Mario Buatta
Interior decorator, public speaker and raconteur
Mario Buatta, one of the United States’ leading interior decorators, who was widely known as the Prince of Chintz, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 82.
His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his friend Christopher Mason, who said the cause was complications of pneumonia.
Buatta was frequently referred to as exhibitionistic, self-promoting and entertaining – descriptions he wholeheartedlyendorsed.buthewas also serious about his profession, often working long hours seven days a week. And he was one of the few major decorators who, for a good part of his career, conducted his business with little or no staff.
He was a longtime purveyor of the English country home, a style he adopted with enthusiasm when he started his own business in 1963 and generally interpreted in a luxurious manner. He conceded that he was not to the manner – or the manor – born.
“Of course, I know a lot of this is affectation,” Buatta once told the New York Times. “I know I’m not an English country gentleman. I’m basically a tradesman who goes in the front door instead of the back.
“Although some of my clients have become my good friends,” he continued, “I am aware that I am working for them and that, on a social level, there’s a very thin line. You can only go so far.”
His client list ranged from the famous – names like Mariah Carey, Nelson Doubleday, Charlotte Ford, Billy Joel, Peter Duchin and Malcolm Forbes – to the merely rich. But it was a commission he received in 1988 – to work on Blair House, the official guesthouse for distinguished foreign dignitaries in Washington, with interior designer Mark Hampton – that brought him national prominence.
Buatta’s rooms were easily identifiable. He was particularly fond of chintz, the printed cotton fabric with a glazed finish, and made exuberant use of pillows, fringes, swags, tassels, bows and ruffles. With some tassels costing hundreds of dollars each and fabrics hundreds of dollars a yard, curtains in a Buatta room might cost $12,000 in today’s money by the time they were hung. And painting a Buatta room, which could involve six or seven coats on a canvas wall covering, plus stippling or staining and finally glazing, could easily come to the equivalent of $23,000 today.
Like many decorators, Buatta did not charge for his time. He would bill 25 per cent of the value of items bought at auction and add 20 to 30 per cent on such objects as furniture and paintings. He often worked on a room over a period of years.
He explained his decorating philosophy to Life Today magazine in 1992: “A room or a house has to come together the way a garden grows – a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, and the rest when the spirit moves you.”
Althoughexactingaboutother people’s homes, he was less so in decorating his own living quarters, two floors of a Georgian town house in Manhattan. He made no secret of his indifference to certain aspects of home care, including dust.
“My dust is friendly; it’s a protective coating for fine furniture,” he once joked, adding, “People ask me if the things in my apartment are family possessions, and I say ‘Yes, but not my family’.”
Buatta was a sought-after extra man at benefits and other society events. He was out almost every night, often at cabarets, where he would sit ringside with a small cadre of friends or clients. When he admired a performer – Peggy Lee was a favorite – he would appear every night of an engagement.
He was also a popular public speaker and raconteur. “I’ll go wherever they ask me,” he once said. “Colleges, antique shows, women’s groups.”
From 1975 to 1991, Buatta was chairman of the Winter Antiques Show, a mishmash of vintage furniture, decorative housewares and wholesale oddities held at the Park Avenue Armory, at 67th Street in Manhattan. He increased its revenue tenfold and turned it into a major social event. He was also a presence at the Kips Bay Show House, a luxury Manhattan home that celebrated interior designers had transformed into an exhibition of fine furnishings and art.
He encapsulated his career in the book Mario Buatta: Fifty Years of American Interior Decoration (2013), written with Emily Evans Eerdmans, a design historian. “I wanted to call it It’s About Time or The Buattapedia,” he said in an interview with the Times in 2013. “It’s my one and lonely, the child I will never have. And it’s given me a hernia.”
Mario Buatta was born on Staten Island on 20 October, 1935, to Olive and Felix Buatta. His father was a violinist and orchestra leader known professionally as Phil Burton. “My motherwaslikejoancrawford in Harriet Craig,” Buatta told The Times in 1986. “She was cleaning ashtrays before anyone could finish a cigarette.”
There was little doubt even when he was a child that he would choose the decorative arts as his life’s work. It was also clear he would not be a minimalist. He recalled that even as a youngster he was aware of his surroundings, and that he “hated” his family’s art deco furnishings.
An early influence was his aunt Mary Mauro, who took him to antique shops. He was only 12 when he acquired his first piece, a writing desk that he bought for $13 on a layaway plan, paying 50 cents a week. “Aunt Mary was a real Auntie Mame,” he said. “Every boy should have an Auntie Mame to help him over the rough spots.”
He graduated from Curtis High School on Staten Island and for brief periods studied at Wagner College there as well as at the Cooper Union in Manhattan. He intended to study architecture; two uncles were architects, and a grandfather was a builder. “But I hated the idea of how the house stands,” he recalled. “What intrigued me was interiors.”
Buatta began his career working in the decorating departments of stores like B Altman & Co., and for interior designer Elisabeth Draper. In the early 1960s, he was hired by the office of Keith Irvine, a well-known decorator, but he left less than a year later to take over the clients of a young decorator who had died.
Afterheopenedhisownbusiness in 1963, a seminal event was a trip to London, during which he met decorator John Fowler of Colefax & Fowler. Fowler taught him about furniture and fabrics and generously shared the names of decorating sources. It was Fowler who was credited with starting a modernised version of the English country home style. Buatta became his disciple.
Buatta had fancied that style since he saw it on his first trip to England on a study programme. What particularly attracted him, he told Architectural Digest, was the “historical clutter” of English homes. He loved the idea that many generations of the same family had collected furniture and objects and stuffed their houses with them.
“They went to China and brought back ivory, porcelain and furniture,” he said. “They also brought things home from India and Africa. Their homes weren’t filled with just English furniture.”
At various times during his career, Buatta had agreements to put his name on wallpaper, fragrances, furniture, area rugs, lamps, bed linens and fabrics (notably chintz).
He is survived by a brother, Joseph.
“I have no personal life,” Buatta often said. “I am married to my business.”
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“Iknowi’mnotan English country gentleman. I’m basically a tradesman who goes in the front door instead of the back”