Bowerbird House
It was the dawn of the 1970’s. My first husband, Peter, and I eloped in grand style at Park Avenue’s Saint Bartholomew’s Chapel with our close friends, the Lees as our attendants. A wedding reception consisting of the merry four of us followed at The Plaza’s Oak Room. We were young and happy (our parents quickly recovered from the shock of our eloping and fested us at their homes) and the world, or, as we saw it, Manhattan, was our oyster. Twelve years of married bliss were to follow including the birth of two beautiful baby girls.
Peter was working at Bankers Trust in 1970 and I was the fabric co-ordinator at Brunschwig and Fils under the fierce tutelage of Zelina Brunschwig and the more sociable, tender mentorship of the divine Murray Douglas. Then it was on to better pay and more responsibility at Arthur H.Lee and Son in it’s palatial interior headquarters on East 56th Street, NYC.
We lived at 18 West 70th and had a wide circle of friends which was a moveable pod of partying at our various apartments. One thing was affirmed in our rounds. I had a way of doing up our place that our friends greatly admired and soon Peter’s single colleagues at Bankers Trust were asking me to make their apartments appealing enough to attract a mate. And so began my side job as an interior decorator whose only aim was to help my clients woo a future bride.
Male bowerbirds are the stealthy little bird indigenous to New Zealand, who has a most unique reputation as one part architect, one part decorator and a larger part longing to woo a mate. So, at mating season he puts a truly heart-warming effort into building a large conical nest, over three feet high and safely away from predators. Next comes meticulous attention to detail in decorating his thatched structure with every eye-catching ornament he can find, from; lost hair ribbons to cigarette butts, all to attract a female to nest with him. And it works!
I could not resist naming my labors and eye after this little fellow and thus, Bowerbird House Interiors became my trademark. And yes, the boys got the girls and devoted marriages ensued.
Decades later when my name was firmly established as a decorator, I rebranded the company with my name but being a die-hard romantic, I must confess, doing up those bachelor apartments to give off an air of domesticity, worldliness and respectability were some of my forever favorite projects and remain so.