Eleanor McMillen Brown

If you get it right the first time there's no need for change.
Eleanor McMillen Brown

I don't think modern has quite reaced a complete whole yet. I like the textiles, the glass, some of the ironwork and some of the backgrounds, but the furniture-no.
Eleanor McMillen Brown

It is to the client's advantage and also the architect's, to have a trained and experienced decorator with both technical knowledge and an understanding of interior architectural detail so as to be able to assemble intelligently the proper textures, colors, furniture and objects to make a consistent room. If all these things are taken into consideration in the original planning...a great many difficulties can be anticipated.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Interior Architecture and Decoration

It is to the client's advantage and also the architect's, to have a trained and experienced decorator with both technical knowledge and an understanding of interior architectural detail so as to be able to assemble intelligently the proper textures, colors, furniture and objects to make a consistent room. If all these things are taken into consideration in the original planning...a great many difficulties can be anticipated.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Interior Architecture and Decoration

Architects who feel that the decorator often fails to complement the character of the building...[are recalling] a flimsy shadow of the past who used to pose as a decorator when he was really nothing more than an arranger of furniture.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Interior Architecture and Decoration

The contemporary eye combines objects and material of the present with objects and materials from the past, not because of fashion but because of one's own knowledgeable eclecticism - the result of one's own varied experiences and cultivated taste.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design

Contemporary paintings and sculpture are happy with furniture of the past. Fabrics of contemporary colors and textures and suitable and appealing on old chairs. Old patterns seem excitingly fresh when rejuvenated by a contemporary palette. Modern lighting and ventilation enhance otherwise traditional rooms.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design

There is nothing more trite than a set period - any antique period bought intact for today's living. But, by the same token, a contemporary house that ignores all vestiges of the past in order to express a purely modern philosophy runs the risk of becoming a stagnant document of its own time.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design

Taste is relative, but to be positive and vital it must respect the past, accept the present and look forward with enthusiasm to the future.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design

The settled, comfortable look of beautiful upholstery makes otherwise austere rooms more cozy and adds to rooms of clinical structure the traditional qualities of charm and comfort. Active, positive taste demands a constantly fresh appraisal of familiar forms - holding on to those thing that add quality, beauty, and pleasure to one's life, disposing of superficial impediments.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design

There is nothing more trite than a set period - any antique period bought intact for today's living. But, by the same token, a contemporary house that ignores all vestiges of the past in order to express a purely modern philosophy runs the risk of becoming a stagnant document of its own time.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design

There is nothing more trite than a set period - any antique period bought intact for today's living. But, by the same token, a contemporary house that ignores all vestiges of the past in order to express a purely modern philosophy runs the risk of becoming a stagnant document of its own time.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design

I try to design rooms around their architecture or to create architecture where none exists.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Maybe I work out my needs for change on my clients. I'm perfectly hapy with what I have. It functions and it's very pretty.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

For without the private world of retreat man becomes virtually an unbalanced creature.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

There is nothing more trite than a set period.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Anything is possible with hard work.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Every room needs a touch of yellow.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

If you get it right the first time, there is no need to change.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Man has moved through the long passages of time digesting, recording, changing, but always leaving in his time and place the records of how he lived and why.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Repeat shapes to gain harmony.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Love of beauty and the desire to create it is a primal instinct of man.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Just do an excellent job and the money will follow.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

To be of use in the world is the only way to be happy.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

The estimate is the job.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Never take on a partner.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

Love of beauty and the desire to create it is a primal instinct of man.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

We are often inclined to think of art in terms of pure decoration rather than as a vital part of our everyday lives.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

I've done just about all I can with what I've been given on earth.
Eleanor McMillen Brown, Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard

The basic rules of proportion and scale are unchanging. They are reinterpreted according to the needs of the time. I like simplicity and I believe in restraint. Above all, there should be harmony-of proportion, line, color, and feeling. The most important element in decorating is the relationship between objects- in size, form, texture, color, and meaning. None of these is in good taste in itself but only in relationship to where it has been placed and what purpose it is to serve.
Eleanor McMillen Brown

To develop in taste, quality, and personality one is obliged to respect the past, accept the present, and look with enthusiasm toward the future.
Eleanor McMillen Brown

[on interior design] I think you have to have a real sense of scale and proportion. You have to have a real feeling for it. I think you are just born with it or you are not. No matter how much training you get, you can't learn that.
Eleanor McMillen Brown