The purpose of this thread is to present the challenge, give background on the Hollywood Regency style, and to link participants to the "About the Design Around This" page.

DO NOT POST YOUR DESIGNS IN THIS THREAD. A THREAD WILL BE STARTED IN A WEEK"S TIME FOR POSTING THE DESIGNS.

Anyone who wants to participate will have at least a week to come up with their design.

You can do a Finish Board to present your design.

You can post a series of pictures to present your design:

However, if you are posting a series of inspiration pictures, the inspiration should be clear enough and close enough to your design to communicate your designs to other people.

(Since the threads get large, I would prefer Not to see lots of photos of flowers, staging, and non-fixture/finishes inspirations--this is probably snarky but a placemat doesn't really go that far in my book in promoting a concrete design and it takes up bandwidth.)

HOLLYWOOD REGENCY:

There is a lot of bad and conflicting information about Hollywood Regency, because, similar to other design period-styles it did not get named except in retrospect.

The Hollywood Regency "period" encompasses the period from about 1940-1970, although it has even earlier roots and some designers, such as Carleton Varney never stopped decorating in this style. Current designers or decorators who have revived Hollywood Regency are KELLY WEARSTLER and MILES REDD, in particular and JONATHAN ADLER has basically copied/adapted a lot of Hollywood Regency period accessories and furniture and merchandised it.

HOLLYWOOD REGENCY is a pastiche of almost every classical and neoclassical style with art deco, Asian, and midcentury modern influences. So, you will see the influence of 18th century French, English, and American furniture mixed with the deco and Asian influences of lacquer, and the modern influences of comfortable upholstery and spareness of line. It evolved over the decades into various different expressions, but consistent throughout is the use of luxurious materials, glossy finishes, and opulent details. Since this was the middle of the 20th century, these designers were also not afraid of formica, vinyl, and blatantly fake finishes.

WHAT KIND OF HOUSES LEND THEMSELVES TO HOLLYWOOD REGENCY?

This house is a Prototypical Hollywood Regency House, designed by Los Angeles architect Paul Revere Williams

Another Paul R. Williams House:
Colonial Revival? Deco Moderne? Yes.

Lucille Ball's House, by Paul R Williams
(stars once lived much more modestly, it seems)

Paul R. Williams' own house:

A midcentury rambler (large ranch)

A largish house contemporary to the 2000s

A condo apartment in a highrise:

THE OLD SCHOOL:

William Haines' house for Carole Lombard:

A William Haines room circa 1960:

Dorothy Draper's Greenbriar circa 1940s

A later Draper room:

A Tony Duquette room:

LATER PERIOD:
David Hicks, 1960s

Billy Baldwin, 1970s:

Michael Taylor, late 1970s. This room remained unchanged until a few years ago and was subtly updated:

THE FURNITURE:

Dorothy Draper's "Viennese" chest:

Tommi Parzinger Lamp, and console:

James Mont chest and mirror, Michael Taylor spoonback chair:

The Hollywood Regency -inspired kitchen will really be a new interpretation, because a real kitchen in this period would be a fairly typical period kitchen for the era of the house.

I have some photos of this Real Kitchen, which is probably as close to a Hollywood Regency styled kitchen as one can get, with it's FLOATING ISLAND.

Anyhow, I just wanted to say thanks for this topic. I can see using a lot of the stuff in the inspiration photos in my own house today. Well, not the gold highlighted kitchen cabinets, no matter how "Hollywood Regency" they may be. But I will have 4 ovens in the new kitchen, so there you go--Hollywood Regency in Central PA!

I would call the current Jonathan Adler pieces "Miami Regency" I think.

William Haines, Tony Duquette, and Michael Taylor used French period chairs mixed with everything, and they all developed their own contemporary pieces. Dorothy Draper mixed a lot of American/English period furniture with deco moderne, and David Hicks mixed English and contemporary/lucite. They all pretty much mixed any period antique with any contemporary piece without any compunctions. They also mixed color in ways we no longer do, so much.

There were a lot of crystal chandeliers and sconces, a lot of statues and porcelain museum mounted as lamps, a lot of white plaster, a lot of mirrors in antiqued (and some veined) finishes. There does not seem to be a lot of actual full mirrored pieces, at least originally. The clipped corner chairs and "bamboo" pieces weren't there, either. I think these trends were added later and were more mainstream.

The Regents also embraced a lot of materials that people have turned away from. Dorothy Draper used football fields of vinyl tile, and I have read things about Haines and Baldwin talking about using vinyl floors, plastic laminate and vinyl upholstery--and they all used a lot of wall-to-wall carpet.

