Mario Buatta
‘Prince of Chintz’ who decorated the houses of American high society with English ‘old money’ style
MARIO BUATTA, who has died aged 82, was an American interior decorator hired by the well-heeled to deck out their homes in a New York version of English country style; he was known as “the Prince of Chintz”.
In his heyday in the 1980s Buatta would festoon Park Avenue duplexes and Southampton cottages with swags, jabots, bows, ruffles, pleats, tassels and cascades of madly flowered glazed cotton, and fill them with “family” furniture and mementoes, patterned needlepoint rugs, paintings, candlesticks, china table settings – all suggestive of “old money”. Clients included Barbara Walters, Henry Ford II, Henry Kissinger, Malcolm Forbes, Billy Joel, Nancy Reagan and various Hearsts and Woolworths. In 1988, with Mark Hampton, he took on the job of redecorating Blair House, the US state guesthouse in Washington.
A “Buattified” room would feature the sort of objets – antique silver items, porcelain boxes and animals, Scottish tobacco tins, oriental knick-knacks – that might have been amassed by English gentry families over a couple of hundred years. He claimed to like houses to have an “undecorated” look: “I want the room to make the owner’s personal statement, not mine. Your house should reek of you. It’s a living scrapbook of your life.”
His clients tended to be the sort of people who thought nothing of paying $17,000 for an antique card table, $10,000 for a single piece of elaborate drapery or several hundred dollars for a single tassel. And in putting together collections that might tell their story, they tended to be on a tighter schedule than the average English country gent.
As they were often too busy to collect for themselves, Buatta was happy to do it for them. The result was a version of English country living which was not always convincing to those familiar with the moth-eaten real thing.
Other American designers did English country, but few worked as hard as Buatta at networking. “Mario is the kind of person who will go to three parties in one night,” Peggy Kennedy, the executive editor of House Beautiful, observed. “He’s always on.”
Authentic or not, a Buatta interior was seen by many as providing a entrée into New York high society. “You have to have your house done if you want to get into the rat race, if you want to make your mark in the city, if you want to get on the [charitable and institutional] boards,” explained Joan Kron, the former editor of Avenue, the city’s leading society publication. “Because you need a place to entertain. And if you’re new, people will look at your taste; your taste is a passport.”
Mario Buatta was born on Staten Island on October 20 1935, the son of a band leader and grandson of Italian immigrants. His taste for lavishness did not come from his childhood home, which was austerely minimalist, with white carpets, white walls and plenty of steel, chrome and glass.
“I used to call our living room a dead room, because you couldn’t walk in it,” he recalled. “You couldn’t put footprints on the floor. You couldn’t put fanny prints on the sofa. You couldn’t put fingerprints on the table.”
Young Mario much preferred the more lived-in look of his Aunt Mary’s house, and when he was 11 she took him on a tour of antique shops. His first piece was a writing desk that he bought, in instalments, for $13. When he took it home his father insisted it be sprayed for woodworm. After leaving school, Buatta studied briefly to be an architect, but gave it up when he found out how much mathematics was involved and after concluding that what interested him was not structures but interiors.
He began his career working in the decorating departments of big stores, and for the interior designer Elisabeth Draper, before starting his own business in 1963.
On a trip to London he met John Fowler of Colefax & Fowler, designers and distributors of furnishing fabrics and wallpaper, who was credited with the introduction of an updated English country house style and who remained a huge influence.
A regular in design magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, when fashions changed to more minimalist styles Buatta remained true to his ruffly, chintzy aesthetic. “I like clutter,” he explained. “If there isn’t a lot of it, I’m not very happy.”
For many years he was chairman of the Winter Antiques Show, held in Manhattan to raise money for good causes. He increased its revenue tenfold and turned it into a highlight of the social season.
Buatta was not poor, but he was nothing like as rich as most of his clients. Like many decorators, he did not charge for his time, but earned money from commissions – about 25 per cent – for the antiques, draperies and other items he bought for clients, and from licensing an array of Mario Buatta products. He was also a popular public speaker. Often working long hours, seven days a week, for a good part of his career he ran his business with little or no staff, which meant that he could only handle a few big projects at any one time.
“I have no personal life,” Buatta often said. “I am married to my business.”
Mario Buatta, born October 20 1935, died October 15 2018