June 23, 2024You might call Elizabeth Lawrence, of the New York firm Williams Lawrence, an interior designer for the ages, so deeply ingrained within her is the profession’s craft and history. She grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, with an artist mother who made a vocation out of decorating — and redecorating — their house in the relaxed country style popularized by the then-reigning American doyenne of traditional decor, Sister Parish. This ongoing endeavor required a great deal of antiquing, with young Elizabeth unfailingly in tow, whether she liked it or not. (She did as she grew older.) And on trips across the pond to see family, Lawrence’s mother always made sure they visited at least one of England’s historic stately homes.
Despite this early immersion in high-style decor, Lawrence planned a career as a professional photographer. After graduating from the University of Richmond, in Virginia, she took additional courses in the field and, on a lark, also enrolled in a course on interior design. It was an aha moment. Lawrence put down her camera and enrolled at New York School of Interior Design.
The spring of her first year, she sent out résumés to an array of the city’s interior design firms, hoping for a summer internship. “My mother suggested I send one to Bunny Williams,” she recounts, “and I told her, ‘Bunny Williams doesn’t have interns!’ But my mother insisted, so I did. And they were the first to call me.” Lawrence laughs at the memory, quipping, “The moral of that story is always listen to your mother!”
The rest, as they say, is history. The summer internship continued into the fall and winter, eventually turning into a junior designer position after she graduated. In the years that followed, Lawrence worked her way up to senior designer. But by 2017, she was champing at the bit to move on and gain some individual recognition. That’s when Williams proposed that Lawrence become her partner both in her decorating business and in Bunny Williams Home, a collection of furniture, lighting and accessories designed by the team and sold on 1stDibs. And last year, the celebrated designer signaled her resounding confidence in her former protégé by officially changing the firm’s name to Williams Lawrence. It was a significant moment for Lawrence, certainly, but also for the world of American interior design. Before opening her influential firm, in 1988, Williams spent more than two decades at the illustrious house of Parish-Hadley, founded by Sister Parish in 1933.
Lawrence wears the mantle of legacy lightly on her shoulders. A recent project decorating a captivating Spanish Mediterranean retreat hidden amid a dense grove of palm trees in Coral Gables, Florida, demonstrates her command and originality as a designer, as well as her professional humility, since it puts the freewheeling style of her client center stage.
That client, a well-known New York–based personality in the business world, has for years enlisted the firm’s expertise whenever she acquired a new residence. She calls working with Elizabeth “a joyful experience” precisely because “she wants to create my house, not her version of my house. She is filled with beautiful, creative ideas, but her goal is to work with me in bringing a shared vision to life. And all the better if that vision is suffused with my creativity, too.”
An ardent aficionado of both decorating and collecting art, the client spent many hours exploring the trove of treasures for sale on 1stDibs in search of furnishings, artworks and accessories for her new home. Decoration was the happy focus of the project, because the house, built in 1929, had “good bones,” says Lawrence, and was “in wonderful condition,” requiring only minor renovations. It was also a blank slate, as the previous owner had chosen white for the plaster walls and furnishings. Lawrence’s client, by contrast, revels in colorful layered interiors with a Moorish flair.
The one element in the house that wasn’t white was the beamed and vaulted dark-brown wood ceiling in the living room. Since it compressed the space, Lawrence suggested that it not only be painted white but also embellished. “Most people would be fine with a white-painted ceiling,” she notes, “but the client always wants a bit of extra pattern and color.” So, the firm researched antique painted Spanish and Swedish ceilings and worked with decorative painters on developing a flowering vine design.
A benefit of creating interiors with the same firm over many years and in many houses is how well its designers get to know one’s taste and inventory of cherished, but often stored, furnishings. In this case, Lawrence knew about a large and beautiful Persian rug that the client had put away after her husband died and she had sold their Fifth Avenue apartment. When Lawrence saw the expansive living room, she knew at once that this was the new home for that rug. So, it was from the floor that the design of the room and, in a sense, the house was constructed.
“The rug had some dark colors, so we really needed to lighten the room up,” says Lawrence. “We upholstered the sofa and a pair of antique Louis Philippe chairs found on 1stDibs in a bright green performance fabric and layered in ikats and pillows and things with purple.”
The living room’s white walls continue into the dining room, situated down a half flight of stairs. Although it features a stunning antique limestone mantel, Lawrence felt the small square room needed something more. She again looked up, this time to the room’s concave ceiling, and got the idea to glaze it sky blue and adorn it with gilded leaves. During the install, she realized that, visually, the glazing ended too abruptly at the edge of the ceiling and wall. It needed to descend a bit. She consulted with the decorative painters and together they conceived a tasseled tent design, transforming the room into a charming faux pavilion. Adding to the festive atmosphere is a whimsical 1970s Italian brass chandelier from Banci Firenze with floral-shaped frosted-glass shades and a mirror with a jewel-like polished-brass frame, with marble and walnut insets that the client found on 1stDibs. “The room is especially great at night,” says Lawrence, “when the gilded leaf on the ceiling and around the room catches the candlelight.”
As the firm developed a scheme for the house, the client and her three dogs — two very large German shepherds and a dachshund — spent the winter season there, making do with some temporary pieces purchased from the former owner. For Lawrence, this is the ideal scenario for anyone planning to redecorate, and especially renovate, as so much is learned from a new home, and how one might want to use it, by actually living in it.
In the television room, for instance, the client had planned to get rid of the previous owner’s large modern sectional. But she discovered that it was exceptionally comfortable and her dogs loved it. So, Lawrence had it reupholstered in a pale indoor/outdoor material to make it dog proof. Yet the room couldn’t be more stylish. Since it is a private space meant for family, Lawrence proposed they do something really fun and wild. They sheathed the walls with an ornately patterned mural, much like the seraglio-style London drawing room paneled with Indian fabrics that Renzo Mongiardino famously created for Lee Radziwill. Lawrence’s team devised the mural’s unique design and then had it digitally printed and installed. “Miami is such a humid place,” she notes, “it’s a much better option than a fabric.”
That decorative flamboyance extends throughout the upstairs, as exemplified by the client’s bedroom. To bring a sense of scale to the high-ceilinged room, Lawrence says she selected a fanciful four-poster bed and then covered the headboard with an embroidered “bohemian-looking” fabric. To keep the room from appearing “too Moroccan,” she chose a colorful but modern rug from Doris Leslie Blau to ground it. The client confesses it’s her favorite room in the house. “It is the ultimate sanctuary, inside a bigger sanctuary,” she says, “but also a room where the dogs can be themselves and play without a moment’s concern.”
Which is how it should be, because when decorating in the tradition of Sister Parish and Bunny Williams, the dogs should always be kept top of mind.
