Ray Booth on meditation, AI, and why 'beauty is a byproduct'

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is interior designer and architect Ray Booth. Ray's career forms a perfect circle. At school, his first internship was with the legendary Southern architect Bobby McAlpin. After moving to New York and working for John Celadino and Cloda, Ray moved back and became a partner in McAlpin's firm, where he stayed ever since. But Ray has also become a star in his own right, with a book, lines for Hickory Chair and Visual Comfort, and a regular placement in top shelter magazines.

0:49I spoke with Ray about staying with McAlpin while building his own brand, how social media has made clients more difficult to work with, and how his new book, The Expressive Home, signals a new chapter in his career.

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2:04all at laloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I rugs.com. And don't forget to follow at laloyrugs on Instagram and TikTok. And now on with the show. As I read the opening of your book, you talk about what sounds like your own version of this tension, of this thinking that you've been going through, listen, I love doing these interiors and I love all of the opportunities that I've gotten through this incredible partnership with McAlpin. And we'll talk about all of that. But you talk about the fact that architecture is really how you see the world and how you come at the world. And there seems to be a longing going on for you.

2:55And I wonder if you could help me understand that better. I think I'm going through my own sense of awakening in life and in my career. And this book has been certainly a large part of coming to terms with who I am. And it's not about being a student anymore. It's about coming into my own and this awareness and this awakening about what I bring to this craft and how blessed I am to get to do it. and it's time to own it. And interestingly, you write in the book about designing homes with, yes, this notion of right now and what matters to you, but also thinking about the next stages and phases of your life that you want to, if you can, be thoughtful of and incorporate into the process.

3:55But for you, this sounded like this guy is really working some things out for himself. Well, listen, if we're living this life in any plane of it, you know, we're talking specifically about career-wise, let's not sit on our laurels and think that we've got it all figured out. Let's continue to reach for the edges and see what else there is to learn and aspire to in our work. Not only on our behalf, not only about our experience when we're doing this kind of work, we're doing it on the invitation from our clients. And so I want to continue to evolve and grow and become who I am meant to be in this work that we do for our clients so that I'm bringing the best for them to the table.

4:47With that in mind, let's take this opportunity to, as you just alluded to, so Bobby McAlpin, larger than life figure, right, is a professor of yours in school and who was an early internship. I was one of their first interns with my friend Gray Davis, who works with Meyer Davis in New York. The great. Very talented firm. So Gray and I were the first interns at McAlpin when there were four. It was Bobby, Bill Ingram, Greg Tankersley, who's also one of our partners now, and Mary Robin, who is Greg's wife. And we all would squeeze into this tight as a tick little office on Cloverdale Road in Montgomery, Alabama.

5:36Gray and I would drive every day from Auburn University where we were in school. And you said the great Bobby McAlpin. Bobby is such a personable and approachable and humble creature. This talent is what is so great and so immense and has been fuel for me from stem to stern, from my beginnings to hopefully my end on how to do beautiful, poetic, emotionally evocative work. You've spoken candidly about the fact that architecture school was tough. And many people have spoken to me about struggling with the math or struggling with various components. And many people have said, listen, I couldn't get all the way through it because of that.

6:30Yeah. Well, I like to say in terms of some of the math, like physics, I liked physics so much I took it seven times. And it is really only through damn tenacity that I was able to make it through. But I was a straight A student in everything design. And yes, structures and physics and all of the math side of it was not my game. And indeed, I had been encouraged as a high schooler because I knew from the age of probably five, six, that I had an interest in houses and home. And how was that showing up? How did you know that then? What were you doing? I had the good fortune of a lovely mother who had a love of house and home.

7:17She was exposed from where she came from, which, you know, let's just say they didn't have indoor plumbing at the time. And it was, you know, tougher existence, house full of love, but, you know, tougher existence. But she went to stay with family that had these friends that lived across the street. And they were in a big, beautiful antebellum house. And They took my mother under their wing and she would talk about how they lived in this extraordinary, beautiful antebellum mansion with the columns and the spiral staircase and the grand piano and the salon. And so I think that this cemented in her head this love of beautiful houses.

