become, for a minute at least, like America's most famous decorator and known for doing interiors that said old money, when that wasn't how he grew up at all, how did that happen? And so that could only be told in the second book. That was not the story Mario wanted to know. He never wanted to really share his secrets of how did he create a room. And by being able to show the scheme boards and some of the drawings of furniture plans, it was really fun to show all the work that went on behind his kind of joker facade, because he always wanted to make people laugh. He never wanted them to see the hard work that went on behind the scenes. But of course, to create these extremely detailed rooms and houses for these demanding clients, there was a lot of work behind it all.
Suzy Chase: I think what really fascinates me about him is what you just mentioned. He grew up on Staten Island. I don't think his parents were interested in interior design. And he bought his first antique at eleven, and his father could not wrap his head around it.
Emily Eerdmans: That's right. And this was a story Mario told every single time he did a public appearance and gave his standard lecture all over the country. He would always talk about this lap desk and how when he brought it home, his father's reaction was, oh, it's going to have worms in it. Why would you buy something secondhand? You have to leave it in the garage before you can bring it in the house. And I always didn't quite understand his father's mentality. But then when I was really thinking and really researching the first relatives to come to New York or from Sicily and just sort of what their lives were like and where they were living and what their circumstances of, it made sense that when you arrive with not so much, you want to buy new things, there's something about if you're buying something that's antique, you're not seeing it as antique, it's secondhand. And it's like you can't afford the new thing. So then you're making a compromise by buying something secondhand. So then it was like, okay, I get sort of why the father and his mother didn't really get it, but that Mario got it. And I think when you read about the psychology of collectors, there's this through line of collectors are bonding with things more than people for various reasons. And I think it just shows that Mario had that internal connection with material items from a very young age, which is fascinating to me, and really until I visited his apartment once when he was alive. But when I really was cleaning it out and really understanding how he collected and how much he collected, I had a huge appreciation for that.
Suzy Chase: So, speaking of upbringing, in the foreword, Patricia Altschul talks about how she was drawn to Mario's use of color, his love of antiques and exotic objects. But what jumped out at me was they happened to collect the same things. Delft chinese porcelain and dog paintings. It was so interesting how these two very different people from very different backgrounds were drawn together.
Emily Eerdmans: That's so true. Yes, it's absolutely true that they just had a natural affinity for so many of the same things. And it's a very kind of particular taste. It's a taste that's very, I would say, sort of waspy, sort of speaks to ancestral wealth. From a young age, Mario was fascinated by that look. For example, Sister Parish, another interior designer, really represented and grew up in that, you know, Mario would talk to me about this. I think his name was. Was it Tom? But there was a young man on Staten Island who was like blonde and tall and all American and came know a WASPY family and grew up in a house that had all those kinds of things. And Mario just really kind of revered all of that in a way. But that isn't to say that he wasn't comfortable in his own skin. I think that was something that was extremely special about him, is that he never pretended to be something he wasn't and was very genuine. And I think that's why so many clients really felt comfortable and came to adore him. He was the real thing. Yeah. So I think it's a certain kind of taste that you can know when you think of Mrs. Altschull, who is a southerner. It's a very kind of old southern taste. And that's definitely the kind of taste that Mario, growing up saw that in houses and then soon blended it with his love when he discovered the English country house and the John Fowler and Nancy Lancaster color saturation and chintz. And it sort of took that taste to a whole other level for Mario.
Suzy Chase: And I think why his work stood out so much is that one of the places where you connected with Mario because you love the English Country House style?
Emily Eerdmans: Exactly. You know, I grew up in Ohio and we didn't have an interior designer. I think my mother definitely subscribed to architectural digests. Remember seeing those in the bathroom? She loved American folk art and that kind of thing. So we grew up with antiques. But it was a very different. It was not the Mario look at all. And I had gone to grad school in England at Sotheby's Institute, where the program is really focused on the English country house through the centuries and the kind of taste that you find in those collections. And when I came to New York in 2000, and so I was in my mid twenty s, I still had never heard of Mario Buatta, but I worked for a dealer, an English furniture dealer, and it was at the Winter Antique show where they would participate that I first came across him. And it was very clear he was a big deal. And when I was asked to do this book, which was a decade later, why I was so excited to help him with his book is because we did love the same things. I mean, you're absolutely right. But also, if you're a designer and even if you've only been in business for a couple of years, you kind of have to do a book. It's almost part of getting to another level, even if you don't have a huge body of work. I mean, Mario really deserved a book. Sometimes people do a book and you're like, what do they have to show us? They're still developing. They're only 30 years old, and they've only done a few projects. I want a book by a master. So to me, that was really significant. I didn't understand what it would be like to help a living person with their book. It was very challenging because I had a whole vision of what it should be, and that was not Mario's vision. And obviously, Mario's vision was the vision. So that was very frustrating at times. I could never have foreseen how working with him on that book would change my life, honestly, and that we would have a real friendship. I mean, he has meant so much to me that I could never have anticipated that. But, yeah, I never really wanted to help people with their books, but it was just because of him, who he was that I loved what he was about. There were so many reasons where it was just an honor to do it.
