Designer Obsession — The Importance of The Decorative Arts in Interior Design At Texas Design Week Houston

Join Texas Design Week Houston on Thursday, April 17 , 11 am to 1 pm,  for a remarkable panel of experts in the decorative arts: The Importance of the Decorative Arts in Interior Design, at Ann Sacks.

Guillaume Féau, Feau Boiseries Paris

Féau Boiseries brings centuries of Parisian paneling — and a trove of design history — to its first American showroom.

Féau Boiseries, the Paris company founded in 1875 that’s renowned for salvaging and replicating centuries-old wood paneling has a rich legacy that includes one of the world’s largest collections of antique decorative paneling housed in its Rive Droite ateliers — among them, fragments from Napoleon’s office. The archive contains pieces by legendary French designers Jansen and Emilio Terry and hundreds of samples created for Alberto Pinto, Madeleine Castaing, Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, and Jean-Michel Frank. Among the more storied elements are rooms made for Madame de Pompadour and a fantastical set of chinoiserie panels crafted for an 18th-century Parisian library.

Over the years, Féau Boiseries has worked with leading interior designers such as Jacques Garcia, Jean-Louis Deniot, and Michael S. Smith. The company’s gilded panels also graced the interiors of influential patrons and industrial titans Henry Frick, Henry Ford, and the Getty family.

Now, under the direction of Guillaume Féau, a third-generation steward of the company, and his sister Angélique Féau-Leborgne, the firm is expanding its reach across the Atlantic and opening opens its first United States showroom in New York City’s D&D Building. The expanded presence will make it easier for American designers, architects and homeowners to access the company’s extraordinary archives and explore its full offering of reproduction panels and moldings spanning the 17th century to the Art Deco era.

By Rebecca Sherman

Guillaume Feau, Feau Boiseries, along with Miriam Ellner and Sara Story, illustrated talk, book signing and cocktails, Thursday, April 17, 11 to 1 pm, at Ann Sacks, as part of Texas Design Week Houston. For the complete schedule and tickets, go here.

The Rare Artistry of Miriam Ellner

Verre églomisé artist Miriam Ellner creates decor of transcendent beauty for leading designers around the world. Her new book, Golden Glass: Verre Églomisé, reveals her rare artistry and experimentation.

Golden afternoon light spills across the 2,500-square-foot penthouse studio as artist Miriam Ellner and a team of seven artists work intently, painting shimmering glass panels laid out on sturdy industrial desks and tables. Surrounded by battalions of brushes, they make magic happen among the orderly chaos of art in progress, with a shimmering array of gilded glass samples, jewel-like sheets of silver and gold leaf, glass jars of powdered potions, paint cans and well-used tools of the trade.

Along one wall of Ellner’s office, shelves with hundreds of paint-smudged art books, collected over a lifetime from around the world, are at her fingertips for reference and inspiration. From her desk, Ellner has a clear sight line of the Empire State Building nearby.

“From our 20th floor, we see the inspiration of former industrial buildings that now house white-hot art galleries and ateliers, as well as the rough and tumble of new construction,” she says. “There is great energy here.”

Since she opened her studio in the early 1990s, Ellner’s alchemy — turning plain, clear glass into art — has caught the eye of top designers such as Michael S. Smith, Bunny Williams, Emily Summers and Peter Marino. Over the following decades, her dazzling designs have become coveted among interiors specialists and architects for her artistry, her deep knowledge of art history and her versatility.

“Miriam has been recognized as the foremost practitioner of verre églomisé in the world,” Glenn Adamson, former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, says. “There are few decorative artists working in her medium, and none working at her aesthetic level.”

Also among her roster of top designer clients are Brian McCarthy, Alexa Hampton, Charlotte Moss, Julie Hillman, Ken Fulk, Suzanne Lovell, Victoria Hagan, and Young Huh. Their designs featuring Ellner’s art are in her new book, Golden Glass: Verre Églomisé (Pointed Leaf Press).

