Venetian Smoke: the true story

Hello Readers,

Taking a break from the exceptional design world of trends, tabletops and tastes I am writing about a true story that has just surfaced today as I woke up.  It’s called Venetian Smoke. Actually the story has been with me for over 20 years but for reasons to be announced at some later time, this story must be shared now.

 

Venetian Smoke

Vern was a designer at the company I worked with, Susan Crane, in Dallas, Texas. The company was known for fixturing, seasonal display trim and decorative props which were used in the visual merchandising for every major retailer in the country.  It was the 80’s when big rich glitzy Texas was quite a showy place in a decorator kind of way. As a noo-yorker and a young one at that with not really so much worldliness under my belt, it was a bit “over the top”, bigger than life and, I admit, somewhat alluring place. The homes included dashes of folly in their architecture; arches, entries, columns, huge dining rooms, multiple chandeliers, nine foot French doors to gardens, dramatic up lighting and dramatic down lighting and a Palladian window tossed here and there for fun and so forth. If Dallas didn’t have it, they built it, I’d say, and the thin veneer of stucco mixed with ‘southern hospitality’ was just fine with me.  It looked new and clean and spacious compared to old, dirty and cramped New York City where I had just recently moved to.

 

Vern, being the head designer had the obligation and expectations of having a wonderful home made all the more wonderful from the amount of wholesale props that adorned near every inch of the place. His partner Cliff would sit at the baby grand in the middle of the colossal living room and play Liberace-like renditions of classics, show tunes and either Barbara Streisand or Chorus Line melodies. Extra flourishes and tinkling sounds were added for drama and to also free up one hand to take a swig of some alcoholic concoction usually made with a gin brand you never heard of in big red or black letters.

 

Vern and Cliff were both well groomed, tall, twenty or so years older than I and pleasant looking. Cliff was blond and wore silk shirts with bold colored patterns unbuttoned just enough to reveal a gold chain and smooth tan chest. He was always prepared to perform a lounge act at the end of the day as Vern would often come home with an unexpected group.  Places and parts were then to be repeated as if a daily tour had been reserved. Vern was often compared to Robert Mitchum (which he loved). On the street, someone might yell, “Robert Mitchum!” and then of course he would act as if he was Robert Mitchum, not saying he was or wasn’t, but playing up the unexpected discovery.  His eyes had that same slight droopiness in the corners, his dark straight hair, cut shorter to the sides with a pile in front whisked to the side of his round head and in his John Wayne gentle smile a cigarette seemed to give him an air of tough authority.  Dressed in a black turtle neck, black pants or jeans and black shoes he always looked the part of an accomplished designer.  

 

The experience was very grand, chandeliers sparkling against dark green velvet walls, the piano notes, elegantly lush, pushed against crisp white French doors, those polished brass lights above pictures gave the home a clubby feel as if Julie Wilson, big white lily in her hair, was about to come around a corner from the Algonquin.  It was quite wonderful visually and this was Vern’s stage set looking like a million dollars from his outrageous attention to detail, up lighted palm trees and vast amounts of Obelisks, huge ceramic Chinese horses, oversize works of well copied Titians and Rembrandts, each with their gleaming picture lights. You felt very honored and chic to be invited to such a home.

 

The house tour continued throughout room after room and cocktail after cocktail. Vern’s mastery of decadent Dallas design was limitless as he explained humbly but with great detail how he glued thousands of shells to mirror frames, set hundreds of tiles to columns and made enormous lamps from Peruvian statuary of questionable origin. There wasn’t any object or surface that he couldn’t talk about since you realized that he had touched every inch of every room with a hot glue gun, fabric, stapler, gold leaf brush or faux painting tool.

 

We came to a bathroom and on this carved wall panel was the most extraordinary color. It was something like peacock blue with gray added in and brightened with a touch of cream, something I’d say in a slate family. I remember asking Vern, what this beautiful color was.  “That’s Venetian smoke!” he exclaimed without a second’s hesitation of tour guide authority. No one had heard of Venetian Smoke before at least not as a color reference.  We all looked at each other, nodded our heads toward each other in instant approval and inaudibly mouthed the syllables ven- e- tian- smo- ke as if we had been given the chant that could turn lead into gold.

 

It was at that moment we realized that we may not really have been given the formula but we were standing in the results of someone that thought they indeed did have it. You don’t need to see a Venetian house burn to understand what Venetian smoke looks like. Venetian smoke is the way to describe any color you have no idea of what it really is.  It is what old guard show house designers do when they paint a floor vermillion red or ceilings black gloss or mirror the steps on a stairway.  They create a look of something you’ve never seen before, just as Vern had mixed several cans of leftover paint to produce the once in a lifetime color for his wall and it was unforgettable.

 

As we descended the stairs it seemed staples popped out at corners of the fabric covered dark velvet walls, the veneer of gold leaf paint on the frame wasn’t dried quite well when a texture of bubble wrap became imprinted across the Vermeer, the antique Chinese horse was made months ago it seemed and one side of the head wasn’t exactly lined up correctly with the other in the hastily produced mould. It all started making sense. Vern was the designer in a well worn cashmere coat who always had a one-hundred dollar bill prominently displayed on the left side of his billfold.  “Oh, you don’t mind getting this cab do you? I don’t have any smaller bills”. Years and many cab rides later that bill was as fresh as the first time I ever saw it.  Yes it looked like a million dollar house as a canvas stage set looks like stone or brick or whatever the artist wants it to look like. Although Vern was a Zefferelli, there was no doubt in that, as well as his being a kind and dashing person, you began to realize that pre-meditated appetizers weren’t going to be put out. A bowl of popcorn was offered, a smaller dish of Ritz crackers appeared. The nightly tour group, nursed with grain gin cocktails, would always offer to pay for dinner that was nonchalantly suggested.  The sparkle of chandeliers, the eloquent piano rhapsody, the mood lighting on velvet walls are all a swirl on a gentle breeze in an elegant cloud of Venetian Smoke.

 

Several years later, when I purchased my first house, I remember mounting four decorative moldings into each corner of my dining room.  At the top of each I hot-glued a Walnut shell, spray painted bright gold.  I am almost certain Venetian Smoke had gotten in my eyes.