Angelo Donghia / Erica Brown's "Interior Views"

[ED: This post is a continuation of a previous post on the work of Angelo Donghia. Available online texts on Donghia's work can be sparse, and more often focus on his legacy as a businessman rather than his skill as a decorator. More information on his life and work can be found here and here. It should also be noted that artist Richard Giglio's apartment was attributed to Donghia in Architectural Digest's New York Interiors, 1979.

The video interview below was taped in 1981, four years before his death of AIDS-related pneumonia.]

"Light pouring through multifaceted skylights makes its own geometric play in a living room where checks and plaids are counterpointed against white. White separates—and at the same time holds together—the strong blues and reds used on sofas and chairs and in the rug. The bar stools came from the S. S. Caronia."

"At the age of forty-five, Angelo Donghia is unique in the world of American interior design. While most designers find their work with private clients all-consuming, he has successfully embraced almost every aspect of the design business and even achieved the impossible: he has moved into the mass market without lowering his reputation in the eyes of his private clients.

Today, in addition to his interior design company, Angelo Donghia has four other distinct corporate entities: a fabric company, a furniture company, a licensing company, and an ever-growing collection of showrooms throughout the country. In all, he employs eighty people.

At the age of ten, Angelo Donghia was growing up in the small mining town of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, aware that he didn't want to follow in his tailor-father's footsteps and that he liked making things more attractive. According to Mr. Donghia, nothing has changed. "I'm really doing the same as I was then," he says. "Except now I'm doing it in the big wide world. I've always wanted to do things. In high school I was the president of five different organizations at once. I was always very busy, and I love getting lots of people involved. Strangely enough, I didn't do any of that at college; I was very quiet."

College was three semesters at the University of Miami followed by three years at Parsons School of Design. From the day he graduated, his life has followed a logical progression of one success after another. "At the end of 1959, I decided to apply for jobs. I had three designers on my list: Michael Greer, Yale Burge, and Billy Baldwin. For no particular reason, Yale's name was first so I called him first and he hired me. I asked for one hundred dollars a week. He said, 'You'll take seventy-five,' and I said, 'You're right.''' It was an association that ended only with Mr. Burge's death in 1971."

"The bedroom opens onto a small sitting area. The carved-wood sofa was spray-painted white and covered in white cotton. The room divider holds objects but also encloses ugly, but necessary, water pipes."

"Angelo Donghia became an associate of the company in 1962, a vice president in 1964, and in 1966, when he was made a partner, the company became Burge-Donghia. "By 1968," says Mr. Donghia, "I was running the decorating business and designing rugs and fabrics and some furniture for specific jobs. Yale had a furniture business separate from our partnership, and he decided I should have one too. So we created  Vice Versa, a fabric company, for me.

"I needed furniture on which to display my fabrics, so I used the pieces I had designed for customers. The fabric company became successful, but I felt I could do more. So I started selling the furniture through the same outlets.

"Then Yale died. I continued the decorating business as well as the fabric and furniture companies, but I noticed I was being 'knocked off' by the large furniture and fabric companies. I decided it might be a good idea to do my own 'knock-offs' of my own designs, and that's when I entered the mass market." To work with the manufacturers involved, the licensing department was formed in 1973.

Mr. Donghia's network of showrooms grew from his dissatisfaction with the "way his custom fabrics and furniture were being represented on the West Coast. "They were pushing me off into a corner and not supporting me. So, to protect my designs, I looked around for my own small showroom space." In doing that, he discovered that he wasn't the only designer who was unhappy with his representation. This persuaded him to buy a large Los Angeles showroom, where he now represents twenty-seven companies. Its success led him to open others in Troy, Michigan; Chicago, and Miami.

The story of Angelo Donghia's career may sound too cool, calm, and collected to be true. But for those who know Angelo Donghia, it's hard to imagine it otherwise. A man of calm assurance, he also has a creative, versatile, quick mind, and he realized early on the importance of having a cool, hard business head as well.

"It's very easy to be creative in the design business," he says, "but it's very difficult to make money. As a designer, your expertise is in pretty colorings and gracious living, not in dealing with other people's money. But you have to do that too. So you might as well make them work together."

"More counterpoint of color and pattern in a bedroom. The small geometric design of the carpet is picked up and enlarged upon in the quilting pattern of the bed cover. The effect of these hard edges is softened by the curved headboard with its broad rim of gathered white cotton."

""I was brought up by a father who was a terrific businessman. I was exposed to the constant effort needed to make any business grow. Then Yale Burge gave me the best possible training in our particular business. But I think the main reason I succeeded has been that I was never afraid to fail. If I fail, I know one thing: I am very talented with my hands. If all this goes out the window, I'll never starve. If you reduce everything to the necessities of life--being able to feed and protect yourself-I'll always be able to do that.

"I never take success for granted, and I don't do things for success. At the same time, I'm not going to do things that cause failure. I'm going to work hard and follow all the rules that make one successful—establish a good credit rating, make choices that appeal to people, gather a staff that supports me, not suppresses me. And I believe very much in integrity and in keeping agreements."

These are not the kind of words one hears often from an interior designer-or from any creative personas—as the reason for his success. And Angelo Donghia is creative. He, more than anyone, has given us soft, sensuous luxury in a modern setting. While his designs are light, airy, simple, and meticulously tailored ("I learned from my father how to cut pants and vests, but I never got to the big time-coats"), they are also romantic in their softness, their colorings, and their interplay of pattern and shape."

"At the other end of the living room, pattern plays on texture. A Victorian wire birdcage stands in front of a window shaded by vertical blinds. The floor is covered with terra-cotta tiles. The rectangular table is rattan covered; the round table with animal-like legs is by John Dickinson."

