Geometric Retro Chrome Mirror

Let there be no doubt about it, suave as he was, with his bespoke suits, slicked-back hair and patrician good looks, David Nightingale Hicks (1929–98) was a committed revolutionary. Composing rooms of arresting opulence through his magisterial orchestration of cacophonous colors and patterns, Italian modern mixed with Louis XV furnishings and counterintuitive plays of scale, he forever rocked the stately world of interior design.

As a zealot of style, he took no prisoners. “Dedication to design means ruthless criticism and losing friends,” he once declared. He was not exaggerating. His wife claimed that he conceived his signature high-gloss brown walls as a result of her throwing glasses of Coca-Cola at him during their alarmingly frequent marital spats.

By the time he was 25, Hicks, who had attended London’s Central School of Art and Design and endured a couple of arid years in the art department of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, had the crème de la crème of London society as clients — and he was being entertained by them! Within a few years, he was courting Lady Pamela Mountbatten, the daughter of Lord Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India, and the uncle of Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband. They married in 1960 and acquired Britwell, a Georgian pile in Oxfordshire, which became the family seat, design lab and showplace.

The first truly modern interior Hicks ever designed was Lord John Cholmondeley’s penthouse overlooking Hyde Park, in 1967. The graphic boldness of the scheme — brightly colored walls outlined in dark hues and dynamic geometric-patterned carpets — echoed the energy and attitude of the hard-edge painting that was then at the fore. Here, as in all his interiors, he included what he called “tablescapes,” vignettes of artfully arranged objects and artworks that added interest and life to the room. They were soon widely copied. Another landmark interior came in the early 1970s, when he revived Baronscourt, a grand neoclassical house in Northern Ireland, by giving it an entirely contemporary decor.

In addition to his immense creative talent, Hicks had a keen entrepreneurial acumen and vision. While he could have made a fine business simply designing grand homes for the wealthy and titled, he expanded his studio to include offices, boutiques, restaurants, hotels and nightclubs. He had showrooms all over the world, and he embarked on licensing agreements for ranges of vividly hued, geometric-patterned sheets and towels, clothes, umbrellas and bags.

The British designer was as daring as he was debonair, deploying a brazen mix of colors and patterns that came to define the groovy-glamorous interiors of the Swinging Sixties.

Find David Hicks furniture on 1stDibs.

Milo Baughman was one of the most agile and adept modern American furniture designers of the late 20th century. A prolific lecturer and writer on the benefits of good design — he taught for years at Brigham Young University — Baughman (whose often-scrambled surname is pronounced BAWF-man) focused almost exclusively on residential furnishings, such as chairs, sofas and benches. He had a particular talent for lounge chairs, perhaps the most sociable piece of furniture.

Like his fellow adoptive Californians Charles and Ray Eames, Baughman’s furniture has a relaxed and breezy air. He was famously opposed to ostentatious and idiosyncratic designs that were made to excite attention. While many of his chair designs are enlivened by such effects as tufted upholstery, Baughman tended to let his materials carry the aesthetic weight, most often relying on seating and table frames made of sturdy and sleek flat-bar chromed metal, and chairs, tables and cabinets finished with highly-figured wood veneers.

Like his colleagues Karl Springer and the multifarious Pierre Cardin, Baughman’s designs are emblematic of the 1970s: sleek, sure and scintillating.

As you will see from the furniture presented on 1stDibs, Milo Baughman’s designs for the likes of Drexel Furniture, Glenn of California and — for five decades — Thayer Coggin are ably employed as either the heart of a décor or its focal point.