Ep. 441: The World of Peter Dunham

20:44Taryn McCullough:At the time, the March issue came out or April issue came out. And the first person I got an interview with to show my textile to was Albert Hadley when he was Albert Hadley Limited on his own or whatever it was on East 64th Street. I had a friend of mine who worked there who got me an appointment. He looked at the textile, put one aside, which was my fig leaf design, said, I think we could use this one. And then he was my first order.

21:11Liz Logan:which is amazing for any novice designer.

21:17Taryn McCullough:It was like not only was he there and he was charming and lovely and couldn't even be better, but he then called, said, who are you going to be selling these shows? Well, I don't really know yet. I'm just working it out. And he called John Rosselli, who was sort of a legendary multi-line show. I mean, New York is still going on. So, John, I'm sending you this kid around. He goes, textiles, I think you'll like them. So I totted off to the D &D building, and John liked the stuff, and that was it, really. And then I started building up all the others. So John was selling, then I could get into everything else in every other market, which was great.

21:59Taryn McCullough:So it's a lot of, I have to admit to a tremendous amount of serendipity in my life. and I was in fact going back one step I sat next to Barney Williams the other night at a at a event dinner in New York and we were talking about those days of Parrish Hadley and she said well you know the thing about sister was one thing but the the real sort of force of the teams was Albert because Albert you know had taught at Parsons and worked at Macmillan so he was really somebody who really spent a lot of time with his teams and younger people educating them, educating them about historical styles, about architecture, about details, about all the things that Albert or any designer who has points of view should push onto a younger generation.

22:54Taryn McCullough:And she couldn't go on about it enough that, you know, the fact that he was able, was kind of the reason why all these companies now at the top of their game in new york david kleinberg brian mccarthy there was jed johnson there's obviously bunny williams there's several others who were all because of the tutelage of albert hadley so he was a very significant person um in the field still today very much like three generations down they're still benefiting from that tutelage Hi, listeners.

23:29Liz Logan:If this episode has inspired you to tackle a project in your own home, we want to help with a special offer just for podcast fans. We know how exciting it is to bring your vision to life, whether you're updating a room or starting a refresh. You'll find everything you need to create a space that feels uniquely yours. As a thank you for listening, enjoy 20 % off plus free shipping on your next order with the code PODCAST20. Visit BallardDesigns.com to get started. Your dream home is just a click away. Use PODCAST20 for 20 % off plus free shipping. Code's not combinable with other offers. See terms and conditions for details.

24:01Liz Logan:All right, happy decorating. Let's get back to the show.

24:08Taryn McCullough:So that's kind of how the textiles started. And my first assistant, Liz, would be rolling out the fabric at the end of the business day. Like we'd get a three-yard order from somewhere and she'd roll it out by hand and we'd cut it and we'd roll it back up and run it to FedEx. And somehow it worked out. and things started rolling, and then more people needed to come and handle it, and we were 800 square feet kind of guest house barn in the back of my house, and suddenly we were like eight people, and I was like, the noise, and the distraction, and the FedEx things, and the delivery, I said, you guys have got to go somewhere else, I can't get anything done.

24:50Taryn McCullough:so they found a little so show not show this little second floor office in the compound on Almond Hill Street in West Hollywood that already had Nathan Turner in it had Catherine Ireland it had Joe Lucas's studio it had Claremont textiles but like all just attached in the same thing I said no no let's redo it let's get rid of the cars put a tree put some gravel some gates let's call it almont yard and almont yard became a destination i talked joe lucas into opening his store underneath me and you know so it became really like you would hit la and you'd want to go see some new stuff you'd go to almont yard which worked really well and then i furnished this little which had now become i guess a showroom instead of an office with stuff that i'd hoarded collected or was kept on making over and over for clients but zhuzhed up the space basically and so that became hollywood at home where there was i bought in several other friends textile collections lisa fine carolina irving john robshaw jed johnson i mean there was a bunch it was like a little collective so that was hollywood at home my next baby and people kept on buying the stuff.

26:17Taryn McCullough:I was like, no, no, no, these lamps are here just for a vibe. No, no. They wanted to buy the lamps and the accessories and the furniture. So I was like, okay, well, I'll sell anything basically. So that's how we got into the furniture business. And then we had to move and we moved to La Cienega for a bigger space so we could have more furniture and more, more, more, more, more. And here we are and I'm like having my show on La Cienega, which has now been about 15 years. I lose track of numbers, but I think about 15 years on La Cienega. So that is my A to Z in a long, long, long answer. I'm sorry.

26:57Liz Logan:That was absolutely beautiful and wildly worth it. So now you have Hollywood at Home, like you said, in LA, and then you have your home and garden store at 200 Lex in New York. So you really have, of your two love cities, you have great placement on both, which is so lovely.