Suzy Chase: You say the 2013 book was his book, and this new book is your book, and the first line of the introduction says, this is not the book Mario wanted. Were you talking about the vision?
Emily Eerdmans: Exactly. And also, he didn't want to give away things. There are things that I talk about that he didn't really want to have talked is that's also part of it. The first book is like, you're in the room with him, and it's a real Mario experience, and you're just immersed in it's over 400 pages of these incredibly beautiful, colorful rooms. And this book doesn't have so much of that. We do have three of his last projects at the end of the book that we present, kind of like as master classes where we really try to dissect. But even how we present those three projects, which was Patricia Altschul's Charleston house, a house he did in Aiken, South Carolina, and then the river house apartment for the Rosses, he would never have wanted the breakdown of how he was doing. Know, when he had assistants who decided to leave if he found out they were trying to use the same workroom that he had introduced them to, he would be furious, and he would try to get the workroom to not work with that assistant. He was very protective of his knowledge and how he did things. If he was in heaven or wherever he is and looking at this book and now that he's gone, so people can't really be a threat to him anymore, maybe he'd feel differently. I never thought about that. Maybe now that he's gone, he'd be fine with it.
Suzy Chase: How did he get the title the Prince of Chintz?
Emily Eerdmans: One of his, I would say, iconic rooms. And if you close your eyes and think of his name, this is the room you're going to think of is the 1984 Kips Bay show house bedroom that he did in blue and white. It had lavender walls and this Brunschwig Verrieres blue and white chins. And it was just this really romantic, swashbuckling bedroom. He was, like, in the showhouse or right outside the showhouse. And a New York news reporter, Chauncey Howell, was interviewing him and just spontaneously called him the Prince of Chintz. And then so cannily. So Mario, who really did have a flair for marketing and promoting, he's like getting chintz suits made up and chintz kimonos and chintz cakes and a chintz cowboy hat. And he appeared, I think it was 1986. He was on the cover of this local magazine called Manhattan, and he's, like, wearing the chintz suit, posing in Central Park. And he ran with it. And it was very clever. There's something about, like, we're still remembering Prince of Chintz.
Suzy Chase: Well, in terms of branding, which is such a buzzword these days, do you think Mario was the first decorator who turned himself into a brand in the 80s, like, starting with the Prince of Chintz?
Emily Eerdmans: He really was one of them. I mean, I think he was looking at what Laura Ashley was doing. He saw what Ralph Lauren was doing, and especially Ralph Lauren. I think he took a lot of lessons from him. And, yeah, he sort of knew, like, have hallmarks that you always use so that when people see a room, they know it's you. He was very clever that, you know, one of the books I wrote was Madeleine Castaing about the designer anticare in Paris. Madeleine Castaing. And when you look at a room that she did, you know she did it. She uses the same fabrics, the same kind of. And I remember I was interviewing Jacques Grange, who was friends with her, and he wrote the foreword for that book. And he know, I'm not like that. I can do like, I don't want you to see a room and know that I did it. I want to be able to do any style for any client, which he really can on an extremely high level. But there is something about. And Mario would be just like Madeline, where you see the room and you know it's him. And I'll also know Mario wasn't the only one to do the style. There were definitely a lot of imitators. He was one of the first, I will say, to really do it in his age group and with so much color and so much pattern. But you can sort of tell when it's an imitator. His color sense, I think, was really one of his areas where he was a genius, where a lot of people couldn't handle color the way that he did.
Suzy Chase: You know, I met you back in 2010 at your party signing for your book the world of Madeleine Castaing.
Emily Eerdmans: Right.
Suzy Chase: And it was at someone's fabulous apartment, and I can't remember whose it was, but our dear mutual friend Kerry Robinson brought me to that.