8:02And so she's always driven us. I grew up in this town called Huntsville, which has a historic district called the Twickenham District, which is one of the largest antebellum neighborhoods still in existence in the South because it was not burned during the War of the Northern Aggression. As we will forever refer to it. Yes. I say that out of good play, everybody. He's kidding. He's kidding. I'm kidding. I mean, please. I live in New York. Um, so, but I would go through these houses as a young man and, you know, I knew that I was looking at something beyond beauty. I knew that what I was seeing expressed in my mother's, you know, wild interest in all of this was, um, that there's something more meaningful here.

8:49You know, there is more to this. There is emotion to these structures and not just beauty. And I picked up on it. I had a receptiveness to that. And so I would go steal graph paper from my dad, who's an aerospace engineer, and I would start drawing floor plans. And then I would start drawing elevations and, you know, reinterpretations of things that I had seen as a young man. And I drew my entire childhood. And that ultimately led me to know that I was meant to be involved in houses and in the study of architecture. And what did dad, who was an aerospace engineer, make of your interest in all of this?

9:35God bless him. He didn't know what to think. He was determined that I was going to go to Georgia Tech and probably study. He didn't say it had to be engineering, but he was not confident in my math skills either. So the first year, he actually made me go to school at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, also known as UAH, also known as University at Home, because he was going to keep his watchful eye over me. But indeed, I finally made my way to Auburn. And freedom of sorts. Oh my gosh. It was a revelation. It was, I have found my place. I have found my people. I have found my purpose. And did Bobby McAlpin, did he see that?

10:23And did he see how excited you were by this? Yeah. Yeah. So I went into something called Summer Option, which is a program where you get your first year of design all concentrated into one summer. It's basically meant to kill you and really weed out anybody who's, you know, again, people ring the bell and they say, I've had enough. Some are off. But my, one of my first professors was David Brawley, who David Brawley works with us today. David is working on architecture projects that Bobby and I are, are doing. He's doing renderings for this. So the fact that I've had this kind of history with these people is really extraordinary.

11:08And to talk about it, I take it for granted daily, but I've been really fortunate to be in this stable of great talent. And so David was one of my first summer op professors. I left for my first real year, and indeed it was Bobby McAlpin. And again, as if the bells hadn't been ringing and the angels singing, I was like, wow, this man, he did a gallery show where he had all these low tiers with drawings, kind of 11 by 17 drawings, renderings of floor plans and elevations. And the whole room was darkened. And he was playing this ethereal music from Andreas Vollenvieder, if you know who that is. It's this harp music.

11:56And I would go in there and I didn't smoke pot. I was a very good boy, Dennis, but I would go in there and I was transposed into another realm and it just further cemented what I was meant to do. And then I was interning with them by the next summer. You and Gray Davis, right? Indeed. Yeah. Amazing. And you interned there, but somehow you don't stay and New York City beckons. So tell me, I mean, help me understand that timeline and what else was going on there, Ray? Young Ray, as older Ray continues probably to be much to my detriment, curious and hungry for more. And what I had originally thought during my last year of studies at Auburn was I would maybe go to London.

12:51Well, we fell a little short of London. I had three friends, Gray Davis being one of them, that I graduated with. And we decided to move to New York City. So$500 in my pocket, two weeks at home with my mother and father saying, you can't go to New York. You've never been to New York. You have no job. You have no place to live. Sort of like talking about physics, right? Let me explain all the problems with this plan that you've laid out. So I endured those two weeks. And then fortunately, we took off to New York. And it was, again, one of those magic moments where it was just revealed I was making the right choices.