It holds up pretty well for a 50 year old room, I think.

Speaking as one whose work takes her often into old Palm Beach (and those folks don't give a flip about current design trends, so most of their houses haven't been updated since they moved in), I very rarely see any of those items in what's left of real Palm Beach. Perhaps in newer houses in the wannabe north end, but definitely not in Palm Beach Palm Beach. Shells in the grotto in the garden, yes, but not so much in the house.

The grotto furniture is intended to be outdoor stuff, isn't it cement?

In terms of lighter "beachy" looking furniture, I associate that with winter condos and such. But I mispoke, too, I meant to call it Miami Regency. Or maybe I should call it Ft. Lauderdale Regency. :)

Most of what I've seen in PB is the real thing, often with a coral rock base. They don't do cement much. I was at a wedding there where the tent company managed to damage one of the coral rock balusters of the railing on the terrace and it was a very expensive mistake, because it took a lot to find someone who could carve an exact duplicate these days.

Thanks for clarifying.

I looked up how I thought it was spelled and it is spanglish slang for a slovenly dirty girl, so I am way off base.

I've seen the stuff carved into architectural elements but I don't know that I have ever seen a genuine piece of the furniture in person, I think the stuff I saw was concrete on an armature. I can't tell on 1st dibs what is real and what is not either, but most of it seems to be based on Florentine forms, or kinda French looking.

palimpsest mentioned Kelly Wearstler as a designer involved with reviving this style. Above you see an image from the Doheny neighborhood.

Here's her website's "residential" section--I have arranged for you to arrive in the Bel-Aire neighborhood. Click through this, then continue to the other places (listed below the photos).

Don't hold your breath--there is no kitchen here. That's your job.

Another name in Pal's revival list is Miles Redd. Although my Google search gagged on his own website, here's a House Beautiful story on his work in a Manhattan apartment. The kitchen in #15 of the slideshow may look very familiar to those who've been looking at the GW Kitchens forum for a while. But I don't think this is quite what Pal had in mind for the Hollywood Regency kitchen DAT. Or is it?

[House Beautiful] "The tiny emerald green kitchen is pretty much dipped in pigment. You went all the way!"

[Redd] "The kitchen existed. It was a good-quality laminate and I thought, Why replace this with a paneled kitchen? I knew it would paint beautifully and that a strong brush of color would make it exciting. I kept thinking: British racing green, the color of a 1962 Jag. But that turned out to be too dark. So we pumped up the color just a scootch and lacquered it to give it life."

The Miles Redd reminds me of Billy Baldwin.

I like the Paul Williams rehab.

I keep trying to educate myself by spending time studying this style using leads from Palimpsest's postings. Here's an article on Dorothy Draper in NYMagazine.

The website is very interesting. Go to Projects and find a number of different Baratta designs using the style. I don't think the modern rooms have the opulence of the traditional and classic ones.

There are also products for sale, including chairs.

I've just started really reading and looking. These rich, luxurious, and sometimes opulent materials are like a foreign language to me, but they're very beautiful. I'm so impressed with the striking designs presented so far, and hope others are finding the thread on the Conversations side, (click here.)

One taste:

from the Traditional Home "Our Most Beautiful Kitchens" slideshow

I'm a little encouraged that even I can see the orange-oval-island Traditional Home kitchen above doesn't work well. Does make you wonder how it made the cut.

The slideshow shows strong HR symptoms. Try testing yourself as you watch it...what are the core HR elements you can recognize?

--dramatic lighting

--a sense of playfulness, yet elegance presides

--Mideast and Far East allusions

--actual Regency items or allusions

--And what is the term for those bendy lattice grids that I find in Hollywood Regency on chair backs, drapes, floors, ceiling trim, &c?

I had list similar to yours. I think there is definitely some whimsy in Hollywood Regency, especially in its later incarnations. I think there was a desire to evoke the luxury of exotic locations. It comes through in the chinoiserie, but also I also saw a lot of palm motifs (which I guess could just be Southern California, but has an exotic feel), and I found a banana motif chandy. Then there's the animal prints and animal images. A bit whimsical but also exotic and luxurious.

Real wood somewhere in palette.

Downright artificiality somewhere in the mix.
___

Fretwork, eh? Okay. Is there such a term as "fretwork patterned linoleum" or "fretwork patterned fabric"? or is it just called "fretwork linoleum" or "fretwork fabric" which are oxymorons?