27:19Taryn McCullough:And it was very hard to leave Rosselli in New York, had to say, after all those years. And it was very scary to do it. But I couldn't sell the furniture, which was now a growing business. A big teak collection, a lot of wicker collection, custom-made furniture, upholstery, accessories, bed covers. There's all the things I always needed. It was impossible to sell it without the textiles. Because as you say, you walk down a hallway and you can see, oh, my God, that looks like Peter Dunham. And, you know, so that's why one day I had to call up Jonathan Rosselli and say, I'm really sorry, but we're not leaving you for anyone else.

28:02Taryn McCullough:I would never do that. But we have to sell it as a package. So that's how it happened. And so if he's listening, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all those years of support. But it was time to like swim on my own for a while.

28:19Liz Logan:Well, that was just a beautiful, serendipitous way of talking about how it all it all really came to be. And and beautiful to speak to. I think it speaks to even your patterns and how you developed those and sort of your love for color. So will you talk us through the actual inspiration of your textiles, seeing as they kind of were your launch into everyone's home?

28:46Taryn McCullough:I'm going to backtrack one briefly. And edit me to death, please. But my best friend at high school was someone called Ashley Hicks. And his father was this famous interior designer, who was my first glimpse at a designer. And in fact, over on my shoulder here, I think I have the row of every single publication of David Hicks right there on that shelf there. And he, like, I was just like entranced by the books. You know how people might be entranced by comics or something else as a teenager? I don't know what video games today. I was entranced by the David Hicks books. They were graphically beautiful, and they showed these incredible spaces from Athens to Fifth Avenue to Florida to all these places.

29:38Taryn McCullough:And this mixture of pattern, geometrics, and color, and color contrast, and the mixture of antique and modern was just like, wow. You know, it was just so crisp. It was so together. It was so unique. No one else was doing it to that level of perfection. I think he, again, a whole spew of generations came from him. But so to me, my background, my eye was very attuned to the sense of geometric patterns rather than florals, rather than, you know, other things. It's just finding and looking constantly for the rhythm that you get from geometric patterns. That's where my eye goes to, kind of like somebody's ear for music might go for women's voices or low men's voices.

30:32Taryn McCullough:And mine goes to this sort of rhythm. And his was very much crisp in design and mine is much more tribal. I like that sense of patterns that you get from ethnic textiles, from tribal pieces, from India, from the Islamic world. But not necessarily only from Africa, from, can be Native American. My eye's always roving to find the great pattern. I mean, I go to the Met to go see something completely unrelated, like the Man Ray show. But then I'll leave and see something in a gallery that, oh, look, that little detail. Or maybe I've done fabrics, you know, based on the border of a Doris Duke tunic, you know, that I'm obsessed over.

31:22Taryn McCullough:And then I suddenly, finally make into a textile. So it comes from everywhere, but it's all always, in a way, quite disciplined. I don't do anything very abstracted or, you know, ombre or anything. It's usually a pattern that has a... So that's kind of where the inspiration comes from and very much what I'm looking for in my project. So like now I'm working on, I went to this incredible place up Hudson River, the design library that has like literally hundreds of thousands of designs that you can rent and fashion companies go and big box. Yeah, it's huge. It's one of the most incredible places.

32:06Taryn McCullough:I mean, I just pray it'll go on forever. It's just like, you know, a commercial V &A, Victoria and Albert Museum, you can go. So I took out these things that really spoke to me, but I didn't quite know how. That's the thing, you don't always know how. And then I was doing a presentation the other day, and I was like, you know, that would look really good. Yeah. We would have done some creative work on the computer, you know, laying out the design and scaling it before we send it out to be struck off, right? And I was like, this actually would look really cool. There's nothing else like it, and it would look really cool with that antique carpet I bought.

32:48Taryn McCullough:It's different. It's like this grass cloth I wanted to make. And I was looking at another grass cloth, and I thought, very pretty, that's exactly what I want. Then I thought, huh, wait a minute, there's this other stuff that could give the whole room just an extra twist of bohemia. Just like make this very fancy Fifth Avenue living room just like just a bit more special depth to it. So that's kind of how a lot of textiles come about. Like I'm on the field and I'm like, oh, that's kind of what I need. Or I find it.

33:23Peter Dunham:Yeah, your textiles do feel found and they feel a bit historical, but they do have a twist to them that makes them a little bit more modern, whether it's the color combination and definitely the scale, which is something that I do want to talk a little bit more about. Because you go big with your scale, I feel like. Oh, really?

33:47Taryn McCullough:Okay.

33:48Peter Dunham:I feel like, well, there are no ditzies, right? There's nothing too tiny, I feel like, in a lot of your prints.