13:37We had the possibility of an interview, Gray and I both, with a designer, interior designer, that we were working with at Bobby's office at the time, the late, great, phenomenal John Saladino. Right. And they said, well, you know, you could go and talk with John Saladino. So we took an interview with Benjamin Noriega Ortiz, who was their head designer at that time. Sure. He introduced us to John Saladino right away. They hired us both. I became aware of how much deeper the rabbit hole goes as far as architecture and design in John's office. And so that really led me to look at interiors as a real other option for how to express oneself creatively in this field.

14:34And to their credit, they kind of let me dabble in it a little bit while I was there. And I know it's always challenging to try and sum up what you've learned from working in that office or what John Saladino ever imparted to you along the way in the time that you were there. Does anything stand out in your mind? Listen, John's talent and his study of classical architecture and his reverence for good architecture beyond just decorating and fabrics and furniture was immense. But when I distill it into who John was, I think of him as the painter. John painted with these palettes of things that would not go together.

15:35I still strive to have some of the success that that man had in some of these palettes that he created where crazy fuchsia was coupled with periwinkle and greys. It just was very painterly. I think that's what we can all look back on his work and appreciate. And then you go to work for Clota, if I recall. I did indeed. And how did that even come about? So I'm kind of embarrassed to say, but I will say it. So I, a young man leaving Alabama, craving edges and exploration and what is out in the world. And so I had a friend, Willis who was with a modeling agency and had kind of introduced me to my friend Tony who did some photographs and all these kind of things and they marched me out to some of the modeling agencies and I had a modeling agency I never made any money let's let's just get that right but it was about the experience and so I was with this agency click that that had sent me to um that wanted me to go to Europe as part of this thing.

16:51And again, this was at a time in life where I was allowing a lot of exploration and what is out there in the world. And leaving Saladino's office, much to John's chagrin, and I remember him sitting me down and saying, are you sure you want to do this? I was leaving in part because I was going to explore this other side of potential travel and exploration with this particular agency. And Cloda was hiring at that time. I had a good friend, Andy Goldsboro, who was working there or had worked there. And he set me up with an interview there. And I feel like getting to work with Cloda was a whole other experience in how to create and how to design, radically different from what John offered.

17:46And within that, I was exposed to this other way of working. And I will say, if I call John the painter, I call Clodagh the sculptor, because Clodagh was hands-on. It was literally, we were modeling interiors. And, you know, she was doing a lot of interior architecture as well, furniture design, product design. And it just was a really wonderful, different take on architecture and interiors and design. And then you get the contact from Bobby and tell Tell me that story because it's a voice from the past. Yeah, just kind of continuing on that vein of thought, I left Clodagh and had the opportunity to go to Europe and spend all kinds of money and make no money, but have wild and amazing years.

18:43But have incredible times, right? That, you know, somebody who comes from the background that I do, you never take those kind of chances. Sometimes I think we find what we are most looking for by looking in the opposite direction of where we think those things should be. And so I'm always someone who has wanted to allow that possibility. I'm assuming there was a lot of personal exploration going on, right? Absolutely. And all of that. Absolutely. And discovery, as you were saying. The whole enchilada, yes. But it was, you know, throughout my time in Europe, I was walking with a sketchbook. I was drawing.

19:22It was a chance to go to Lake Mejorie, to Lake Cuomo. You know, all of these things that were with just a couple hours train from Milan. So it was feeding me still on all of those levels. I came back and I worked at Clodas again. And my friend David Howell, David started his own business. So this was, I went from the painter with John to the sculptor with Clodas to kind of the business side of it with David. I was in at the ground level to the point of where they were living in a five-floor walk-up. I would go up the five-floor walk-up on Thompson Street where he had their residence, which was also our office.

