Designer Spotlight

Jan Showers Shows Dallas How to Do Glamour without Glitz

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Four decades into her interior design practice, Texas native Jan Showers is renowned for creating tailored, graceful spaces that exude Southern charm, regardless of their location (portrait by Kelly Christine). Top: A Dallas sunroom with tropical flair. Photos by Stephen Karlisch, unless otherwise noted

When Dallas-based designer Jan Showers was writing her first monograph, 2009’s Glamorous Rooms, her editor encouraged her to adopt the tone Elsie de Wolfe used in The House in Good Taste. “Every line was an opinion,” recalls Showers, who has read and reread de Wolfe’s 1913 classic many times. There was method to her editor’s madness. Showers is now, as ever, a woman of firmly held views.

“Oh gosh,” says the lifelong Texan, “don’t get me started on my opinions!” Prodding wasn’t required: “I don’t like taupe or beige; I love ivory. I don’t like diagonal rooms or bad architecture. I don’t like sloppy-looking things; I’m pretty tailored. I don’t like bad decorative art; I love real art, especially by emerging and contemporary artists. I’m very opinionated about floor plans. I can’t stand to see a room full of upholstered furniture. I find matching drapery to pillows to accessories — all yellow, yellow, yellow, for example — boring. I like to mix things a lot; I just don’t like it if it’s self-conscious or gimmicky. I hate that word too — eclectic.”

Showers formed her opinions early, in childhood, and they were quite mature long before she officially opened the first incarnation of her business, Jan Showers Interiors, in 1977. “Having opinions defines your style and differentiates you,” she says.

Showers was born and raised in Hillsboro, outside Dallas, and enjoyed what she characterizes as a proper and privileged Southern upbringing. Her father, Nellins Smith, was a prominent doctor, while her mother, Margaret Anne, had an enormous influence on Showers because of her sense of propriety and her love of art and interior design. Showers would produce handmade “magazines” for her mother by cutting up her interior design publications and arranging chapters by rooms. “I loved it when my mother’s decorator would come. I learned so much from her,” Showers says of Lucille Neblett, an opinionated woman herself. Neblett studied at the New York School of Interior Design before returning to her native Waco to open an antiques shop and implementing a style reminiscent of Sister Parish’s cozy old-money decoration. She was prone to evocative responses, saying, for example, “Get the blood and aspirin!” when Showers asked the price of something in her shop.

For a Mediterranean-style home in Dallas, Showers decorated a poolside seating area with plaster lamps from the Eden Roc hotel in Antibes and sconces that “evoke the South of France,” she says.

Left: The 1920s home received a historically conscious facelift. Right: Wallace Neff–inspired sofa and chairs, plus ceramic accessories, occupy the loggia. “More than any other element, lamps used in outdoor spaces create the feeling of a complete room,” says Showers.

Inside are more formal rooms, including the living room (left), featuring a Swedish Empire-style chandelier and striped Jean Rothschild armchairs, and the dining room (right), sporting a collection of Louis XVI–style furnishings from the 1940s.

For an elegant Houston home, Showers curated a selection of contemporary artworks, including photographs by Stewart Cohen and a Victor Vasarely serigraph that plays off the densely patterned floor covering. Photo by Tria Giovan

The master bedroom in the same residence features a cowhide-upholstered bench of Showers’s own design, a pair of Paul McCobb side tables and a painting by Marc Moldawer. Photo by Tria Giovan

 

A 17th-century painted-wood Italian chandelier adds drama to a double-height Dallas foyer. The antique Flemish chairs are upholstered in unexpected black and white leather.

Yet, rather than a decorator, Showers longed to be a movie star, a desire nurtured in her local cinema, where she could be reliably found on Sundays when the films changed. (The silver screen, she has acknowledged, is still a major inspiration for her interiors.) But her father put the kibosh on her actorly aspirations — “He said, ‘I don’t think so, sister,’ ” recalls Showers — suggesting she study business instead. So off she went to Texas Christian University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in three years so she could graduate with her husband, James Showers, a fellow business student whom she had married in her sophomore year. (James is a prominent Hillsboro attorney.)

Showers started designing homes as a hobby while caring for her daughters, Susanna and Elizabeth. But once the girls were older — and after the mayor of Hillsboro insisted on paying Showers for her work on his home — she went into the business full-time. In 1977, “Dallas was just full of brown furniture. Everyone was into English country because of the Forsyte Saga,” Showers remembers, referring to the BBC miniseries. Inspired by John Galsworthy’s 1920s trilogy about bourgeois Brits, the show had come out a decade earlier and was wildly popular in the States. “I was bored with it,” she admits. The designer dutifully gave clients the early 20th-century English-style George Smith furnishings they craved, but tried to add a little pizzazz of her own.

With the opening of her Dallas Design District showroom in 1996, everything changed. Showers had already been making buying trips to Paris, returning with mid-century French and Italian design that she mixed with more traditional furnishings. She was cautious at first, filling only 20 percent of the containers she shipped home with these finds.. “The funniest thing was that when I got it back on the showroom floor, what sold was all the late 1930s French furniture with the light woods,” she laughs. From that moment on, her Paris shopping habits changed.

And so did the look of Dallas homes. “I don’t know if I changed tastes in the country, because no one knew who I was,” Showers says modestly. “But I certainly influenced tastes in Dallas.” Her clients have included the entertainment and lifestyle expert Kimberly Schlegel Whitman, as well as major art collectors and philanthropists. Farther afield, she has designed the London home of famed restaurateur Jeremy King and his wife, Lauren.