"Mr. Donghia doesn't think there are many secrets to interior design. Furniture should be comfortable and suit its purpose—"A reading chair is not a reclining chair, and vice versa"--and versatile--"Dining tables should have other purposes, and you can dine in rooms other than the dining room. Remember that windows exist to let in light and air, not as an excuse for fancy treatments. Use less but bigger pieces of furniture and only a few important accessories. Get rid of the unnecessary.

''There is no magic to color combinations. Look at the colors you enjoy wearing most, and look at the way nature combines color; you never see anything ugly there. By all means, play safe with neutrals. They are always good backgrounds for people."

The house shown here exhibits all of Mr. Donghia's design principles and also points up his sure hand with color and pattern. In lesser hands, mixing strong colors with equally strong plaids and geometrics is a certain recipe for visual disaster. When it is done by Angelo Donghia, however, one senses the cool control of the man along with the romanticism. Nothing is extraneous, but the rooms are soft, not stark.

Obviously, Mr. Donghia no longer plots the details of every interior his company designs. But he does control them. ''I'm now half designer and half businessman," he says. "I deal only in concepts. But I have the ability to project what I want to the people who work for me so that they produce what I have asked them for." As he crisscrosses the country keeping his designer's eye on the myriad spokes of his business life, Angelo Donghia has time to reflect. "I always resisted the way my father constantly drove himself. I always thought he worked too hard and was too successful. I have become exactly what he was-and I'm not sorry.""

ALL IMAGES AND TEXT TAKEN FROM INTERIOR VIEWS BY ERICA BROWN, VIKING 1980

Richard Giglio: West 80th, New York

[ED: On a recent and bitingly cold Saturday, I had the immense pleasure of meeting and photographing artist Richard Giglio in his Upper West Side studio, his creative base of operation in Manhattan for the past fifteen years. Though he splits his time between New York and Key West, Giglio works compulsively, and witnessing his studio work firsthand felt at times like a brilliant architectural dig--fashion illustrations, studies for textiles and carpets, typography created for Bruce Weber, fabrics for Donghia, works on ceramic, on paper, on screens. More information on Richard Giglio is available via his website, and also through Cocco and Salem, his Key West gallery, and Gallery Galleon in Puerto Rico. High-quality editions of his work are available through Vandeb Editions.

This post also inaugurates a new series, ROOMS, featuring original content and original spaces, shot by either myself or the artists/inhabitants in residence. Full galleries of each will be made available here.

Thank you to Richard, and to his assistant Ray Black for their fabulous and accommodating company.]

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS OF ARTIST RICHARD GIGLIO'S STUDIO © 2011, KEEHNAN KONYHA

Richard Giglio, Architectural Digest's "New York Interiors"

Richard Giglio cannot remember a time when he was not in the habit of drawing or painting virtually every object in sight. Today, in his early forties, he is an accomplished artist—a fluent draftsman and a sensitive colorist. These are qualities apparent not only in his art but in his life, as well.

He has the rare good fortune to live in what is, for an artist, the ideal New York apartment. It is at the top of interior designer Angelo Donghia's handsome private house in Manhattan's East Seventies. The apartment consists principally of a living room and a studio. They are both relatively modest in proportion but filled with daylight that comes from three sizeable windows in each room, with ample views unimpeded by neighboring high-rise buildings. There is also a third room, upstairs, that serves as an alternate studio when the artist is working on larger paintings. Outside each studio is a terrace, and both are used as roof gardens, as outdoor dining rooms and for alfresco work.

Since Mr. Giglio is in the habit of moving his furniture and objects around from one day to the next, it is difficult to describe the precise arrangement of the apartment at any particular juncture. More to the point would be a mention of those characteristics and components of the interior that are not temporary, but endemic. This is a place designed for both living and working. But even though it as the warmth and interest of possessions admired for their personal associations, it is clean and uncluttered. The painting boards and artist's materials are neatly arranged in a former clothes closet, from which Mr. Giglio has removed the doors. Tall and unwieldy rolls of his favorite "detail paper" are kept well under control, and even provide an attractive design element, in two large French cement garden pots.

He likes books, but he does not leave them on the shelves to be forgotten and gather dust. Instead, he keeps many of them on his tables, lying open at a favorite illustration, or stacks them firmly on the floor and uses the piles as extra tables. Among other substitutes for tabletops are a fine Venetian mirror, a paint board set on a French iron garden-table base and the seats of chairs. Even when the artist uses a normal table, he is likely to have "made it my own" by painting it black or cutting down its legs. Actually, the nearest approach to luxury in the apartment is the sofa bed in the living room. It is a focal point, a pivot around which all else moves, or is periodically moved, Designed by the artist some years ago, it is a temple of ease, with high backs and sides an da chaos of cushions, all covered in pale gray quilting. Yet for all its unashamed comfort and monumental proportions, it fits admirably into its surroundings. For, mysteriously, there is a perceptible undercurrent of abundance in the atmosphere of this superficially simple interior. It can make sensual magic just as well out of a stack of books, a row of tangerines above the fireplace or three paper fans in a terracotta pot.

Inevitably, these two rooms—arranged, rearranged, lived in and worked in by an artist—reveal an aspect or two about their owner's character and tastes. Less expectedly, they also provide an accurate preview and a rewarding echo of his art—and not just because of those particular drawings and paintings by the artist that happen to be there at a given time. The combination of white walls, pale gray bed, black accents and delicate color patches constitutes, in its different medium, a spectrum identical to the spectrum of Richard Gigglio's present work. All has come full circle, and, in his home, the interdependence of art and life seems complete.

ALL IMAGES OF RICHARD GIGLIO'S APARTMENT AND ALL ACCOMPANYING TEXT TAKEN FROM  "FLUIDITY OF SPACE", ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST'S NEW YORK INTERIORS, 1979