- David Nightingale Hicks
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David Nightingale Hicks Born 25 March 1929 Died 29 March 1998 (aged 69) Spouse Lady Pamela Hicks Children Edwina Brudenell
Ashley Hicks
India HicksDavid Nightingale Hicks (25 March 1929 - 29 March 1998) was a British interior decorator and designer, famous for his employment of bold, shockingly vibrant colours, for mixing antique and modern furnishings and contemporary art for his famous clientele.[1]
His career as designer-decorator was launched to media-acclaim in 1954 when the British magazine House & Garden featured the London house he decorated, 22 South Eaton Place,[2] for his mother, Iris, and himself;[3] at the time Hicks was drawing cereal boxes for the advertising firm J Walter Thompson.[4]
An early introduction by Fiona, wife of banker Norman Lonsdale of Kleinwort, Benson, Lonsdale, to Peter Evans initiated a sparkling explosion of drama, colour and excitement in London as the pair, now joined by architect Patrick Garnett [5] of Garnett, Cloughley & Blakemore, set about designing, building and decorating the Peter Evans Eating Houses, a restaurant chain in London's 'hot' spots of King's Road, Chelsea, Kensington Church Street, and Soho.[6] The three set the decorative style that epitomised the Swinging Sixties. Hicks even designed red evening slippers and Evans, in 1967, was awarded the George Bryan Brummell Arbiter Elegantiarium - Best Dressed Man Award - by the Clothing Manufacturers Federation of UK.[citation needed]
Peter Evans: "Hicks was without a doubt a genius. He would walk into the most shambolic of spaces that I had decided would be a restaurant, a pub or a nightclub and, lighting up a cigarette, would be out of the place within ten minutes, having decided what atmosphere it would generate because of what it would look like. He always got it spot on."[7]
David Hicks and GCB collaborated on a series of private commissions, including a house on Park Lane for Lord and Lady Londonderry, an apartment for the film producer Lord Brabourne and a new house in Kinnerton Street for Earl Mountbatten of Burma. GBC achieved international recognition when they refurbished the George V Hotel in Paris for the Trust House Forte group. Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange featured GCB's Chelsea Drugstore.[8]
Hicks's early clients mixed aristocracy, media and fashion (Vidal Sassoon, Helena Rubinstein, Violet Manners (who later became The Duchess of Rutland), Mrs Condé Nast and Mrs Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.[9] He made carpets for Windsor Castle and decorated the Prince of Wales's first apartment at Buckingham Palace. Hicks started to design patterned carpets and fabrics when he found none on the market that he considered good enough. These and his hyper-dynamic colour sense formed the basis of a style which was much admired and copied. In 1967, Hicks began working in the USA, designing apartments in Manhattan for an international clientele, and at the same time promoting his carpet and fabric collections. Hicks also designed sets for Richard Lester's 1968 movie 'Petulia', starring Julie Christie.
In the 70's and 80's David Hicks shops opened in fifteen countries around the world. He designed, for example, guestrooms at the Okura Hotel in Tokyo and the yacht of the King of Saudi Arabia. Hicks was a talented photographer, painter and sculptor and produced fashion and jewelry collections. It is said that if he couldn't find something he designed and made it. He designed the interior of a BMW and scarlet-heeled men's evening shoes. David Hicks spent the last years of his life his very grand home in Oxfordshire, where he created one of the most extraordinary gardens in England. Typically, and eccentrically, David Hicks even designed his own coffin, in which he 'lay in state', according to his precise instructions, in the ground-floor room of his gothic garden pavilion.
Some of Hicks's later work may be seen at Belle Isle, Fermanagh, where he was commissioned by the Duke of Abercorn to redecorate the interior of the castle in the 1990s, having decorated the Duke's main home, Baronscourt, in the 1970s.
Hicks wrote in one of nine practical design books, David Hicks on Living—With Taste[10] that his "greatest contribution... has been to show people how to use bold color (sic) mixtures, how to use patterned carpets, how to light rooms and how to mix old with new."
Hicks was born at Coggeshall, Essex, the son of stockbroker Herbert Hicks and Iris Elsie Platten. He married Lady Pamela Mountbatten (born 19 April 1929), the younger daughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma by his wife, the former Edwina Ashley. David and Pamela Hicks were married on 13 January 1960 at Romsey Abbey in Hampshire.
Their three children are:
- Edwina Victoria Louise Hicks (born 24 December 1961)
- Ashley Hicks (born 18 July 1963)
- India Amanda Caroline Hicks (born 5 September 1967).
A chain smoker, David Hicks died from lung cancer, aged 69 at Britwell Salome, Oxfordshire. He was buried on 4 April 1998 in Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire, where his grave is marked by an obelisk-shaped tombstone.
His son, Ashley Hicks, is an architect and designer. He recently published David Hicks: Designer [11]- a celebration of his father's work, a coffee table book 'jampacked with inspiration... so many of his ideas are back again in vogue, the rooms seem almost current.
Daughter India, who lives in the Bahamas, is also keeping her father's work alive, which has inspired her two books Island Life and Island Beauty'. India has also collaborated with Pamela on the Mountbatten history.
References
- ^ http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-264865/David-Nightingale-Hicks
- ^ http://www.interiordesign.net/HofFDesigner/42.html
- ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/02/world/david-hicks-69-interior-design-star-of-the-60s-is-dead.html??pagewanted=1
- ^ http://www.adbrands.net/us/jwt/us.htm
- ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1518216/Patrick-Garnett.html
- ^ Hicks, David David Hicks on Decoration pub Leslie Frewin 1966
- ^ Sandbrook, Dominic Never Had It So Good pub Little Brown 2005
- ^ The Guardian 8 June 2006
- ^ http://www.dezinare.com/newslettter/davidhicks.html
- ^ Hicks, David David Hicks on Living -- With Taste 1968
- ^ http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/books-guides-resources/good-book-david-hicks-designer-015620
External links
Categories:- 1929 births
- 1998 deaths
- English interior designers
- Deaths from lung cancer
- People from Coggeshall
- People from South Oxfordshire (district)
- Cancer deaths in England
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