Tony Duquette’s Enchanted Vision
Design December 15th, 2009
In the aptly titled More is More, Hutton Wilkinson, Tony Duquette’s friend and business partner of more than two decades, takes us on a tour Duquette’s studios, homes, and, most important, his fantastic imagination.
Wilkinson, president of Tony Duquette, continues his mentor’s work as a jewelry and interior designer; he and his wife Ruth even live at Dawndridge, Duquette’s over-the-top Beverly Hills estate. The pair first met when the teenage Wilkinson volunteered to work on an installation Duqette was putting up at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery. Their long collaboration enables him to offer delightful snippets of life with Duquette: the daily studio lunches (always steak and green beans) attended by luminaries from Anita Loos to Clare Boothe Luce; the clients including Elizabeth Arden and Doris Duke; the star-studded parties at Dawndridge; and, of course, the great stories (once, a client commissioned dinner party centerpieces from Duquette, and the brass and glass boxes of fabulously adorned stuffed birds he produced were so tantalizingly gorgeous the guests simply took them home). A whole chapter is devoted to Duquette’s wife of fifty years, Elizabeth “Beegle” Duquette, herself an accomplished artist.
In an introduction, fashion designer John Galliano, quotes Diana Vreeland’s famous dictum, “Never fear being vulgar, just boring.” In actuality, Duquette was neither—he was a modernist visionary with an insatiable curiosity, an extraordinary eye (he likened himself to the phoenix, “the bird of one thousand eyes”), and an uncanny knack for almost divine juxtaposition. In a lecture titled “The Enchanted Vision” delivered at UCLA in the early 1970s, and printed here for the first time, he cites a simple object from nature, a starfish: “Add a precious stone, and viewed truly it becomes the natural object it really is and effortlessly subordinates itself to what Blake has called the ‘cosmos of the shell.’”
Almost all his jewels (he called them talismans) contained an alluring combination of the precious and the humble. Duquette says he found magic in shells, antlers, feathers, “the carapace of turtles,” and “the skins of lizards and snakes and leopards,” just to name a few. He felt that a “piece of rock crystal” (which he used a lot) had as much “serenity as the lotus palmed hand of Buddha.” But he used no material as much as the sublime emerald green malachite. His printed cotton malachite fabric is now available from Jim Thompson fabrics; the Duquette company sells consoles covered in the stuff and much of the jewelry still incorporates it.
Malachite objects were also featured in his tablescapes, which were always, in his words, “dynamic.” He abhorred “lifeless traditional symmetrical arrangement,” which he found “dead in its perfection.” Though Duquette himself died in 1999, there is nothing dead about his vision, which in Wilkinson’s own creative hands continues to have great influence. This book is a must for anyone interested in design—or just plain exuberance for living.
Pictured above, top row, left: A corner of Wilkinson’s house showing off one of a pair of consoles and mirrors from the Duquette collection. The console is faux bois and glued with Duquette’s malachite printed cotton over the surface. The mirror is 18th Century Italian and has been remodeled with the additions of faux coral branches and ceramic pagodas. A pair of malachite eggs is on the console.
Top row, center: More is More by Hutton Wilkinson, a limited edition of which is available at Hollyhock.
Top row, right: A tablescape at Dawndridge featuring a veremeil sailing ship, golden rats, articulated birds and insects, rock crystal votives, and rare porcelains strewn across his signature malachite printed cloth.
Bottom row, right: A malachite covered ashtray from Lush Life, which would be right at home in a Duquette tablescape, as would the store’s rock crystal bowls and votives, and its extensive collection of coral.
Bottom row, center: Duquette with Hutton Wilkinson.
Bottom row, right: Duquette would approve of this malachite encrusted black Lucite box designed exclusively for Forty Five Ten by Eduardo Garza. We think he’d also be drawn to the store’s Kimberly McDonald earrings as well as to Dean Harris’s chunky aquamarine necklace.
Shop Hollyhock, Lush Life, and Forty Five Ten on TAIGAN.
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