The god that protected boundaries

The god Terminus, the protector of boundary markers in ancient Rome, is the origin of these figures, male and female, that stood sentry, between walls of trompe l'oeil sienna marble, at the doors of Robert Metzger's glamorously riche New York offices.

Not very well-known today, Robert Metzger, was one of the most published decorators of the 1970s and 1980s and, I think, one of the most representative of the era - that of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, Bernhard Goetz, the murder of John Lennon, beginning of the Human Genome Project, the return of Halley's Comet, and Wall Street excesses culminating in Black Monday.

It was the excesses of Wall Street that enabled Robert Metzger to flourish and create some of the most lushly flamboyant interiors of the period. He wasn't alone in creating densely layered accretions of complicated deliciousness - Geoffrey Bennison, Denning and Fourcade (more well-known today than Metzger but surely on the point of slipping from memory) spring to mind, but even at its most extravagantly glamourous there was a light-heartedness in Metzger's work that set him apart. His rooms, though dense, were not boorish. There was none, one suspects, of that suffocating ancestral grime allowed to seep into his decorative schemes.

His office desk, in a room described by Robert Metzger as "... like sitting in someone's library or living room," is wonderfully of its time: the baroque base of an American pool table surmounted by an Italian intarsia top. Drawing up to this desk, surrounded as one was by one's future and suitably histrionic extravagances: gaufraged velvet, burly damask, bewitching brocades, plump brocatelles, waxen marbles, bright-cut crystal, chased bronze, ormulu, auroral needlework, Mr Metzger beaming at the far side, to discuss plans and budgets, aided perhaps by a flute or two of bubbly, cannot have been an irksome task,

Robert Metzger died of pneumonia at the age of 55 in 1994.

Photos by Jaime Ardiles-Arce and Dennis Krukowski from Best From the Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame, Vitae, 1992.

How is history written?

Looking back in the old issues of Architectural Design, House and Garden, etc., it quickly becomes apparent that some designers were more prominent than others. Conceivably, the prominence they enjoyed went hand in hand with being prolific, or they or their PR people were good pals with the editor, or maybe had high-profile, even notorious, clients who needed exposure, but whatever the reason these decorators were extensively promoted.

Nothing stands still; in interior design especially, change is inevitable. And most homes are only seen by a select few. So for the most part, the published account becomes the historical record. Editorial decisions of yesteryear – who gets printed and who does not – become our picture of the design world of their times. Thus one could think that the history of late 20th century decorating lies in the work of a few people - that revered group of Hadley, Hampton, Parrish, Fowler, Taylor, Lancaster, Baldwin, Douquette, et al whose work and names are constantly before us. It's when we get the Best Decorators of All Time nonsense, that fears are raised that interior design history has a gloomy future.

This week I have discussed three decorators who left the scene early and whose work is scarcely remembered except by a remnant of their generation. There are others who should be remembered, Billy Gaylord for one, Kalef Alton, another, was frequently published in the 1980s. One of the most published at that time, Robert Metzger, is not someone whose work I would ever have called well-mannered - ostentatious being the adjective that comes to mind - so it was surprising to find these rooms that could only be described as congenial and urbane - the total antithesis of what his later work became.

So, how is history written? Is it simply that he who is remembered best is he who gets published more?

Photos by Marie Consindas, from Architectural Digest, November-December, 1974.