Tobi Fairley on Barclay Butera: Day 1

Thanks to Tobi Fairley

for the first of her week-long series of posts on Barclay Butera!!

Monday, November 30

Barclay Butera: Living in Style

I have had the pleasure of meeting many well-known designers across the country because of my blog. One of the very first was California designer Barclay Butera. About this time last year, I was writing about how much I loved Barclay’s Wing Chairs. I had barely gotten the blog post published before into my email inbox came a gracious email from Barclay. He thanked me for writing about his products and promised to send a copy of his new book, Living in Style, as a token of his appreciation.

Since that time, I have gotten to know Barclay much better and had the pleasure of meeting him in person many times at the High Point furniture market and at design events in New York and Los Angeles, and each time, Barclay and his staff are equally kind and gracious. So it isn’t any wonder that Barclay Butera has life-long relationships with his clients, including many who live high-profile and celebrity lives.

Barclay Butera grew up working in his mother’s design business who serviced clients world wide. After studying law, Barclay was drawn back to the design industry in his mid-twenties. It wasn’t long before Barclay was in the furniture business, designing his custom Barclay Butera Home collection of upholstery and casegoods.

Barclay’s approach to design combines his client’s heirloom pieces with “new classics” that are just a bit edgier. Barclay draws inspiration from couture fashion detailing and melds his clients’ style with his influence to create “Fashion for the Home”.

Aside from fashion, Barclay’s designs are impacted by his travels as evidenced by the European, American and Far Eastern traditional elements that show up in his rooms.

It was this idea of traveling to many different destinations that set the tone for Barclay’s book, Living in Style, and later his collection of textiles for Kravet Collections. As you will find when reading Living in Style, Barclay’s designs and his philosophies are broken into 5 categories: Beach, Town and Country, Mountain, Desert, and City.

And though there is definitely a common look to all Barclay Butera designs, there is also great diversity in color and style in each of the five categories of Barclay’s projects.

Over the next week, I will introduce you to Barclay’s furniture collection including my favorite introductions at this Fall’s High Point Furniture Market, as well as Barclay’s signature pieces for Hearst Castle Collection and his line of rugs and fabrics for Kravet Collections.

And this Friday, one lucky reader will win an autographed copy of Barclay’s book, Living in Style.

To enter please send an email to me at tobifairley@gmail.com with “Barclay Butera Book Giveaway” in the subject line. Only one entry per person, per week please. The drawing will be held this Friday, December 4th at noon Central time.

To buy a copy of Barclay’s book, or the other designer books previously featured here, visit my Amazon.com book recommendations in the right sidebar of my blog.

And stay tuned for a fantastic week-long look at California designer, Barclay Butera.

Thanks for reading and good luck!

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