His life was littered with great patrons royal and noble the first two Georges and Frederick, Prince of Wales, appointed him Master Carpenter and Master Mason, invented for him the post of Inspector of Paintings in the Royal Palaces, and on the death of Charles Jervas he was at last, in 1739, at the age of 55, appointed Portrait Painter to the King though George II sensibly declared that he would never sit for him, for by then everyone had realised that Kent was not the English Raphael and his reputation had begun to fade. George Vertue, Kents contemporary, whose observations on art in England in their day formed the first systematic account of the subject, was contemptuous, condemning him as an untalented placeman; his ally Hogarth went further with neither England nor Italy ever produced a more contemptible dauber.

That their view of Kent on his death in 1748 held sway is not surprising, for Kents taste was heavily Baroque but without the flight and fantasy of his predecessors Bernini and Borromini, and utterly lacking the common-sense elegance of Fontana; his contemporary in Turin, Juvarra (of whom he may not have known, though he was briefly in that city early in November 1719), was an infinitely more exciting architect. Worst of all for Kents posthumous reputation was the sweeping tide of Rococo all over Europe, light, deft and enchanting, in contrast to his heavy and exaggeratedly stately style it could reasonably be argued that, far from being a faithful follower of Palladio, he weighed down that genius with his sense of pomp and his monumental mannerisms.

Heavily Baroque: the Kings Staircase and Ceiling at Kensington Palace Historic Royal Palaces

But who was William Kent? We know what he was in later life, but the who remains elusive. How was it that a boy born William Cant in 1685, in Bridlington, then a prosperous market town noted for its many annual fairs, the son of a common joiner, could have so attracted the patronage of the local gentry that, at the age of 24 and having changed his name from Cant to Kent, they sent him off on the Grand Tour to Italy, supporting him there for 10 years? It is said that he went to the local grammar school and was apprenticed to a coach-painter in Hull, but this is not supported by documents (though the oldest coach-builder in the country was the Yorkshire firm of Walter Rippon, 1555-1958, and there might be something lurking in its history). All that we really know is that his mother died in 1697 and that in 1709 he was in London, signing himself William Cant... limner. Who taught him to limn (that is to draw and paint)? It is surprising that he claimed no master, nor, when he was famous, did any master claim him as a pupil.

What were his youthful charms, I wonder, and how thick his Yorkshire accent? Was he, as David Hockney was to be, an amusing pet for the aristocracy? Was he, like Roy Strong, not only clever (in the best sense of that word), but something of a chameleon? Or is there the very simple answer that one of the local aristocrats was his father and that he was educated almost as a gentleman? One writer in the exhibition catalogue has him as warm, affable, witty, extrovert... bubbling with erudite learning though without offering evidence; another (there are 15) quotes Lady Mary Wortley Montagus quip on bisexual ambiguity and goes on to suggest that in the relaxed atmosphere of the court, Kents relationship with Lord Burlington might have had its amorous dimension.

In Italy he joined the studio of Giuseppe Chiari, a pupil of Carlo Maratta I wonder if some of the appalling duds in the Maratta Room in Houghton Hall were not only framed by Kent, but painted by him? His output of paintings copies and originals was, in the circumstances, prodigious, for he supplemented his various pensions from England by acting as a proxy collector of all sorts of works of art and playing cicerone (guide, companion, comforter) to other Grand Tourists, often of the grandest kind. Of these the most important were Thomas Coke, future Earl of Leicester and builder of Holkham Hall in Norfolk (to designs by Kent), and Richard Boyle, exquisite and aesthetically driven, the youthful Earl of Burlington who was to take Kent into his household, and in whose arms the great genius died, then to be buried in the Burlington family vault. Both men were significantly younger than Kent, Coke by 13 years, Burlington by a decade.

And still we ask who was this William Kent? He seems at once to have had contacts with the highest levels of society in Italy, both visiting English and resident Italian, to have been given commissions by Italians (who should have known better), and even to have won second prize for painting at the Accademia di San Luca. We have no portrait of him earlier than a head by Benedetto Luti, a far superior painter whom Kent had known since his arrival from Rome in 1710, and who may have been an influence. It is, I suspect, a fragment of a full-length portrait, and with no costume to distract us we see only a decidedly plump face with a double chin, a petulant little mouth and a disagreeable air of hauteur; he is 34 and soon to return to London. At 40 or so he was painted by the plodding William Aikman, an immediate contemporary from Scotland who had recently come to London seeking patronage; he too gave Kent the double chin and little mouth, but the air is now complacent. In a self- portrait two years later Kent looks down on the great staircase of Kensington Palace, and in this he has run to fat, the cheeks now so plump that they pinch the once large eyes. In Burlingtons household from the day of their return together from Italy in 1719, Burlingtons Countess observed Kents fondness for food and affectionately referred to him as Kentino and ye little Signor. Did he assume tiresome Italian manners, I wonder?

