Furnishings for the nurturing home

KNOWN FOR HER elegant and streamlined interiors, interior designer Barbara Barry describes her latest collection for Baker as “quiet, peaceful and serene”. She recently flew into Bangkok from her southern California home to unveil her new collection and launch her recently published book “Around Beauty”, which explores the principles of good design.

Her new collection, which is available at the Baker showroom on the third floor of Siam Paragon, features 60 pieces, most of them classics, and is more about mood than a particular style. They include furniture for the living room, dining room and bedroom as well as upholstery, lighting, mirrors, and tabletop items. To emphasise the beauty of the wood and its finishes, Barry has selected a range of materials for the collection, including high satin sheen lacquers in an organic palette of linen, quill and pearl, white onyx, limestone, faux shagreen, burnished gold leaf, warm silver leaf, and bronzed mirrored glass. 

“Barbara Barry: Around Beauty”, the acclaimed designer’s first book, also showcases her design philosophy and body of work in illustrated pages that will speak to everyone with a refined aesthetic. Her work has long been praised for its quiet refinement, soothing palette, and graceful furnishings, as well as for its ravishing tailoring and colouring. 

A complete departure from the traditional design monograph, the book discusses her principles of good design - simplicity, proportion, and harmony. She talks about what inspires her, from the quality of light to the colours of nature, and illustrates how she utilises nature in decoration. From the simple strength of a white plate to the sensual elegance of a well-made bed, Barry explains why a gracious life, a well-ordered life, in short, a life around beauty is the only one worth living.

“Original yet classic, this new collection for Baker is timeless, speaking to a vision of mine that has ripened over a long career devoted to beauty. I like taking original pieces in their new finishes and blending them with the new collection. There is a simple elegance to the collection in which each piece has been pared down to live in harmony with other pieces, whether from my collection, other collections, antiques or modern pieces,” says the American..

The highlights include the Carmel console, which features a walnut frame decorated with shagreen-stamped leather doors and drawer fronts and the Larchmont dining table with its beautiful walnut basket-weave veneer. Bearing the signature Barbara Barry X-back, the oval dining chair in gold leaf also accents the refined wood frame and inset upholstered back while the Folie mirror is an imaginative work of art that speaks to Barry’s belief that “personal luxury comes in the details”. The crystal clear mirror is surrounded by a cast resin frame of whipped meringue with sculptural peaks and finished in shimmery matte pearl. 

The accessories are the sculptural Golden Pod in glittering burnished gold leaf or warm silver leaf with star-fruit shapes transforming a simple nature study into a wondrous objet d’art, and the Night and Day Spiral – a sweeping arc with dark bronze finish on the exterior and warm gold leaf interior that speak to the dark of night and morning sun.

“For me, quiet shapes and simple forms are the antidote. I love simple forms enveloped in simple fabrics not shouting to be noticed. These uncomplicated forms open up space, and ground the room. They embrace our unfolding lives without competing with them. The pieces in this collection are quiet not active, peaceful not patterned, and in creating them I was reminded that underneath that layer of life lies serenity,” she says. 

In Barry’s world, every detail is harmonious. “Designing furniture and designing rooms are intimately linked. It’s as if each one is speaking to the other, is in search of and informing the other. It is a conversation, one where questions are asked and answers defined. Once this occurs, the real work of a collection begins, and so does the fun.”