Sometimes the best quotes aren't from the designers but from the clients:
"David walked in, asked for a glass of port and the plans of the house—and, after only a brief tour, made all the right decisions in half an hour."
James Hamilton, the 5th Duke of Abercorn, on designer David Hicks, whom he'd hired to redo the interiors of his family estate, Barons Court, in County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland. From Architectural Digest's 1979 book Traditional Interiors, with photographs by Derry Moore (for whom I also have an enduring love).