Visual delight: the Gallery at Chiswick House by William Henry Hunt, 1828 Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth The exhibition is disappointing in its modesty. If Kent is known for anything, it is for opulence and grandeur in great rooms and splendid staircases, their theatre controlled by unity and uniformity, by concept rather than impulse, but this we can divine only from small things, from prints and drawings, plans and elevations, from ponderous gilt furniture and the fine frames of paintings of such poor quality as can occasionally still be found in Londons auction rooms on a bad day. All these are crammed hugger-mugger into too small a space, yet, if Kent was ever inspired, it was in furnishing vast rooms in which assemblies met, in his ability to turn every wall into a decorative architectural scheme in which furniture, paintings, curtains and cut-velvet wall hangings combined to form, as it were, a rhythmic architectural faade. Isolated in an exhibition, his ornate furniture, titanic in ambition, laden with detail and far too sculptural for its purpose, may seem more than mildly absurd; but against a wall, under a painting, these cumbrous monstrosities are far more than seats and tables, and in Kents eye were part of an aesthetic unity, part of the process of completing a house in which every detail of colour, material and texture played its part. He was, in this, the inventor of what in Germany, a long century later, was called Gesamtkunstwerk the complete or total work of art though the music should be by, not Wagner, but Handel, Kents very close contemporary.

In this exhibition we see proof of Hogarths judgment that Kent was a contemptible dauber, and his draughtsmanship too is exposed as that of a hapless amateur; but to be fair to him, Kent should be judged only in his houses and palaces, not in the mean circumstances of a meagre exhibition in the V&A. Five minutes in one room of Houghton proves him to have been capable of the most accomplished fusions of architectural convention, decoration and embellishment.

William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain is at the V&A, SW7 (020 7942 2000, vam.ac.uk) until July 13. Sat-Thur 10am-5.30pm, Fri 10am-9.30pm. Admission 8, concessions available.

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William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, V&A - exhibition review

STEP into Yamin S in Jalan Maarof, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, and you can feel immediately that this is a boutique with a difference.

Located on the same stretch as other designer labels and high-end furniture shops, the two-storey bungalow is not filled with racks and racks of clothes. Instead, there are wooden and rattan furniture in the foyer, living room and even the living room upstairs.

It seems that boutique owner Mohamed Yamin wears many hats as fashion stylist, wedding planner and interior decorator. While he started his career as a designer, he thought it would be a strategic move to be involved in every aspect of the industry.

A friend told me once that I should be good in not only one area of the business as I may need something to fall back on. Realising that he was right, I studied furniture design and interior decoration. Then I worked as a wedding planner, he says.

I also learned that in this business, you can be in demand one day but not the next. I had the unfortunate experience of this after 28 years in this business.

Mohamed Yamin, who was born in Malang, East Java, went into designing after winning a fashion designing contest in Jakarta in 1986. It was not his original intention to be a fashion designer. He wanted to win so that he could pay for his art and design course. But when he won, he changed his mind.

He worked with a well-known kebaya designer, Prayudi, for two years and learned about designing and photography. After that, he did a two-year stint at Sari Ayu and was appointed as designer for Puteri Ayu. It was a good time. I made a name for myself in Indonesia and had a good life. Everyone there wanted a Yamin design, especially celebrities and the rich and famous, he says.

HUGE LOSS

But in 1989, he suffered a huge loss in the stock market. He was left with nothing and his clients abandoned him. Feeling rejected, he moved to Singapore where he set up a designing business with a local but the business was short-lived. After another short business deal in Johor Baru, he came to Kuala Lumpur in 1994 to work for a textile company.

After a while I decided it was time to learn new things. At that time, wedding planning was a new concept in Kuala Lumpur but it was already very popular in Indonesia. So I went back to Jakarta to learn the trade. It took me a year to learn everything about planning a wedding and, because part of the job was decoration, I thought it would be a natural move to extend the business to home decorating, he explained.