33:59Taryn McCullough:The woman who ran Jean-Michel used to say, no, you need small things. We call them dollar prints. They make a lot of dollars. enough enough with the novelty design she would say i need some dollar print um it's true i try and vary it where i have some that maybe you don't notice as much as sort of smaller ones that fit it because like i need big scale and small scale i need rough and smooth i need shiny and matte i need soft i need hot you know they're all these different tools that as a designer or as a textile designer you need um and very much but my interior design business is based on this layering of you know textures i remember one project not that long ago where we did this presentation we thought we were so pleased with ourselves we were like spot on we got the client she said oh no no no no no no no no no wicker and i looked kind of slightly horrified we all looked at each other and kind of known for wicker and rush and caning and whatever.

35:07Taryn McCullough:I like things that have a very handmade feel to them, crafted. And I looked a bit nervously at my team and then we'd like, oh, no sizal. It's like, okay. So we went through sizal and wicker and rush and I said, well, I have no tools left. You know, I literally, no grass cloth on the wall, no thing. I was like, well what am I going to do now? You know so but those are kind of part of the tools like that sense of touch and hand and something that looks very handmade but it's true I hadn't thought about some of my patterns being big but they are like some of my well-known patterns are quite big because sometimes you need a big pattern you need to cover a whole wall or you need something that fills the whole of the back of a chair and then And then you need things that are maybe just a stripe, you know, kind of the mashed potato to go with the gumbo or the rice to go with the gumbo.

36:05Taryn McCullough:Can't all be gumbo with a plate of gumbo, you know. When you were living in L.A., did you ever go to that restaurant? It wasn't called meat. It was called flesh or something. And everything was really heavy with a heavy sauce. And I was like, can't we just have like some steamed spinach to offset the richness of the meat, you know?

36:30Peter Dunham:It sounds, you've got to go to the vegan place next door.

36:35Taryn McCullough:Exactly. Bring it with you. Oh, no, but I love that.

36:39Peter Dunham:I love that, like going through a room and thinking about the opposites. Thinking about whether it's big and little or shiny and matte or natural and man-made. because your rooms really feel so layered and so refined while feeling very cool and very vibey. And I think vibe is another thing that I'd love to talk to you about because that seems to be something that you talk about in the book a lot, like finding the vibe of a home.

37:14Taryn McCullough:Yeah, it's really interesting. that's been one of the chapters that is interested or I got the most response from in the book. It's funny, people ignore togetherness or charm, the things that, you know, or refuge, other things in the chapter. People love the vibe thing. It's very important. When I speak to vibe in a house, and you have to understand, as you know from living in LA, There aren't that many houses that come with a vibe. Now, vibe to me is something I grew up in very historic places in France, went to very historic houses. My mother only picked my boarding schools purely by their looks.

37:58Taryn McCullough:I remember arriving at Stowe, the most beautiful school in England, and my mother gasping, and I just knew that was the school that she was going to choose. It wasn't going to be Marlborough or Rugby or Harrow or whatever else. it was, you know, stow. So I come from these where there's a huge amount of vibe in the stow. I mean, if you're walking up to a very old house, even a house that doesn't seem particularly old, but a 19th century house on Staten Island comes with a built-in vibe, comes in with generations of people who have lived and died in that house. It's come with vegetation that's grown up around it been ripped out replaced it's had it's been added on to sometimes well sometimes quirkily so for me coming to la where so many houses were maybe 50 years old barely a hundred because they get pulled down so aggressively they're built like movie sets um and coming to a lot of new houses my most important thing in a house is creating a vibe.

39:08Taryn McCullough:Now, it's got to correlate to the people who live in it. You can't create like this super hipster vibe for a really frumpy couple, and you can't put a really hipstery couple in a really frumpy house. So, you know, you've got to suit it to them. But whatever it is, those people, it's got to be welcoming. It's got, for me, it's got to like exude as much personality as possible because at the end of the day I don't really care what it looks like I really care how it feels I really want a house to feel lived in I guess that's where I make up with layering I mean look behind you on the wall it's layered there's like a vibe they're books you've got beautiful branches behind you you know And, you know, it's already got personality.

40:01Taryn McCullough:But a lot of spec houses built all over California, I mean, I would say probably two-thirds of the houses we walk into are either spec-ish or were spec houses, or they're new builds, ground up, which we're increasingly doing. And that's why people call me. They want me at the beginning to create that sense of home rather than a sense of showplace. Showplaces is for the D &D building, you know? It's not for me or it's for a big showroom in a commercial center. That's the purpose of it. But it isn't for me in a house. I want the house to look like the clients. If they're wacky people, then make it wacky.