Emily Eerdmans: And then that book, I mean, each of these books has its own kettle of fish or problems to solve. So in that situation with Madeleine Castaing, there were no archives. Everything had been destroyed. To kind of not have any tax issues, which is like a huge french thing of taxes and stuff, and not wanting to pay them. I interviewed her grandson, but really this assistant, Laure Lombardini, who was in her eighties at the time and had started working for Madeleine, like, when she was just out of common school. As I dove into her life, I saw how many inaccuracies there were, how she romanticized the truth. And so I realized, okay, if all these archival things are gone that I can't verify, then I'm just going to kind of go with this romantic vision that she had for herself and for her rooms and just let the book be that. Whereas with Henri Samuel, his niece Eva, who's an architect. She was so kind to share whatever she had. And I was able to do research and footnote. And really try to be as accurate as possible with dates. That just wasn't the case with Madeleine. So the Madeleine book has such a different voice than the Henri book. One of the reasons I think these books are important, I'm sure other people will do updated versions of these books. Is that these people will disappear if they're not captured on the page. I think Laura Lombardini has already passed away. And her memory is now gone. And Henri Samuel had a lover, partner who shared so much information. And could verify, like, oh, yes, that painting and that photo is blah, blah. So there's something about time is of the essence. And what was so crazy about the Mario book. Is that I could just ask know when he was alive. Like, so was this it? He's like, no, you're totally wrong. So that was an amazing experience. Like, the subject can talk back to you.
Suzy Chase: What an emotional statement. “These people will disappear if they're not captured on the page.”
Emily Eerdmans: That's right. And, of course, every book is filtered through today and through me. So there's no such thing as something that's objective. But that's okay.
Suzy Chase: You're a good filter.
Emily Eerdmans: So, speaking to the filter of the second book. I came to have so much emotion for Mario. Like, writing the second book was. This is probably the hardest book I've ever done. Because I knew him so well. And I had protective instincts. Whereas if I didn't really know him. But had all this information. I maybe would have presented it in a different way. Does that make sense?
Suzy Chase: Totally. There's a line in the book on page 19 where you wrote. As I spent more time in his own interiors. I began to bond with them as if they were manifestations of Mario.
Emily Eerdmans: Oh, my God. I mean, there was this day where Sotheby's was supposed to take all the dog paintings off the wall over his sofa. And they were actually supposed to do it the next day. But they started doing it early, and I freaked out. I'm like, no, because that room in particular. You felt him there. You really felt him there. And it was like, I could still be with him for another six to eight months. Which probably sounds really creepy. But as everything was taken away for sale. And the apartment became emptier and emptier. Then he started to leave. He started to evaporate. But there was this moment where we were cleaning out this closet. And we always had, like, Pandora radio or something playing. And I'm opening up the scroll thing, and Peggy Lee is playing on the radio, and what I'm unscrolling is a picture of Peggy Lee signed to Mario while she's on the radio. And it was like, all these little. These moments, like, was it was really so doing this book and just feeling. I mean, I'm a things person myself, so I'm probably prone to feeling like, if I have something that belongs to my grandmother, I still have my grandmother, which, of course, I don't, but, yeah, so it became really emotional. Really emotional. And then when we did the Sotheby's installation, Russ Jenkins did an incredible job designing that. But we were recreating elements of the apartment, and I found myself becoming Mario. I was like. I became a monster. They had bought these really ugly, modern white vases to sprinkle around with flowers. It's like, Mario would never, would never have had a vase like that. And it was probably, like, 11:00 p.m. At night before it was going to open to the public the next know. And I'm, like, roaring at them over these dumb vases. And then I'm like, why don't we just use things that Mario had and put flowers in them? And so that's what we did. But it was sort of like, who am I? Who have I become? Oh, my. You know, I really cared. Maybe a little too much.
Suzy Chase: One of my favorite decorators included in this book is Nancy Lancaster. So I had Jane Churchill, Nancy's cousin, on to chat about her. And my one big takeaway from Jane was that Nancy created the look of studied carelessness. So how did she influence Mario?
Emily Eerdmans: Oh, my gosh. Well, it really was her yellow room that started it all. Seeing a photograph of that and how saturated it was in this gorgeous yellow just shook him to his core. I mean, it really changed the trajectory of what he was about. And, of course, he saw that photo while working for Keith Irvine, who had worked for John Fowler. So he was already getting kind of a John Fowler training through Keith, even though he didn't know it at the time. And Keith was the one who introduced him to his first favorite chintz. Mario always called his look the undecorated look, which would very much be parallel to Nancy Lancaster, who one of her quotes is, I'm against decorating the idea of it's decorated and done. Of course, you're planning and you are coordinating, which is essentially decoration, but it shouldn't look like it. It should look like it's evolved over time. And Mario would say, you want to do that chair over there? And a totally different fabric so it looks like it was brought into the room at a later date. But if you looked at his rooms, my God, they were so mean. It was sort of know to think that his rooms, with those incredible curtains and everything like that, wasn't a decorated room. But he definitely had that philosophy that he got from John and Nancy, that it should look like generations have brought things to it. But one of the things I talk about in kind of my colfax and Fowler chapter in the book is if you had gone into an english country house in the, that didn't have the John Fowler touch to it, it would have been pretty drab, actually. It wouldn't have been like the Colfax and Fowler version of it, which was so beautiful.
