As Paige Rense, Editor Emeritus of Architectural Digest, puts it in her foreword to Mario Buatta’s new book, “It seems impossible to imagine being depressed in a Mario Buatta interior.” The Prince of Chintz is also a master of color with a passion for print that has seen him transform beautiful and often extremely grand homes and spaces into rooms that are as comfortable and welcoming as they are a spectacle for five decades. In his book, a retrospective of his glittering career, images of the houses he has decorated all over the world are compiled in his self-styled, “Buattapedia.” Here are some of our favorites.

 

“This is the first room – a decorator’s show house in Greenwich, Connecticut – I ever had published; it was in the September 1969 issue of House and Garden. I used a lot of my own furniture in the space, including a sofa that I had slip covered and a French screen in the corner.”

Image from Architectural Digest

 

“Mario’s living room, designed as the original house’s library, is glazed in three shades of lime green and creamy white, with a faux-sisal painted floor. Over the sofa hangs Mario’s collection of dog paintings. He often jokes, “These paintings are my ancestors. Seriously, I love dogs.” To the left of the sofa is a blue and white French screen, which he would hide behind to overhear prospective clients’ first impressions.”

Image from Architectural Digest

 

“The master bedroom is a blush color with an even paler pink-ground Lee Jofa chintz used on the four poster bed. On the slipper chair is a pale turquoise lily block print from Jean Monro. Mario remarks, “I love the idea of mixing several patterns. It’s like a garden with different flowers and plants – suddenly you see a lot of this and then a lot of that. It grows over time.”

Image from Architectural Digest

 

It was this iconic bedroom created for the 1984 Kips Bay Show House that earned Mario the moniker “The Prince of Chintz” from news reporter Chauncey Howell. House Beautiful Editor Margaret Kennedy, who devoted the cover and seven pages to the room in the magazine, says, “If a particular room at a particular moment can define an era, this was it… The genius of the room was that in the midst of muchness, the airiness of the white bed calmed it down, as did the pale lavender walls, which receded. At the height of America’s obsession with English country style, Mario’s interpretation was the best.”

Image from Architectural Digest

“Watermelon walls were hand painted by artists Robert Jackson and Haleh Atabeigi to resemble eighteenth-century Chinese wallpaper in the dining room. A pale blue ceiling suggests the sky. The outdoor garden setting is complemented with the flowering-treillage carpet, the only floor covering in the main rooms.

Image from Architectural Digest

All quotes taken from Mario Buatta Fifty years of American interior Decoration, Published by Rizzoli and out now.