40:50Taryn McCullough:And if they're rather conservative, make it conservative. but make it very appealing like you know this older serious couple or younger serious couple whatever chill them out a bit give them a vibe music lighting textures contrast and you know i was talking before about the what i believe this serendipity that's happened in my life. I still do it in my design work. You know, we try and do no less than 30 % serendipity in a project and 70 % planned and made and decided. People really hate the process because people like to know ahead of time everything in their place. And I'm like, we don't need to decide right now we have six months before this house is finished we can i'm going to be looking at hundreds of auctions between now and then go to round top and brimfield and french you know flea markets that i call like the modern version collector version of the killing of the hunger games where everyone is ready to kill each other for for a little capron coffee table um you know So, but there's this sense of like, it's got to be at least 30 % found.

42:15Taryn McCullough:I will never go below 20, that's for sure. You've got to have art, you've got to have some books, you've got to have some carpets that have seen some life or some, you know, in a modern house, I'm not going to, I'm generally not going to put a Georgian piece of furniture in or really old antique carpets, but I want maybe tribal masks in there. Maybe I want, you know, art that was, even if it's made now art that feels it has has life somebody made it it's you can't find it anywhere else that's my where vibe comes from if that makes sense oh it totally makes sense yeah right i mean one of the chapters i didn't do which i would have loved to have done but you could only do 300 pages, even for me, was one on flattering the people.

43:11Like, if somebody has fantastic, beautiful, you know, red hair, like, decorate around them.

43:20Taryn McCullough:You know, if they have magical blue, green, gold eyes, use that all over the room. I mean, that is, as I call it, your headboard color. Like, you know, if you have incredible blue eyes, I'm going to try and make your entire bedroom as close to being covered in silk velvet, the color of your eyes, because that is going to become hither. And which is, to me, is the goal. You know, everyone wants to be attractive and have a healthy sex life at the end of the day in my houses if they can. And, but if they have very dark features or very dark eyes, then I'll start picking up black accents around the room.

44:00So you continually reconnect the person

44:04Taryn McCullough:to their strongest feature. So as I put in one project, I did one interview, I said, well, what's the finishing touch? And I said, art, of course. If somebody's got a Picasso in the fireplace, are you really going to notice that the homeowner has a dreadful toupee on? And no, you're going to look at the Picasso on the wall and think, wow, he's, you know, he's someone. So I think that's the, if I do another book, I'll talk about making more of the people, not just of the house themselves.

44:41Liz Logan:That's beautiful. I love that. Well, I think that connection to home and that's something we're all looking for. Like that is truly what you can't, you can look at images all day that aren't your work and be inspired. But at some point you have to look inside and truthfully who you are. And to your point, what makes you feel beautiful and comfortable and safe.

45:07Taryn McCullough:But don't you think that's quite hard to do? I mean, I don't always know about myself. And God knows I've been to plenty of therapy in my life. But, you know, I don't always know, like, oh, that's really what I am or what I seem to other people or what, you know, I'm confused about myself a lot of time. And I think people have a very hard time envisaging what they're going to do to a house to make it seem like them, particularly in six months, one, two, three, you know. I mean, Sister Parrish went buying those frigging quilts for like nine decades for her house in Maine to create, you know, her vibe there, her iconic there.

45:47Liz Logan:That's the other part, too, is I think generationally that whole it isn't done in one day. And leaving space for that serendipity is not it's something that people need to learn how to do truly to give things time.

46:04Taryn McCullough:you know and i think habits have changed i was listening to this really good podcast because i'm a big podcast listener too um and he's talking about the the antique trade and thing is ultimately people are just not interested anymore in going out to collect and shop and time their life has been replaced by a lot of other things if you have kids now there's this huge pressure i mean my parents did not take me to soccer games at the weekend or ballet or whatever parents have to do all the time as a full-time parent is constantly be chauffeuring their kids around to these events so they can get into the next school or the next level and the next thing.

46:50Taryn McCullough:So there's less and less time, right? So people spend more and more time online and it's really hard to collect beautiful objects. I mean, how many houses do you go to where you think, wow, this person's really gone around, and found really pretty things, all these flea markets or auctions or antique shows. I went to the San Francisco Antique Show the other day. They're struggling because people don't go to those kind of things, whereas they'll go to the opening night, which was like super bash, which everyone was wearing couture and whatever. But did they come the other days when they wanted people to buy?

47:27Taryn McCullough:I would say much less than 10 years ago. it's people people are preoccupying doing other things looking looking online at Instagram or TikTok or whatever people do with their time but it's different so you know for me it was like a really fun pastime even when I was 15 coming back from boarding school I discovered the auction houses in Paris and that was incredible you know my Disneyland is an incredible salvage company that has beautiful architectural salvage that makes me dream. And I was like, oh my God, take a picture of that. I can use that there. Or where can I use that? Usually I see an object and come back to it two years later because I found a place to improve.

