Southern Home (SH): Can you describe your early years? It’s quite a journey!
Marshall Watson (MW): At Stanford, where I studied literature, design, and engineering (an unlikely trio, I know), I learned never to take the easy way out—to question and question until I uncovered solutions. The craft of theater design, which I pursued at Brandeis, inspired a love of research, of my total immersion in the history, context, and aesthetic traditions surrounding a dramatic text. And finally, there was my life as a successful actor on a soap opera, from which I learned to listen, to be specific in my interpretations, and to embrace and enjoy the diversity of human experience. But it was only when I found my way to interior design, as a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, that I understood that here, at last, was a pursuit that combined everything I’d learned to love. Amusingly enough, when I became a practicing designer with my own studio, my father, a traditional World War II veteran, actually rejoiced—that’s how thrilled he was that I wasn’t an actor anymore!
SH: Where do you find inspiration? Art, fashion, travel?
MW: Yes to all. Fashion can give you an idea for the drape of a window treatment. It can also help you predict future color trends. Art can influence your decisions in composition. And travel can open your eyes to textures, details, architectural revelations, scents, sounds. Everything, really.
SH: What’s a common mistake people make when designing their own homes?
MW: Allowing a dark room to remain dark is a frequent mistake. If you have a room with no natural light, there’s a lot you can do to make up for it. You can use lacquered walls and ceiling to reflect shimmer. You can fill the room with indirect light from chandeliers, sconces, table lamps and mirrors. The technology of light bulbs has advanced so much. But you must buy the very best light bulbs. LED bulbs can make gorgeous bright light, but they don’t dim very well. The low light is rather gray.
SH: How do you get clients to express what they want in a house?
MW: You research them. You question them as much as possible to interpret their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. It is our job as designers to find out what appeals to the clients’ sensibility and what doesn’t. We have the great gift of technology to be able to show them a virtual walk-through, something that wasn’t available when I was starting out.
SH: Where do you start the design process?
MW: The floor plan is the very first thing we do. How do you plan to live in this space? Where do you watch television? Where do you sit every day? Often, I have to accommodate a collection of something, such as football memorabilia, that doesn’t really appeal to me. But everyone has taste, and with every arrow in my quiver, I can make their taste look good. And I do!
SH: What is a trend that you welcome?
MW: A lot of our clients are asking for blue and green. Blue has been popular forever, but the combination of blue and green feels very fresh. They are colors from the natural world, so that makes them a delight to use.
SH: How did your family’s influence direct you toward interior design?
MW: Both my parents took great interest in our surroundings. We lived in Kansas City. My father was a rosarian and had more than 200 plants. My mother had a great love for antiques, and she taught me how to discern quality furniture. She’d say, “This is why this piece is high quality.” She taught me how to recognize mahogany and how to value its rarity in the 18th century. If all the claims of 18th-century mahogany are to be believed, a veritable army of carpenters would have had to work day and night to produce all of them.
SH: How do you describe your style?
MW: I’d have to say classic, but what I mean by that is that my designs reflect the proportions of human scale. I worry that people might think of Greek or Roman when I say classic. But a Louis XVI neoclassical chair is also classic.
SH: Can you describe a particularly challenging project and how you resolved it?
MW: My clients had commissioned a house in John’s Island, Florida, that reflected the area’s prevailing Georgian style, one embellished by shutters, columns, and Palladian arches. The pair very much appreciated their new home. But the rooms, somewhat unexpectedly, turned out to be enormous, and my clients had no idea how they might inhabit these voluminous spaces comfortably. I couldn’t alter the architecture, so I used the art of decoration to construct an alternative “architecture” within the outsized circumstances of the house. I addressed the soaring ceilings by floating the chandeliers and lanterns two-thirds of the way up, making the rooms feel less cavernous. The tall, narrow entry hall lacked vitality and definition, so I commissioned a soft-toned landscape mural against which I set contemporary mirrors and consoles, adding rectilinear furniture pieces that produce a stately processional rhythm and the perception of architecture scaled to the human figure.
SH: I understand that you and your brothers are competitive about gardening.
MW: We are! Whenever we’re together, we’re talking about vegetables and fruit. I’m very inspired by my own garden. It’s in the Hamptons and is actually two gardens, one a thoroughfare for herds of hungry deer and the other a partially fenced, partially walled refuge. Though Italian influenced in the clipped evergreens and statuary, French influenced in the potager and espaliered trees, English influenced in the blowsy borders and variety of plants, and colonial influenced by its symmetry and formality, it is essentially a new American garden.
SH: Is there a certain room you always enjoy designing?
MW: I always enjoy putting together a kitchen. It’s like a puzzle. Fitting all the components together is a most satisfying endeavor. I love going to the stone yard in New York because it’s like walking through an art gallery. I’d like to throw a dinner party there!
Lightning Round
What are you currently reading? I do read novels, but right now I’m reading the Old Testament. It’s fascinating.
What are your next travel plans? Right now, I’m on a book tour for my newest book, Defining Elegance, so my next stops are Boston, St. Louis, and San Francisco.
What brand of luggage do you carry? Louis Vuitton. I have a carry-on, and never once have the flight attendants made me check it, because they know it’s likely to be stolen.
Dog or cat? Dog, preferably a big Labrador retriever.
What’s your morning ritual? A flat white with heavy cream, then the gym.
What’s your guilty pleasure? The Gilded Age on HBO.
What are your favorite flowers? Peonies, chrysanthemum wisteria, and lilacs.
What is your standard finishing touch on an installation? Pillows and lampshades.
What is something that we’d be surprised to know about you? I really like astronomy.
What family traditions do you observe? As one of three brothers, we are competitive gardeners. We always end up talking about vegetables and flowers.
Every Southern home should have? No Southern home should be without…good linens, sterling flatware, and twelve place settings of china.