20:02Stephanie would be asleep in the bedroom, which the bed touched all the walls. And I would quietly pull my drafting board out from under a sleeping Stephanie. And I would take it into the kitchen and I would set it on the table and I would start drawing. So that was an opportunity to really learn about how to start a business from the ground up. I mean, we started it from nothing. And he did, really. I was just there to work with him, but was an integral part of those early years. so that all led me up to the point where i had maintained a relationship with bobby and greg through all of these years and bobby god bless him kept occasionally reaching out are you ready to come back now are you ready to come back you ready to come back now after 10 years the answer was finally yes because i was i was sort of reaching that point in my career where i was hitting my own ceiling and I wasn't sure where to go next.

21:08And so they finally said, well, how about you come back as a partner? And so I returned to Alabama, made the shift from Manhattan to Montgomery, Alabama. And how did that feel at the time? Not for the faint of heart. I cried for a couple of years, but it was tough. All of my friends in New York were like, you're what, what, what? You are crazy, right? But again, you find sometimes what you're most looking for by looking in the opposite direction of where you think it lies. And for me, that was to come home. And that was to come home to Bobby and Greg and Alabama. And so we started the interiors business.

21:51We had another partner at that time, Grainger car. And so I had to come in and really at that stage, start from scratch and undo to redo because they didn't have a purchasing program. They were writing orders by hand and that was Grainger. And so we looked into the purchasing programs and how to start establishing standards for this business that would allow us to actually operate. Because I was a little bit I'm going to have it come undone. This is the way you're doing business. And I moved from Manhattan to Montgomery. No, sir. No, sir. We got to get some of this ironed out. So we did, and we had all the encouragement in the world.

22:33Bobby is someone who says, go and do. And so that was the first couple of years. And then we've had to make a change. Granger had health issues, And we looked at that time for another partner that could come in. Granger was evolving to more of an antiquarian business with Bobby. And that's when Susan Farrier came in. And Susan had had a real experience in the business world, albeit both with interiors, where she was working at the time when we met, and then also in the business world. She had a wonderful breadth of business experience and sense. And so that was a great turn for, I think, the interiors business is to have that evolution and be able to go forth from that platform.

23:31We're taking a quick break to remind you about Leloy. This October at High Point Market, Leloy is hosting special events in their showroom you don't want to miss. On Saturday the 25th, they'll start a keynote conversation with Amber Lewis, Julia Markham, Anna Bond, and Lalloy's newest partner, who we can't reveal just yet. They're also hosting a book signing and a meet and greet with Amy Astley, the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest and the author of AD at Home. Learn more about those events and book your appointment at lalloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I rugs dot com. And don't forget to follow at Lalloy Rugs on Instagram and TikTok.

24:16And now back to the show.

24:23Remind me of how you structured all of that, because it seemed like it was at one point it was you and Susan doing the interiors. It was also confusing. Yeah. So, you know, we were at times we were McAlpin Tankersley and then McAlpin Booth and Carr. that was Granger. Then it was McAlpin Booth and Farrier. And then we had somebody come to their senses. Uh, our friend Keith Granite is like, you guys got to rebrand it. And at that time we had three other partners, architecture partners who were here. So it was seven people. It was confusing. You know, it's just a few too many cooks in the kitchen.

25:01And so we rebranded under McAlpin, McAlpin House. We became a place from which you could get all of these services and talents rather than a person. It certainly is accredited to Bobby as our original partner. But McAlpin became kind of a place and not just a person at that time. And we all let our names come off of that in an effort to create what is now what I think is a stronger presence and more easily understandable presence, I hope, out in the design world. As you brought business structure to all of this, how did you think about where the priorities were? And did Keith Granite step in at some point and give you help beyond just rebranding?

25:58Well, so the priorities are always going to be how do we do the best work that we can do? Keith really, he was instrumental in the rebranding at that time. We didn't follow a course afterwards with Keith. For me, we were doing books at that time. And Jill Cohen, who is now editor-in-chief at Lux Magazine. Sure, the legendary Jill Cohen. My dear, dear, dear, dear, dear friend. We were doing books through the McAlpin brand, which all of our work is somewhat represented there to a different degree. And Jill was helping us with those books. And she said, well, Charles from Ritzoli is wanting to know who's the next book.