48:14Liz Logan:Amazing. So everyone has their own interest, but I think interests and tastes have changed.

48:20Taryn McCullough:People don't necessarily want to go out and on a Saturday morning like they might have, or some of us design freaks do, and go to like yard sales and find like great needlepoint cushions, you know. They don't. So I think that that's where creating that collected vibe for young generations gone away in my houses, why the look of design narratives have been pared down where there's a lot of neutrals and, you know, we're now coming out of it with more color and more texture and more richness, I think. But we've had a good 30 year run of kind of, you know, beige texture and off white and things like that.

49:12Taryn McCullough:Because people either don't really want to say very much about themselves to the outside world. Or speaking to like who you are is become more complicated because people don't live where they grew up very rarely. I mean, you know, they do, but a lot of people I know in places like California came from other places. So already they're not somebody who grew up in Pasadena and went to Pasadena High School and they have a Southern California, Pasadena, clear identity. They're transplant like I am. So it translates into me wanting to create a vibe and an identity everywhere I go. And for other people, it means like doing none of the above.

49:56Just, you know, putting forward a blank canvas.

50:00Liz Logan:Yeah. I think a lot of people are afraid. They're afraid they will make mistakes and they will be costly.

50:10Taryn McCullough:yes i agree with you i agree but i think if you paint your whole house white to me it's a vacuum that needs filling what's scary is that they feel like going out there and buying photographs or photography framing and putting it on the wall and doing like a salon hang like behind Liz there is, that's not scary. I mean, you know, you could make it with your kids' art too. Like just, but I guess they don't want to, yeah, I definitely find in LA where people were much more reticent to buy art to put on their walls is because they don't want to make a statement that looks stupid.

50:57Liz Logan:Yeah, I think a lot of people are afraid to look stupid. They're afraid to show. But by art, I mean, that's easy.

51:03Taryn McCullough:No, actually, art's quite complicated. Really?

51:07Peter Dunham:Yes, because it's easy if you're an artist.

51:13Taryn McCullough:Like, you know, my life partner is an artist, so constantly has a very strong eye for other artists' work. Connect, so very often I'll listen and look at things that he's pointing out and say, oh yeah, we should look at those pieces, they're great, and consider buying one or whatever. So if you're an artist, it's easy. If you're somebody who grew up going to museums and having an interest, and even if it's just a little bit and you don't do it for a while, I find so many people come back to it. They like culture and be part of the culture. So artists very kindly created lithographs, right? so you could buy Picasso for the equivalent of a thousand dollars you know you can still go collect a lot of art you can go and get Ellsworth Kelly beautiful lithographs that translate really well for five thousand four five thousand bucks whereas the original artworks are five hundred thousand dollars you know but they allowed us to have access to art proper grown-up art that you could put in your walls that isn't but people find it very complicated because they might not go to museums because they're busy at school you know i had a client in the other day who admitted he had never been to the getty museum who lived within half a mile of the getty museum i said you've never even taken your kids on the tramway i mean how could you not even take the kids on the tramway well they went with school i was like oh if you're already that on that side of

52:50Peter Dunham:The 405. Just get yourself to the gate. Ah.

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53:25Taryn McCullough:So I'm just saying that you've got, you know, people coming from lots of different places, so you have to meet them where they are. And maybe they're interested in rock and roll. So like, let's buy rock and roll photography. That is your vibe. There's fantastic photography, you know. So that's the way we as a designer had to try and pull it out of the client to give them a little bit more of a, of a to give them a version of what they should be because and hopefully they're very comfortable and happy with it but it takes some work and you're right people don't naturally come to it with oh like i'm we're gonna go out there and fill it with young emerging california artists It requires work.

54:11Taryn McCullough:I spend every other weekend probably going to art galleries, talking to dealers, sometimes buying. I mean, it sounds like I'm a mega collector. It's not. But, you know, part of what amuses me about living in California is the art world in L.A. is very vibrant. you know and it's a great offset to like these miles and miles of square miles of strip malls here is there is a vibrant art community and for my partner there's a vibrant music community that you can go to like these small venues and hear amazing people and then wow two years later they're filling the staples center so there's that so we go mine is visual his is you know audible whatever you say um and and so you know for me the idea of going to galleries is a great way to connect with artists to talk to them go do studio visits go see what they're doing to talk to art people converse what are the ideas so that's what i get joy out of but it is a joy it's not an effort for me yeah but you know as a result i have some idea of art and some background in it and things that after the end of the day, I just buy what I like.