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Art of the designer

Veteran and his Family Receives a Home! Taylor, Michigan
Outside of the EM mission the Founder, CEO and Visionary of Enchanted Makeovers, wife and mother to four young adults, Terry still finds the time to personal...

By: Terry Grahl

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Veteran and his Family Receives a Home! Taylor, Michigan - Video

Eddie George was too busy charging through defenses as an NFL running back to stop and inspect the stadium turf. Now retired, hes turning a critical eye to home building and design as a judge on a new reality television show.

George joins designer Nate Berkus and interior decorator Monica Pedersen on American Dream Builders, debuting Sunday on NBC.

For George, the show is a chance to make use of his college degree, having majored in landscape architecture at Ohio State University, where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1995. He jokes he had no one to discuss his passion with during his nine-year career playing for the Tennessee Titans and Dallas Cowboys.

This opportunity presented itself for me not only to show the talents of a landscape architect, but also to be creative, he said.

After graduating, George opened the Edge Group, a planning and architecture firm with offices in Columbus, Ohio, and Nashville, Tenn. He later earned an MBA from Northwestern University.

Berkus said he had never heard of George before the show because hes not a football fan.

For Dream Builders, Berkus sometimes climbed on the shoulders of George, who is 6-foot-3, to better inspect crown molding in homes they judged.

You can make a room look fabulous, but if you are in there for about five minutes and you notice all of the small things that are wrong, it can go south really fast, George said. One of the things that Ive learned on this show is how to truly go into a space and gauge it for what it is and how much thoughtfulness has gone into it and how the details really speak volumes down to the knobs that you use on the drawers or the counters.

American Dream Builders features 12 contestants divided into two teams to redesign and renovate a home inside and out in a matter of days. Each week, one contestant is eliminated until two reach the finale, where they renovate two Southern California homes while competing for a cash prize. At-home viewers can go online to enter a contest in which the shows winner will renovate their home.

Its interesting to see the contestants react to Eddies judgment week after week because, if they dont get the details right, he notices every time, Berkus said.

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NFL's Eddie George trying out new turf on 'American Dream Builders'

Creating an internal space that is both livable and artistic is a difficult task. Thankfully, Minnesota is chock full of interior design professionals that have made this their lifes work. From the simple to the complex, interior designers in Minnesota concentrate on perfecting and individualizing your living or working space to meet your needs. Here are some of the top Midwest interior designers to be found in the North Star state.

Design By Lisa275 Market St., Suite 567 Minneapolis, MN 55405 (952) 927-4466 http://www.designbylisa.com

Lisa Ball is a talented interior designer who has been creating the perfect living space for Minnesotans over the last decade. Specializing in residential design and unique home areas, Lisa has an eye for choosing the right furniture pieces, fixtures and decor to fit the functional and artistic needs of a home. Her work has been featured in Midwest Home and Mpls/St. Paul Homeas well as other local publications on design and architecture. From kitchens to kids rooms, Lisa can help shape your home into a work of art.

Martha OHara Interiors9950 Wayzata Blvd. Minneapolis, MN 55426 (952) 908-3150 http://www.oharainteriors.com

A local designer that has been winning interior design awards for the last 20 years, Martha OHara is a talented professional and a top designer in the Midwest. Aside from an interior decorator, Martha focuses on lighting plans and custom cabinet design as well as remodeling and building projects to meet the needs of her clients. Martha has an established relationship with the best builders in the state and is able to coordinate and communicate to them what is desired for the client. Last year, Martha won an award for her hand in an historic renovation project.

David Heide 663 Grain Exchange Building 301 4th Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN 55415 (612) 337-5060 http://www.dhdstudio.com

David Heide founded David Heide Design Studio to be able to collaborate with other talented designers to deliver quality living spaces for locals and Midwestern clients. Having studied architecture and design, David works on interior projects as well as remodeling, new home design and home addition construction as needed. He has put a lot of effort into the historical preservation of Minnesotan communities and understands the advantages of designing a home for living in the Midwest. Many of his efforts have been featured in Midwestern Home and other design publications.

Related:The Benefits Of Hiring An Interior Designer

Maggie Flowers & Co. Duluth, MN 55805 (218) 724-8821 http://www.maggieflowers.com

Maggie Flowers Interior Design Ltd. is located in northern Minnesota and offers a wide range of design services for residential homes. Focusing on eco-friendly practices including sustainable processes and reclaimed materials, Maggie Flowers can help provide an artistic and green space for any home. Specialties include space planning, refinishing and remodeling of furniture and spaces, and artistic interiors. Custom artwork is also available from Maggie Flowers to make each project unique and individualized.

