Pnina Wilkins, interior designer

Pnina Wilkins, an interior designer and past president of Hadassah, died Feb. 22 of heart failure at Seasons Hospice in Randallstown. She was 90.

The daughter of Benjamin Laikin, a wiping cloths manufacturer, and Anna Golomb Laikin, a homemaker, Pnina Laikin was born in Baltimore and later moved with her family to Detroit.

After graduating from high school in Detroit, she attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison for a year. She left Wisconsin after she met her future husband, Stanley Wilkins, in Atlantic City, N.J., during a family vacation.

The couple married in 1943, and after living for a few years in Detroit, moved to Mount Airy and then to Pikesville in 1963.

After owning several businesses, Mr. Wilkins went to work in the automobile business in 1950 and founded Wilkins Buick Inc. in Glen Burnie in 1969, which is now Wilkins Automotive. During the 1970s, he established Wilkins Yacht Sales in Edgewater that specialized in selling Hatteras Yachts.

Mrs. Wilkins, an interior decorator, was the founder in the 1980s of Bay Country Interiors, Dibert/Wilkins Associates of Towson, that designed residential interiors and later yacht interiors.

She was a longtime member and served as president of the Baltimore chapter of Hadassah from 1975 to 1977.

A resident of Pikesville for more than 50 years, she was an accomplished pianist and studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She also designed and made jewelry and her own clothes.

Later in life, she designed and produced luxurious multi-colored blankets, throws and shawls, that combined wool, silk and cotton yarns.

Mrs. Wilkins and her husband, who died in 2001, enjoyed spending time on the Arrowhead, their 61-foot yacht.

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Pnina Wilkins, interior designer