55:32Taryn McCullough:I'm not trying to beat the market. I'm not trying to be cool. I'm not trying to, whatever. I just, for a few thousand dollars, I'd buy something I really like. And so hence I have now in my sixties, a very layered look of art. And so, but that says a lot. When you walk into our house, there's something very comfortable to people. Like there's quite a lot of stuff and it's interesting and they don't know quite where to go to first. It manipulates the experience. So I guess that's what we do as vibe creators, is we are manipulating the experience. Is slowing it up, speeding it up, making it jazzy where you need it to be exciting, like a dining room.

56:16Taryn McCullough:You want people to converse and be excited, but a living room, you might want soothing and calm. Then a library, you want it to be heavy and moody, you know. That's going back to vibe. That was a long vibe.

56:31Liz Logan:Well, could we quickly touch on your charm section of how people can bring in charm?

56:39Taryn McCullough:Well, they're very similar to each other, vibe and charm. I think that a vibe in a house can be very charming or it can be very impressive or it can be very loud or whatever. thing. But charm is a different thing altogether that where you're really creating a very emotional connection. It's almost like one-to-one and the other one is it's there for everyone. Like a vibe of a house is there for everyone, the people who live there and the people who come. Charm is really like, wow, I walked into that house and it really struck me. That was so charming. And how do you do it? It's like, for me, a lot of the time is textures and patterns and creating moments of like, oh, wow, look at that beautiful window or look at that tree.

57:30Taryn McCullough:Oh, my God, look at that oak. You know, just picking up on the really beautiful moments of charm. I mean, charm is a dog lying in a basket. Charm is people in their happy places, this light hitting a thing. It's when you walk into a house like, oh, you know, this is sweet. This is, you know, it's just like, charm can be very high-low. You can have a cottage that's really charming. Listen, when you have a cottage in the Cotswolds, you don't need to row the charm river very hard.

58:14Peter Dunham:No, that's pretty built in.

58:15Taryn McCullough:But when you're doing a spec house in, you know, in Newport Beach, you need to row. It's like going through those rapids, but the wrong way up. You need to row heavily to create charm. And what do you do? You create moments, like you said, layering of stuff of warmth as best you can. And that's, to me it's very important the charm is a very important factor just putting people at their ease and and and letting them into your heart it's just it's like somebody's very soft eyes you know very friendly smile or something you know that's the that to me is the charm when you walk in i'm not making a very good pitch for it i had to say but it's hugely important for me for people to have a feeling of emotion, of love, of like connection to this thing.

59:09Taryn McCullough:And that's your charm.

59:11Liz Logan:Well, you have a whole section in your book of charm, so they can check that out too when they see your book. So it's totally good. The other part I did, I know we have made you talk for a whole hour, but I just wanted to note also this wonderful toolkit section you have in your book, which is just such a gift as part of the book to really go through. I mean, you really talk and give so much for anybody who really is trying to, again, find the vibe, find the charm, figure out how to add that into their homes. And you go through the furniture plan and pattern wrapping and, I mean, even the power of a mirror.

59:51Liz Logan:Can you even like sum that up in two minutes? Because that was like, I mean, it's all so wonderful.

59:56Taryn McCullough:all i mean i'm truly loving the questions um mirror isn't just something that you look at yourself in mirror to me is almost like a it's like a way to sculpt light and to to add to the vibe or the charm or whatever if you're adding to the charm you're using messed up mirror to, you know, create it. If you're using, for example, in New York, I often do this with some with you, where that I mirror the around the windows. You don't notice it. You literally, most of the time, don't notice the back. But I have, for very little money, added, or I think it's very little money. Everyone complains about the price of everything.

1:00:42Taryn McCullough:But, you know, you can put mirror either side of the, on the flat walls, if you have deep windows and put a little trim so you don't see the edge of the mirror, hence a little bit more money. And then it expands your windows. So for me, like this sense of airiness is so important in a room. So mirror is, I'm sculpting airiness, not necessarily light in the view, but this sense of openness. People don't notice it. And then they're like, I can't believe we didn't do this before. You know, they're like, what do you mean doing the window? I said, trust me. I didn't invent it. I mean, you know, I look at people like Chessie Rayner and Mika Ertigan, two like massive icons of interior design.

1:01:28Taryn McCullough:Not me. You mentioned I was an icon at the beginning. I was like all blushy. But like people like them who were like, they used a lot of tricks like this. So that's what the toolkit's about. Like creating areas that break off from one big central space Sometimes you need a big central area in a living room to like have a big gathering in, and that's how you entertain. That's how all your members of the family sit together and in one big group and maybe watch the game or whatever it is. But other times you need little locations for more intimate moments, little, you know, working. My biggest goal in my toolkit is try and get people to use every room.