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Best Interior Designers In Minnesota

(credit: PATRIK STOLLARZ/AFP/Getty Images)

The 2014 San Francisco Decorator Showcase takes place at 3660 Jackson Street on April 26, 2014 through May 26, 2014. The three-story house clad in climbing ficus hassix bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in a 8,820-square-foot property overlooking the Presidio Wall. It was built in 1907 for Rose and Alfred Sutro, nephew of San Franciscos former mayor. The unique appeal of the property is evident; the house sold last year for $18 million within one week of being listed. The interior designers listed here represent East Bay-based interior designers who have been selected to contribute to past San Francisco Decorator Showcases which currently attract more than 15,000 visitors each year. From among hundreds of invitations to Bay Area designers, a short list is reviewed, from which a professional design advisory board selects each years finalists.

Blending the indoors with the outdoors to create that connection in living spaces is a specialty of this Oakland-based architecture and interior firm. From a beginning in 1998, the four-person team offers a modernist tradition that allows for a three-dimensional expression. Called the heart and soul of the group, Michelle Wempe is an award-winning designer. From a Sonoma pool house in a 13-acre meadow linking to a newly-built main house, to a Tudor-style home redesign in Piedmont, the firm tackles residential and commercial projects. A member of the American Institute of Architects, Zumaooh participated in the San Francisco Decorator Showcase in 2009, responsible for creating the homes vintners vault.

We love to mix classic, timeless interiors with modern simplicity, is the mantra from this four-person firm in business since 2002. The firms work was showcased at 2010 in Dining By Design. Versatility was displayed in a wonderful teenage girls bedroom suite at the 2012 Marin Decorator Showcase House in Belvedere, looking like far too much fun for studying. At the 2012 San Francisco Decorator Showcase, Kriste Michelini presented an intimate and glamorous master bedroom dressing room furnished with special vintage pieces. In the 2013 showcase, a third floor loft space was transformed into a light-filled writers nook, simultaneously dreamy and calm, with vibrant pops of color to shake off writers block.

The greatest satisfaction in my work is the rewarding personal connection that results from turning a house into a home, says Frank Holbrook. The capabilities are wide-ranging, including historic preservation, lighting consultation, fine art acquisition and project management. Take a tour of the results through the lovely website photography. Just add sunshine. Frank Holbrooks background is a unique blend of expertise in teaching art history, fine arts, painting and drawing before handling the restoration of some of Napas important landmark structures, bringing them to National Register of Historic Places status, including The Buford House (1887).

Laurie JM Farr is a freelance writer covering all things in her adopted San Francisco. A dedicated urbanite, shes a transplanted New Yorker by way of a couple of decades in London as a hotel sales and marketing manager. Follow her work on @ReferencePlease, USA Today, Yahoo! and on Examiner.com.

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Best Interior Designers In The East Bay

BOB CRAIG

GANNAS GOWNS: Madame Ganna Walskas couture clothing makes up part of the exhibit Enemy of the Average.

Lotuslands Cultural ContextRevealed

The title of the current exhibition at Lotusland amplifies a declaration that Madame Ganna Walska once made about herself. I am the enemy of the average, she said, thus aligning her taste with that of several other extraordinary international figures of her era, including the decorator and socialite Elsie de Wolfe, Dodie Rosekrans, and the genius interior decorator, set designer, and jeweler Tony Duquette. On Saturday, March 8, Lotusland presented a slide lecture by Hutton Wilkinson to accompany the exhibit, and Wilkinson, Duquettes former business partner and an important decorator and designer in his own right, captivated the crowd at this sold-out event with sly humor, encyclopedic knowledge, and an awesome collection of images. As a sought-after decorator with an elite clientele, Wilkinson claims that he has never had to do more than one house a year, which is wonderful because it leaves him time to decorate his own home (which has been featured admiringly in Vanity Fair), give these charming talks, and write multiple books about his great friend and mentor, TonyDuquette.

Through his lecture, which was often hilarious, Wilkinson illuminated the fascinating and inexplicably neglected subculture of fantasy and glamour that swirled around some of the worlds richest women beginning in the early 20th century and lasting into the 21st. Several members of the audience, clearly hip to the scene, arrived decked out in Duquette jewelry and were singled out for recognition by thespeaker.

