19th Anniversary

19th Anniversary 86 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com I t was during Sotheby’s auction at El Mirador, Armour meat-packing heiress Lolita Armour Mitchell’s Montecito estate, that a teenaged Suzanne Tucker first fell in love with antiques. Sitting in the bleachers, she followed the proceedings, noting the sale price and provenance of each piece, beginning the process of training her eye and visualizing how she would place them in an interior. After obtaining a design degree from UCLA, she lived in London and worked with Peter Hood, a protégé of John Fowler, absorbing the nuances of the Colefax and Fowler/Nancy Lancaster aesthetic. Upon her return to California in the early 80s, she signed on as secretary to interior design legend Michael Taylor. Within months she accompanied him to projects, serving as his assistant, and then, as a designer in her own right, delivering the firm’s trademark “California Look.” The use of multiple shades of white; an emphasis on the effects of light; bringing the outdoors in with large plants and sometimes, even boulders; mixing antiques and modern pieces from disparate styles and ages all seem commonplace now, but were revolutionary then. Mastery of scale and proportion was perhaps the key talent Suzanne honed while working with Taylor, and as she once explained, “Scale has to do with size, proportion with balance, and when these are in harmony, the end result is comfort.” In 1986 her mentor died, and Suzanne partnered with Timothy Marks (who later became her husband), launching Tucker & Marks. The firm is a perennial on the AD100 List of Top Designers of the World, and Suzanne Tucker is a highly sought-after speaker on design and the decorative arts. Since attending the very first San Francisco Fall Art & Antiques Show with Michael Taylor in 1981, she has missed only one, and served on the Show’s advisory board and as Designer Circle Chair for many years. She established a preview night for the design industry to pre-shop for clients, and re-established the popular Designer Vignettes to illustrate how antiques can be mixed in with other elements in an interior. 2019 will be her fifth year as Show Chair. Suzanne’s passion for antiques shines through in these interiors, which showcase creative ways to incorporate them with modern art, global treasures, and contemporary upholstered pieces. facing page A trio of 17th- and 18th-century granite cannonballs from Spain lend a sculptural element and crusty patina under an 18th-century Chinese altar table. A Jim Dine charcoal work, Untitled, 2006 hangs above. The frog planters are from the estate of legendary Hollywood set designer Tony Duquette. Photo by Matthew Millman. Suzanne Tucker the Soul Room of a “Antiques give a room its soul, a sense of history, nuance and romance.”

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