1:02:09Taryn McCullough:So if I can get people to get, my goal is, I guess from real estate, I want to get at least 120 % out of every room. So if it means I need to put a Peloton in your living room, I'm going to put a Peloton in your living room. I might want to powder coat it a color, or if you really want to play the piano, but like this big black piano, like let's lacquer the piano, let's stay in an antique piano, a color that's prettier than just black or brown. But that's what the toolkit is for, kind of the solutions to, I guess, modern living and using the space that you're given. Because again, going back to the spec houses that most people, I guess, buy in to at some point, even if they've been pre-owned or I have to walk up to is, like I need a very strong toolkit.

1:03:10Taryn McCullough:If you walk into a lovely Rosario Candela apartment on Park Avenue in the 70s, you don't need much of a toolkit. Rosario Candela really fix the space for you. There is a great sofa wall. There's a great chaise wall. There's a great little desk area. It's really built in. But in these rooms with all openings and all huge windows, and there's no wall separation, nothing to put anything on or to put a sofa against. You need a toolkit. And it starts with fixing the architecture too. That's a big chapter in my book. I think that when one can, even if one does it in a very temporary way, like by putting up a, using a big rug as a tapestry on a wall and blocking up a window or a door, particularly when it's not giving you a great view through that, I'm a big one on that one.

1:04:05Taryn McCullough:You know, you can very inexpensively, you know, I had a project where there was just a fireplace with two windows that just had really buzzkill windows views. So instead of going to the length of like drywalling and I just knew it was good, I basically put some kind of white fabric behind and put bookcases in front of both of them. You don't notice that it blocked up windows. Or I'll use a four-poster bed with a hanging and shove it in front of a window that I don't like. You know, so fixing the architecture doesn't mean you need to call up and have a long-term relationship with a contractor who you end up hating.

1:04:47Taryn McCullough:You can do some of that yourself where you manipulate the space. So that's kind of the toolkit. The toolkit, I think, is very important for me because those are all the personal little tricks and traits. So going back to mirror, you can create all these different effects with mirror that isn't really looking at a glitzy mirrored room or mirrored wall, per se. You know, you can incorporate it into the architecture.

1:05:19Liz Logan:That's beautiful. Okay, I had one more question, but Liz, I feel like I've asked. No, go for it. The green sofa. Why has the green sofa followed you your whole life? You even highlight it, like you say it in the book. And I was like, the green sofa, where did it start and why does it follow you?

1:05:39Taryn McCullough:you know it's really weird but i tried to chat gpt the other day with one of my young associates and they said like make a peter dunham living room and i said really and it analyzes said yeah try green sofa so i said green stuff anyway because obviously it shows up okay green to me is a neutral like we live so i'm looking out of my two windows here i've got a giant orange tree with vivid green leaves, and over there I have hedges and trees. It's green, green, green. We live surrounded. So two human eyes, green and blue are neutrals. In fact, much more so than beige. Now, beige is a neutral if you live in the desert.

1:06:26Taryn McCullough:It's all over the place, and I think it looks beautiful, and there are thousands of shades of beige. I have a whole editor's letter that Margaret Russell did after a conversation with, yet again, Albert Hadley, where he said to her, it's not beige, darling. It's sandstone. It's ivory. It's, you know, he went through all the different descriptions you could describe off-white with. And he was right. There was all these subtleties that it alludes to. But green, to me, is ubiquitous. So as a color that you can use almost any way as that. And I'm always desperately trying to connect the view to the indoors.

1:07:04Taryn McCullough:That's one of my big goals always is try and make like, whatever we do is never going to come anywhere near what mother nature does. Mother nature is a way better designer, way better colorist, way better everything than human beings are, right? That's my belief. So if I'm going to connect to the outdoors, where I have a lot of green views often, I like to put a green sofa, it kind of, it's very welcoming. It connects you to the outside. People look good in a green sofa. Everyone's outfits on a green sofa look good. I was noticing the other day I was in the South and people had a lot of pattern dresses.

1:07:45Taryn McCullough:And I was like, you kind of got to be a little careful about how much pattern you put on things if people are going to wear a lot of pattern clothes. You know, so I was thinking about that. So the green sofa is big for me. thank you i mean i i all the things i said about green i believe about blue because i think you look at the sky and a blue sky is a very happy experience you know it's to me that's happy green is happy brown twigs on the trees when the leaves have fallen in winter is not necessarily happy i don't look at the landscape taking the li in february or whatever freeway with a lot of trees and looking at a whole bunch of brown twigs, that's not a happy thing for me.