Suzy Chase: I thought it was really interesting that Mario called it decoration and not interior design or decorating.
Emily Eerdmans: Yes, exactly. And when we did the 2013 book, he wanted it to say 50 years of american interior decoration. And he always called himself a decorator. He had over 100 scrapbooks where he pasted every single article he ever appeared in. And there are other articles that he doesn't appear in. And so those are always interesting. It's like, why do those interest him? And there are quite a few, particularly in the 1970s, all these articles about design versus decoration and how the schools are all decoration is kind of seen almost amateurish. And it's like, if you're really trained, then you're a designer. And actually, when I was teaching at fit history of interior design, I actually got in trouble for using the word interior decoration. I was talking about Thomas Hope, the English regency. I mean, he was sort of a designer. I guess he's a gentleman, but also was kind of a designer. And he published a book about his. Know, he used the phrase interior decoration in. So. But just that the schools are very sensitive about that distinction, and you can't really use the word decorator anymore. So it's interesting. It's sort of a generational thing. I think Mrs. Parish would have called herself a decorator, and I think Mario would have thought to call himself a designer, was kind of being pretentious, putting on errors about what he did. I think that's why he stuck to decoration.
Suzy Chase: So in this book, you have included everything, and I mean everything, even how we can make our own cloverleaf bow, which I need to do.
Emily Eerdmans: Oh, my gosh. I remember when we came across the vogue sewing pattern for that. And I was telling the book designer, the book designer, who was, oh, my God, he's such a major talent, Richard Pandiscio. And then he had Bill Loccisano, who was working for him then work on the book, who had worked on the first book with Mario as well. He was like, we're going to sell a million copies because of this bow diagram. When we took off the dog paintings and saw that the sashes that ran behind the paintings didn't just. It was like total theater, just sort of like little elements of a bow nailed into place so that it looked like the real deal.
Suzy Chase: And you know what the best tip was? Don't karate chop your pillows.
Emily Eerdmans: Right? Yes. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You're reminding me of this video my friend sent me of Joan Crawford in some soap opera movie where she's karate chopping 100 pillows. It's hilarious. But, yeah, it's too obvious. So, yeah, what you should do is you should pick up your pillows by the corners and kind of, like, shake them and, like, fluff them out and rotate them and, like, sort of shake them and then put them down and from the sides, kind of, like, make them bulge out a little bit.
Suzy Chase: So now to my segment called Home, where I ask you to describe one memory of your childhood home. And please start by telling us where it was.
Emily Eerdmans:I really remember two childhood homes. One was in Michigan in the middle of the woods. Basically. I went to a three room school house with two children in my class when I was really little. And then we moved to Ohio to a little college town called Granville, and that was to a Victorian house. So maybe that was the one I spent the most time in. So we'll go with that house. My mother, she loved Martha Stewart. She could wallpaper and paint and refinish furniture, refinish floors, cook Julia child recipes, like, all the things that I can't do. And that mean. That's what I remember. I remember her. It had been used for college housing, actually, when she and my stepfather at the time bought it. And she completely brought it back to life. And so I remembered the bird wallpaper in the dining room and her refinishing the floors. And she loved color. She painted it. The outside was this bright, bright yellow color that some of the people were kind of shocked by. It was so bright. But over time, I think the buyers, when she sold it decades later, they wanted the paint color. They wanted to keep it yellow to see her. And she's a great. She's a great gardener. To see her transform it I think that's probably where my love of environment and rooms came from because I remember when I was allowed to choose wallpaper for my bedroom. I think that's a memory so many of us have who are design driven. And just seeing how one little thing like that can transform how you feel in a space, and then you never lose that understanding. So I would say ever since I've lived in New York, the first few years I would move apartments, every was as one, just, you get a lease for a year, then you have roommates or whatever. But every situation, even though it was a rental, I've always painted my walls, and so many people are afraid to do that. They're like, oh, I'm not going to be here long. Why would I paint? I have to repaint. But I've always turquoise, pistachio, raspberry. I've always surrounded myself with color. And I would say that sort of came from growing up with my mother, who was always doing things to the house.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Emily Eerdmans: Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you for asking. I have a private gallery called Erdman's New York, and you can find us on Instagram at Eerdmans New York or our website, eerdmansnewyork.com.
Suzy Chase: This has been a dream come true. Thank you so much, Emily, for coming on decorating by the book podcast.
Emily Eerdmans: Oh, Suzy, it's such a pleasure to be here. Really, really fun to talk with you.
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