Architectural Digest. 9/1976
The principal designer at my firm has a collection of Architectural Digest magazines dating back to the 1970’s. I often pull them from his library for inspiration. I found the photos pictured here from the Sept 1979 issue of Architectural Digest. I think the rooms are still stunning some 40 years later.
Architectural Digest 9/1976
These photos were taken in Dallas in the home of Robert Floyd of Fitz and Floyd. The interiors were designed by AD Top 100 Los Angeles based interior designer, Jack Lowrance, who has had a long and very successful career. What is so striking to me, and why I chose to write about them today, is that they truly reflect timeless design. I think Jack Lowrance and I might be design soul mates. He believes that “people don’t like being in a setting they have to live up to. They prefer a space that allows them to simply be, a place where nothing is expected of them. Rooms are much like paintings that require time before their intent is fully enjoyed. The eclectic elements of décor mix to create a small world of creativity – a world in close harmony with the past.”
Obviously Jack Lowrance is a talented interior designer, but I think Robert Floyd made the perfect client. He was a world traveler and the consummate collector. What a treat for an interior designer to be able to infuse worldly treasures into the design of a room. Mr. Floyd believed that the more he grew and developed, the more dissatisfied he became with what he had. He was always eager to find intrinsically better pieces. Floyd needed the beautiful reminders on a man’s heritage to feel comfortable at home.
Jack Lowrance and his Dallas based client, Robert Floyd, to me, mastered the art of timeless interior design. These rooms are understated and attentive to detail with a collected feeling. They demonstrate how timeless design requires buying the best you can afford and blending the old with the new, along with personal treasures, so that, whether you walked into one of them back in 1976, when they were first photographed for Architectural Digest or 38 years later, today in 2014, you would feel at home.
Do you agree?
Leslie Hendrix Wood
Decorator
Chancellor Interiors
Midland, Texas
Founder, Editor In Chief
Hadley Court
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