Revisit One of the Final Projects of the Great American Decorator and “Prince of Chintz” Mario Buatta
By Emily Evans Eerdman’s own admission, her new Rizzoli book on Mario Buatta is “not the book Mario wanted.” That book, Mario Buatta: Fifty Years of American Decoration, was the extensive monograph the iconic American decorator and Eerdman wrote together in 2013. Yet, after his death in 2015, his biographer and former protegé found herself tasked with cleaning out his archives scattered across his Manhattan apartment, his Connecticut country house, and several storage units. “I soon discovered that he had not gotten rid of anything, and thence began one of the most fascinating and meaningful journeys of my life,” she writes.
She discovered floorplans, doodles, and floral fabric scraps. She discovered bundles of letters addressed to mentors John Fowler and Sister Parrish. She even discovered an envelope of taxi receipts from the 1970s. But most of all, she discovered the inner musings of a brilliant visual mind, who more or less defined a decade of interior design with his Americanized take on English country house style. (His list of famous clients was a mile long and included names like Mariah Carey, Billy Joel, and Barbara Walters.)
So she decided to chronicle it as a cohesive whole. The result, Mario Buatta: Anatomy of a Decorator, is published this month.
It’s partially a biography: Eerdman delves into her mentor’s upbringing, and his formative years as a designer—including his summer in Europe with Parsons, which sparked his enduring love for the Regency period. Yet it’s also a deep analysis and deconstruction of the central tenets that comprised his work, from chintz to Victorian seating arrangements, to even the specific way in which he tied his clover-leaf bows.
Below, revisit one of Buatta’s final projects, Toad Hall in South Carolina, which he designed in 2004 and is featured in Mario Buatta: Anatomy of a Decorator.
1/5Eerdman points out both the beauty and practicality of Toad Hall’s kitchen: the blue ceiling is a deterrent to flies.
© Scott Frances / OTTO2/5Buatta found inspiration in an early 19th-century American room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when designing the dining room.
© Scott Frances / OTTO3/5The living room at Toad Hall.
© Scott Frances / OTTO4/5“If you can’t hide it, decorate it,” Buatta once said. Here, a bathroom features blue-and-white striped curtains.
© Scott Frances / OTTO5/5“The use of a dhurrie rug on the veranda’s stone floor is unexpected and further enhances the atmosphere of the space as a proper room,” Eerdman writes on how Buatta designed Toad Hall’s veranda.