1:08:29Taryn McCullough:Green leaves are, blue sky is, you know, the sea. Those are the associations I have with color. So green sofa it is. I recommend a green sofa. It goes many places. You can buy, you know, if you're going to try and not make expensive mistakes, you can spend a lot of money on your sofa, which sofas have become quite expensive these days, and do it in green. And I think you can take it to a lot of different houses. Love that. Just saying.

1:08:58Liz Logan:Just saying. Just this famous person, you know, just telling us who does this for a living. You're all welcome for that tidbit.

1:09:06Taryn McCullough:I do it for a living. I don't know how famous I am. Some say, oh, you're so famous. I said, because you follow me on Instagram going around my book tour. Trust me, no one is walking up to me at an airport and say, oh, I saw your book or whatever. No, I'm not famous.

1:09:20Liz Logan:I would. Okay. And a lot of people listening would. I was going to say, you've come to a podcast that's a whole bunch of people who would love to meet you and talk to you.

1:09:30Taryn McCullough:And it's a lot of people, too, so I'm happy to do it. Anytime you want to do a virtual book signing or a real book signing somewhere, I'm there for you.

1:09:39Liz Logan:Wonderful. Well, will you – Liz, do you have any more questions?

1:09:43Peter Dunham:No, this has just been absolutely a treat.

1:09:46Liz Logan:You have to please come back. We will give you a little break, but please come back. We would love to talk more because you just have such a wealth of knowledge and a beautiful way of looking at the world. And will you tell everyone where they can find you and follow you and see your work and buy your book?

1:10:07Taryn McCullough:So Peter Dunn Design, Hollywood at Home, Peter Dunn Home and Garden, Peter Dunn Textiles are pretty much. And they all kind of are interconnected on Instagram. I think that's the biggest site. Buying the book, a lot of places, bookstore, there you are. It's actually, I have to say, I was really thrilled. It sold through its first printing. Already. Which for a design book is kind of, not all design books go through, but the first has gone. They're reprinting it in time for Christmas. It'll be out in the middle end of November. They rushed another edition, second edition. So if you can get your edition now, it will be a first edition, which is always good for the design book collectors.

1:10:56Taryn McCullough:But it was a joy. I cannot take credit for the book.

1:11:00Peter Dunham:Okay.

1:11:00Taryn McCullough:I can only take credit for the content of the book. Van Dome, who is our publisher, and Stephen Drucker, who is another legend in the world of shelter magazines, was very much, you know, for me doing a book and forced me to do a book when I didn't want to do a book and I didn't believe I had the content to do a book. And they have a book designer, Celia Fuller, who they assigned to me, who somehow got the graphics of my design and was really excited about and the pictures and put them together over and over again. And every time she would show us a chapter, I was like, oh my God, it actually looks really good.

1:11:44Taryn McCullough:I mean, I literally had no idea of how it was going to turn out and then how she was going to package it. And it's very hard to do a book, as I was told by them, that is not a book that's a portfolio book or book just of kitchens or to do coastal and mountain and desert and city or whatever themes you want to do that way. It's really a book that's kind of quite jumbly. And it's very hard to do, but it pulled through because the publisher was ready to do very expensive things like the cover with the textile and the embossed. And you can show people the edging of the pages, which is another one of my design patterns, collages on the edges.

1:12:27Taryn McCullough:So all these things that they came up with, which was added money, but the book publisher was willing to do it because that's how they want to push the envelope of their book. So I serendipitously lucked out to have an editor who really wanted me to do it, a book designer who was fantastic, who related, and we just went out there and shot the projects. and we had a lot of guidance from Stephen Drucker. It was like a masterclass in seeing somebody who really knew what they're doing and how to edit a book to keep it interesting. Yeah. And how to cut it down.

1:13:11Peter Dunham:This book is so fantastic because I really feel it encapsulates your viewpoints on design. Yeah. It's less of a how-to and really just more about your views on design And it's just so wonderful. Yeah.

1:13:24Taryn McCullough:Well, thank you so much. I'll come back anytime.

1:13:27Peter Dunham:Oh, great. Because Caroline is so sad that she's not here. Yes.

1:13:33Taryn McCullough:Oh. Yeah.

1:13:33Peter Dunham:We have a third one.

1:13:34Taryn McCullough:Well, we can do this all over again. We can do this all over again.

1:13:39Liz Logan:Oh, well, thank you so much for your time today. We love talking to you.

1:13:44Taryn McCullough:Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend.

1:13:48Liz Logan:And that's our show. you can find all of the show notes on our blog, howtodecorate.com slash podcast. To send in a decorating dilemma, email your questions to podcast at BallardDesigns.net so we can help you with your space. And of course, be sure to follow us on social media at Ballard Designs.

1:14:03Peter Dunham:Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And please leave us a review. We'd love to hear your feedback. Until next time, happy decorating!