Every Ellner project — from wall panels and doors to ceilings, decorative screens, tables, mirrors, and framed abstract art — is custom-designed and executed in her studio. Working from the foreground to the background, Ellner applies as many as 20 layers of gold and silver leaf, voluptuous color, cursive flourishes and arabesques of metal powders, ground mother-of-pearl, or beads to create mood and emotion. Some commissioned work may take months to complete.

“I was fortunate at the age of 20 to be accepted to a century-old art school, Van Der Kelen Logelain in Brussels, to study decorative painting, gilding, trompe l’oeil, faux effects,” she says. “I embarked on the once-a-year course — very old school, and a great foundation for the breadth of my work today.”

In the six-month course, she learned how to make her own paints and materials, working in basic effective techniques used centuries ago by the Dutch and Belgian old masters. She continues to mix her exclusive, esoteric concoctions and formulas in her studio today.

“It was during my immersion in decorative art that I became aware of verre églomisé,” Ellner says.

In the ’90s, she enrolled in a specialized course in the workshop of London-based Frances Binnington, the foremost verre églomisé artist, who notably created the famous chinoiserie-inspired dining room in Ann Getty’s former mansion.

Ellner’s virtuoso techniques and ethereal layers awash with ornament embrace emotion and the joy of creativity. To create new patterns and effects and add allure, she uses scrapers and combs crafted with cork, and piercing tools carved in wood, using techniques from her Brussels studio days.

Translucent glass wall panels in a recently completed Park Avenue bathroom were inspired by traditional Moroccan architecture and ornament and include repeated subtle geometric patterns in translucent pale turquoise within an arched framework. Newer exclusive dimensional effects are mastered with two to five layers of laminated painted glass adorned with gilded reflections to create a shapeshifting, almost hallucinogenic effect. This technique will form the top of a metal-framed coffee table.

“I’m constantly challenging myself by embracing new images, including many variations inspired by nature,” she says. “Now with my new book, I’m amazed with the scope of work I’ve undertaken in three decades. In the next chapter of my work, there is even more to explore.”

By Diane Dorrans Saeks

Miriam Ellner, along with Guillaume Feau and Sara Story, master verre eglomise artist, illustrated talk, book signing and cocktails, Thursday, April 17, 11 to 1 pm, at Ann Sacks, as part of Texas Design Week Houston. For the complete schedule and tickets, go here.

The Story of Sara

Rebecca Sherman reflects on the rise of Sara Story  and her enbracing of the decorative arts.

Houston native Sara Story’s booming New York City-based international design practice put her on the global map years ago.

A former protégé of Victoria Hagan with a master’s in interior architecture and a namesake firm in Manhattan, Story has projects worldwide, along with lighting, wallpaper and furniture collections. She’s a member of the AD 100 list, and her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Galerie, Interior Design, Cultured, The New York Times, Veranda and Vogue Living among others.

But the Sara Story Design breakthrough was in 2014, when Architectural Digest devoted 12 pages to the strikingly contemporary Hill Country ranch house she created for her young family with architecture firm Lake/Flato. She had just turned 40.

Story, who was born in Japan and grew up in Singapore and Houston, is a supporter and former Board Member of Ballroom Marfa, a contemporary art space in Marfa, Texas, and a founding member of Proyecto Dracula, an international arts organization based in Todos Santos, Mexico. In 2024 Sara was elected to the Board of Trustees of the New Museum and participates in the organization’s Artemis Council. She’s also a member of the Guggenheim Museum’s International Director’s Council and is an active member of the Design Leadership Network.

By Rebecca Sherman

Sara Story, along with Guillaume Feau and Miriam Ellner, illustrated talk, book signing and cocktails, Thursday, April 17, 11 to 1 pm, at Ann Sacks, as part of Texas Design Week Houston. For the complete schedule and tickets, go here.