Vintage Murano glass lamps, a Showers signature, frame a custom sofa in another stately Dallas residence. An Empire settee in yellow satin and a bronze lacquered and mirrored 1960s coffee table adhere to the sunny color palette.

While the exterior of the home was influenced by architectural styles found in southern France, the decor, says Showers “mixes American and European sensibilities.”

Softer hues of the home’s defining golden tones are found in the master bedroom, where a pair of side tables from the Jan Showers Collection are topped with glass lamps from the 1940s. “I love filling these side tables with my favorite things, especially books,” the designer says.

For the Toronto home of an art-collecting couple, Showers created a dramatic black-lacquered foyer that contrasts with the white, gallery-like rooms on either side. Custom-carved gold-leafed mirrors hang above a pair of glossy demilune tables. Photo by Jeff McNamara

A pair of archival ink-jet works by artist Jason Salavon preside over twin seating areas that contain banquettes from Showers’s collection and gilded-iron and mirrored René Drouet coffee tables. Photo by Jeff McNamara

The designer chose a suite of furniture by McKinnon & Harris in crisp white with gold piping for an outdoor seating area. Photo by Jeff McNamara

 

In a pale-blue guest bedroom, a Louis XVI–style desk is paired with a 1940s chair upholstered in a snow leopard print. The curtains are of a hand-screened Raoul Textiles fabric.

The next two years promise to be big for Showers. The first installment of her lifestyle collection for Kravet, a comprehensive line of furniture, is just out, with fabrics, wallcoverings, rugs and lighting to follow this fall. She also recently debuted a hand-knotted rug collection for Moattar and a hide-rug collection for Kyle Bunting. A line of French-style metal outdoor furniture for Michael Taylor Designs is slated for release next year. All these join her own longstanding furniture line (of more than 120 pieces), which is represented at eight showrooms across the country. Finally, this September marks the 20th anniversary of her Dallas shop, where she mixes antiques and newer items — from 1940s furniture to contemporary art and photography — many of which can be found on 1stdibs.

Showers’s brand of glamour is not showy. It’s true, she admits of one of her familiar practices, “I would probably have a mirror in every room.” But those mirrors are almost always antiqued, beveled or etched rather than highly reflective. She deploys them for their sculptural presence and the effect they have on a room’s light— and also for the creative combinations she crafts with them. The corner of an elegant Austin living room, for instance, contains a mirrored chest of drawers and a custom banquette with extravagantly long bullion fringe. But the muted gray palette of the walls and banquette fabric and the sublimely simple line drawings by Texas artist Don Bodine check the glitz, while a table by mid-century French designer Maxime Old adds historical weight to the vignette.

Similarly, in a modern Phoenix home by architect Marwan Al-Sayed, Showers juxtaposed a glittering Venini chandelier with the earthy modernism of a Sergio Rodrigues table and a graphic painting by Terry Winters. It’s a skilled calibration in which no ostentatious “statement” piece detracts from the unified harmony of the aesthetic.

And while she loves André Arbus, Showers is not a huge fan of Art Deco, particularly the American incarnation associated with Hollywood movies. European Deco has timeless appeal because of its clear reference to classic styles, she explains. Hollywood Deco, with its emphasis on sparkle, is loud and time-locked, less able to blend with other periods. Showers’s interiors certainly contain shimmery fabrics, but they are mostly solids rather than patterns. “I don’t like flashy,” she says, offering another opinion. “I’m more into style than fashion. There’s too much Margaret Anne in me.”


Jan Showers’s Quick Picks on 1stdibs

Albrizzi trestle desk in brass, offered by Liz O'Brien
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Albrizzi trestle desk in brass, offered by Liz O'Brien

“This desk is so chic, smart and practical.”

Cartier lady's Baignoire watch, offered by the Keystone
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Cartier lady's Baignoire watch, offered by the Keystone

“Not sure why, but I am always drawn to this watch — they aren’t that plentiful.”

Ellsworth Kelly <i>Colored Paper Image I (White Curve with Black I)</i>, 1976, offered by Susan Sheehan Gallery
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Ellsworth Kelly Colored Paper Image I (White Curve with Black I), 1976, offered by Susan Sheehan Gallery

“I love Kelly’s work, especially this graphic one. That curve!”

André Arbus tufted chaise, offered by Newel
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André Arbus tufted chaise, offered by Newel

“One of my all-time favorite designers of the 1940s, his work has inspired me for the last thirty years. This chaise would look great in any setting — so graceful and dignified.”

Friedensreich Hundertwasser for Rosenthal <i>Spiralental</i> bowl, 1983, offered by Arts 220
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Friedensreich Hundertwasser for Rosenthal Spiralental bowl, 1983, offered by Arts 220

“Another of my favorite personal collections is ceramics. This piece is unusual, and the colors are wonderful.”

Maurice Hirsch Design armchairs, offered by Galerie Andre Hayat
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Maurice Hirsch Design armchairs, offered by Galerie Andre Hayat

“The lines of these chairs really appeal to me, and they mix so well with so many periods and styles.”

Gucci four-piece crocodile desk set, offered by Opherty & Ciocci
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Gucci four-piece crocodile desk set, offered by Opherty & Ciocci

“I’m a huge fan of Gucci from the 1960s. I remember seeing these pieces in Rome during that period and falling in love with them. This is an unusual set.”

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