Just at this time, well, at any time really, it is a pleasant respite from the rough and tumble to remember someone who’s presence always spoke gentlemanliness. Such a one was David Easton, the extraordinary interior designer who died last week at 83. Gentlemanly, and always urbane. Gentlemanly, and always professional. Superbly talented? That goes without saying.
Mr. Easton was one of our first clients, walking into our original gallery on Jackson Square, attracted by a late Georgian painted and gilt sideboard- unusual, as he told me at the time, ‘instead of some plain old brown thing.’ Brown it was not, and while David was pleasant, I confess I was a bit officious, detailing the terms and conditions under which we’d ship the piece to New York- which, by the way, was all fine with him. And, the transaction which did involve client approval before final payment, went off on schedule and without a hitch.
It is something for which I will always be grateful, dealing with David Easton on a professional level, that he set the bar for business like practice, to say nothing of civility, within a trade that seems inordinately peopled by those who are- how shall I say this?- a bit less than ept.
Professional, but that’s not to diminish his talent. One has only to look at the room in which his original purchase from us, the painted sideboard, was placed. An extraordinary and enduring testimony to his artistry is the use made of it in an exquisite duplex apartment at 10 Gracie Square. Enduring as well, as the owners enjoyed a many decades long relationship with David Easton, in a business where, in the best of times, tempers can fray.
A few years after our first meeting, I was on a panel with David Easton, hosted by The Magazine Antiques and moderated by its late editor, the redoubtable Allison Ledes, at the D & D Building in New York. The subject was the use of antiques in contemporary interiors, and along with my friend in the London trade Jeremy Garfield-Davies, I argued for the use of period material as statement pieces in any interior scheme, even if that scheme was overwhelmingly contemporary. This sounds suspiciously self-serving, but I’ll admit, I do run a commercial enterprise and if my presentation ran to something of a sales pitch- well, mea culpa. David Easton, though, showed several slides of recent projects where, he said, he’d blended in a bit more contemporary material than he might have a few years before, but he also made the deathless statement ‘Good design is always good design.’ And so it is- disparate material, though of different periods, tend to articulate with each other when the design of both is of fine quality.
And it is a panoply of fine qualities that composed David Easton’s character that I’ll always remember and be grateful for. He will certainly be missed.