The Duquette style mixes high and low recklessly, pairing priceless antiques with such detritus as repurposed cafeteria trays in pursuit of dazzling effects. Wilkinson characterized the sensibility that he shares with Duquette in terms of color by saying, Coral to me is like white. Its almost a neutral. These Los Angeles artists came of age in the era of the surrealists. Once when Duquettes wife, Elizabeth Beegle Johnstone, entered a Hollywood party with a variegated ivy leaf in her hair as a decoration, it so impressed Man Ray that he ran to get his camera and took her photo. Like the surrealists, their emphasis was on bringing something fantastic to life, or, as Wilkinson put it in describing Duquettes film work, to portray dreams caught in the net ofreality.

Most interesting for those who dote on Lotusland were the suggestions Wilkinson made about how Duquettes work may have influenced Ganna Walska, and there were several. First of all, Duquette created several fantastic private environments for himself, two of which his 150-acre fantasy ranch in Malibu and his San Francisco temple for St. Francis were subsequently destroyed by fire. Along with Dawnridge, the legendary Beverly Hills home that Duquette transformed into a tour de force of design gone wild, these three estates make up some of the most useful analogues available to those seeking to understand the context in which Madame Walska created her masterpiece in Montecito. In addition, Duquette was sometimes referred to as Tony Abalone for his profligate use of the shell, a gesture one sees repeated in Lotuslands aloe garden, which is anchored by a white-bottomed abalone-shell pool. Wilkinson also emphasized Duquettes passion for creativity and his undying enthusiasm for encouraging it in others, such as his dear friend Ganna Walska. Beauty, not luxury, Duquette was known to exclaim when people expressed shock that he would combine high-priced items with recycled refuse, and upon consideration, this credo is not at all a bad way to begin thinking about the stimulating strangeness of Ganna Walskas creations, as well. This visionary company of style existed in a heroic era for fantasy, and Lotusland remains the greatest monument to their collectiveachievement.

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Ganna Walska and Tony Duquette

Monday, March 17, 2014, by Spencer Peterson

After spending nearly a year on the market in search of $2,995,000, Atlanta, Ga.'s so-called 'European Stunner' of a mansion might be due for a price cut, or maybe a little TLC from an interior designer. Though the loud shade of teal covering the kitchen, the shutters, and the French doors is certainly "stunning"no questions therebut when paired with the verging-on-gaudy furniture choices, it gives the place a bit of a cramped, loony feel, and with over 9,000 square feet crammed onto 1.3 acres, it can't really afford to get any tighter. To be sure, this circa 1940 five-bedroom has a bunch of things worth keeping; hardwood floors, "many unique chandeliers," Sherle Wagner sinks, a "garden room," a hedge-lined pool, a two-bedroom carriage house. But spending season after season on the market without changing up one's approach might be the definition of real estate insanity. For now, check out the decorative craziness on the inside, including the mosaic-covered steps in the entryway and one tiny, resplendently pink sitting room.

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On the Market: WWII-Era Manse in Dire Need of a Decorator Holds Out for $3M

Interior Decorator Singapore
Visit our site http://www.carpenters.sg/profile/service for more information on Interior Decorator Singapore.An Interior Design Singapore could help you to u...

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Interior Decorator Singapore - Video

17 women in Venezuela have died after having illegal buttock injections The practice is carried out in illegal makeshift surgeries 'Dr Gus' is a practitioner and performed the injections on a 20-year-old patient for ABC News cameras In the U.S. there have been deaths from black market buttocks injections in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New York

By Alex Greig

PUBLISHED: 14:20 EST, 15 March 2014 | UPDATED: 15:06 EST, 15 March 2014

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The trend for curvaceous rear ends shows no sign of abating, with women across the U.S. and the world risking their lives for black market procedures to make their bottoms bigger.

Deaths from black market buttocks injections have been reported in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New York. An interior decorator in Mississippi faces trial in the deaths of two women who were injected at her house.

In Venezuela, more than a dozen women have died from botched butt injections, but that hasn't stopped the illegal procedure being performed by practitioners such as 'Dr Gus,' who, for $300, will inject young women's rears with biopolymers in his Caracas apartment.

Prepping: Dr Gus prepares to perform illegal surgery in his Caracas apartment

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Meet the Venezuelan doctor who performs illegal, cut-rate butt injections on women wanting bigger backsides