David Nightingale Hicks is another that is well remembered and known in interior design circles. Born in november of 1929, this english born designer was known to be one for using bold colours, adn mixing the antique with modern.
He is possibly just as well known for his famous clientele than anything!
Hicks was schooled at the central school of arts and crafts. Where he honed his craft in interiors and design. He began as a designer, drawing cereal box designs for an advertising agency. After this his career was skyrocketed by house and garden magazine when they featured his family home (which he had decorated).
david nightingale hicks interiors
Starting his interior design career, he joined up with Peter Evans, and p[artrick Garnett who was an architect and designer respectively. With this trio in mind they went on to design a restaurant chain which was in desirable places in london , such as soho and chelsea. This establishment was called the peter evans eating houses.
David nightingale hicks designs
He went on to design many royal’s homes. For example lord brabourne. They also refurbished and interiors designed the George V hotel in paris. The GBC as it was known went on to design many more homes and commercial properties.
One of the properties that Hicks designed was featured in the highly stylised clockwork orange by Stanley kubrick.
To add to the movie credits, he then went on to design sets for the 1968 movie Petulia , by Richard Lester. Because he made a name for himself about his way with colour, we began to see throughout the 70s and 80s a shift in his work.
He worked on projects with aristocracy on media and fashion and even decorated the prince of wales apartment in Buckingham palace. One could compare his trend of working for gentry just like Dorothy Draper and Albert Hadley.
To add to this regal theme, he also designed carpet for windsor castle.
David Nightingale Hicks tablescapes
I think the importance of his work was incorporating old and new, and colours. The fact that he had an appreciation for the olf, made him favourable with the gentry at the time who obviously do not want something wildly modern, yet they did want to keep up with modern trends, and therefore like that mix of new and old, because you do not want to erase the past, neither be dragged and held back by it.
David Hicks on living – with taste david nightingale hicks
From this book – we can ascertain what hicks thought was his biggest achievement:
‘My greatest contribution as an interior designer has been to show people how to use bold color mixtures, how to use patterned carpets, how to light rooms, and how to mix old with new.’
This is a great view into what he was like as a designer, as well as what things he was passionate about. We can definitely see from some of the images how well he did use colour and how that was perhaps different for most designers at the time when dull, lifeless schemes were the most prominent.