26:45and she said, Ray, you're the next book. And this is at a time where I was, again, I'm a student. I'm working with Bobby and I don't have enough stuff to do a book. But she had had the ability to see into our photography library and she's like, oh, I think you do, of things that you've worked on that are not exclusively McAlpin work but with other architects and with things that I had done myself. So she said, I'm going to march you in front of Charles and we'll see. And sure enough, the book, the first book happened. Rizzoli was kind enough to take a chance on me as on my own outside of the McAlpin umbrella, certainly part of it.

27:29And that just opened up all of these other opportunities and possibilities. So Jill was really the launch pad that took me into having a book. And she's like, well, when you have a book, your book is the centerpiece to your brand. And I'm like, I'm not a brand. She's like, well, get ready. Because she really, again, catapulted all of that into action. So I was working almost exclusively at that time, with few exception, on more interior-based projects for McAlpin. I was where I could get my hands into something architectural, I would, much to probably everyone's chagrin. But I was tenacious. So those things did start, those opportunities did start coming.

28:17And I was able to design my own house from the ground up here in Nashville. That was a big part of that book. And through all of that time, I was exercising the architectural muscle by designing custom furniture and all of these things. So enter Lori Salmore and the product possibility. and all we had to do was start gathering up some of these custom furniture pieces that I had done through many years, put them into a book, march them out to, at that time it was Hickory Chair, which was remarkably an immediate yes. And Arteriors at that time, I had a product license with Arteriors, they said yes.

28:56And then we were off to product design. But all of that was born out of that first book. And help me understand the timing. I want to say that was 2018-ish. About 2018. Right. Also the time roughly that Susan Farrier leaves. Susan, as soon as we got the rebranding all figured out, Susan said, I'm out of here. I'm done. And then within three months or four months, the other three partners, everybody left. So we went through a big change. And really all of those people contributed so much to the work at Macalpin. But anything that you allow, I'm a bit of a gardener, anything you allow to grow and grow and grow and grow and don't prune gets gangly.

29:49It gets too big. Your roots grow stronger when you prune something back. And I think it was time for McAlpin to have that pruning, which it wasn't anything that was conscious by any of us other than their desire to do their own thing. But it allowed the business to, I think, become tighter and more efficient. And I think it was important for all of them. And I think all of them have had wild and great success since they took that step. Yeah. And truthfully, I think our business is better since they took that step because it's just allowed us to become a leaner, more efficient organization. organization so tell me what was going on for you because along comes jill cohen the star maker right right i mean she's your she's your fairy godmother shows up we're gonna get you a meeting with charles myers we're gonna get you a book we're gonna get you and then and then a collection with hickory chair and a collection with our tears and later visual comfort and suddenly Ray Booth, Ray Booth, Ray Booth, name alone, right outside of just McAlpin.

31:06And tell me how you start to think about that. And to her point, hey, we're going to make you into a brand. I don't know how that sat with you or how you thought about that, but suddenly you are. How exciting and how fortunate. And it was not something that I was conscientiously pursuing. Maybe I should have been, but I wasn't. I just wanted to do the best work that I could do. You know, we create these interiors and this architecture. We have a document, which is photography. So I just wanted to do the best work that I could. And I've had these champions, Bobby, Jill, um, Lori, who, who have taken on the mantle of, Oh no, there's more you can do.

31:58You know, not that I'm lazy, but I think I, I wasn't driven to do all of these things. I was not pursuing it. And I have these beautiful people who have come into my life who have helped me evolve and grow as a designer. So tie this back to the conversation we had at the very onset of this talk. Well, so now there is intention. And I am someone who can practice beautiful architecture in addition to practice beautiful interiors and product design. And the awakening that I was talking about, and again, on lots of levels in my life, but in my career is to own that and the talents that I have. And I am primed to share with the clients that invite us in to do this work and grateful to be able to do this work.