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David Nightingale 
Hicks
1929 - 1998


David Nightingale 
Hicks
, Obit. The Times "March 31 1998 OBITUARIES DAVID HICKS David Hicks, interior decorator and designer, died on March 29 aged 69. He was born on March 25, 1929. DAVID HICKS was interior decorator to the aristocracy. Over the years his clients included the Prince of Wales, Helena Rubinstein, Douglas Fairbanks, President Nkrumah of Ghana and the Sultan of Oman. He worked for the British Embassy in Washington, the government of New South Wales and - perhaps incongruously - for Aeroflot. David Nightingale Hicks was born the son of a stockbroker in Coggeshall, Essex, and educated at Charterhouse and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. He served in the Army Education Corps, where he taught art. After two years spent travelling in Europe, he joined the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, but at the same time he was decorating his mother's newly purchased house in South Eaton Place. The scheme was featured in House and Garden and soon brought him three prospective clients. Accordingly, he set up as a professional decorator. In 1956 he went into partnership with the antiques dealer Tom Parr, and in 1959 he set up his own decorating firm, David Hicks Ltd, in Lowndes Street, undertaking decorative schemes for the London flats and country houses of many aristocratic patrons. The design for the original nightclub in the QE2 was Hicks's, and he designed many banks, offices, hotels and restaurants. He also decorated houses for the likes of Vidal Sassoon and John Schlesinger. In 1960 he married Lady Pamela Mountbatten, the younger daughter of Earl and Countess Mountbatten of Burma. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Hicks became the epitome of the international designer, heading a large business with boutiques and associates in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Pakistan and Australia. In the tradition of earlier decorators such as Elsie de Wolfe and Syrie Maugham, he showed a flair for self-publicity. As the flamboyant but impeccably groomed Englishman with considerable snob-appeal, his pronouncements on taste were regarded as irresistible, especially, as he often noted himself, to the wealthy Americans who employed him precisely to tell them what kind of taste they should have. David Hicks's style will perhaps be best remembered for his use of strong, plain "vibrating" colours, especially reds and pinks, which he combined with modern geometric designs for carpets and fabrics, antique furniture and often colourful contemporary paintings. He seldom used floral designs and, from 1960, he designed his own carpets, often with distinctive textured geometric patterns, and ranges of wallpapers, furnishing fabrics, bedlinens and towels. He also designed furniture, ties, handbags, shoes and other accessories. BMW employed him to advise on its car interiors. His eye for detail also led to his making handles, lamps, kitchenware, picture frames and even ashtrays for particular interiors. He liked to mix the contemporary with the antique, setting furnishings and architectural details in the classical tradition against strong modern colours. An arranger by nature, he also claimed to have invented the "tablescape", the grouping of objects in telling arrangements, on the basis that one pebble on the beach on its own, for example, was nothing, but in relationship to others it formed a fascinating "stonescape". It was pointed out, however, that Jim Ede, the creator of the Kettle's Yard gallery in Cambridge, had been doing this sort of thing for decades. David Hicks on Decoration, appeared in 1966, and he went on to publish eight more books on different aspects of decoration, including flower-arranging, bathrooms and garden design, a subject that occupied him more and more in the 1980s. In his late fifties, he became increasingly interested in complete architectural schemes, and undertook the architecture, garden design and interior of a large Palladian villa in Portugal. In 1977 he was Master of the Worshipful Company of Salters, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather before him. He leaves three children, Edwina, Ashley and India. Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd. "

Born: Coggeshall, Essex, , England 25th Mar 1929 Baptised:
Died: 29th Mar 1998Buried:
Family:
Hicks

Ancestors
[ Patrilineage | Matrilineage | Earliest Ancestors | Force | Force2 | Set Relationship | Relationship | Options ]

1.
David Nightingale 
Hicks
(
hidden
) 1929 - 1998
2.
Herbert 
Hicks
(
Platten
) + ante 1963
3.
Iris Elsie 
Platten
(
Hicks
) 1886 - post 1929

Siblings


1.
John M. 
Hicks
* 1922

Spouses



1. Abbey, Romsey, Hants., , England 13th Jan 1960
hidden

Descendants
[ Options ]

a.
hidden
1.
hidden
2.
hidden
3.
hidden
3a.
3.1.
Conrad Lorenzo 
Wood
3.2.
hidden
3.3.
hidden
3.4.
hidden
Sources

  • Family Archivists: see
    Hicks


Timeline


25th Mar 1929Born (birth) Coggeshall, Essex, England
13th Jan 1960Married
hidden
(marriage) Romsey, Hants., England
29th Mar 1998Died (death)
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