Interiors She Loves – A Chat with Lisa Fine
By KK Snyder
When personal friend and interiors photographer Miguel Flores-Vianna encouraged her to consider a book project―her first― textiles designer Lisa Fine was intrigued but wasn't sure of the angle. She began by thinking of it as a wonderful platform for talking about her fabrics, but the more she thought about how it would look, the more she began to embrace a bigger picture.
“I decided instead of having it just about me, I wanted to do it about all the people and the places that have inspired me and brought me into doing what I do,” says Lisa, who launched her fabric business about a dozen years ago, prior to which she'd traveled extensively.
“I'm very attracted to interiors―many of which are the homes of designers―that are more reflections of the people that live in them than the actual design scheme,” she shares.
The resulting book, Near & Far – Interiors I love, features homes of the many people that have inspired her. “Most of them are people who love to travel, and either they collect or they're gardeners or big readers, people that just bring elements into their design other than just a flat matching of colors and patterns and placing of furniture. It's really sort of art on how to live, too; these are houses that are lived in.
“Most of these people love to entertain and cook and most of them have dogs. It's a casual idea about a luxurious way to live. Some are very simple houses, but they're very comfortable and lavish in the way that people are free to have their pets and to eat and drink and have people over. They're really grand interiors that never seem pretentious or stuffy.”
Though many have influenced her career, Lisa puts several friends at the top of her list, including Charlotte and Alexander di Carcaci because of their continual rapport―they've been friends over 30 years and spend time together in London every year, perusing antiques and visiting museums. The di Carcacis are also featured in Lisa's book.
“Obviously, your friends might be your greatest source of inspiration because you see them more and you discuss things,” she says, also naming fellow textiles designer, Carolina Irving, with whom she once had a clothing line with and, continues to enjoy visiting exhibits and galleries.
“The house in the book that I probably saw before I saw anyone else's house, would be John Stefanidis's,” she says of another major influencer. “That was 30 years ago and sort of a mind-changing experience because I'd never seen anything like it.”
One of the biggest finds during her travels was a gold gilt mirror that she found in a junk shop in Istanbul and later saw the same mirrors on the walls of a palace in Damascus. “I love all that import/export Hatcher broken china; I have a piece of that I love. One of my favorite pieces of furniture I found is like a Louis XVI black lacquer desk that I bought at an antique fair in Paris. It wasn't a find in the sense that it was a deal, it was that I'd always looked for a black lacquer desk and I found that.”
As far as personal style, she loves classic French and English antiques to anchor a room, along with traditional shaped upholstery. Also, she always layers with elements of Orientalist influence and pieces from exotic travels. “I love chinoiserie, I love black lacquer, I love sort of tribal embroideries and Indian block prints. I love mixing all that, but because you have the anchor of the classic antiques and traditional upholstery, it never looks like it's a souk or it's ethnic, it just gives an interesting layer to something and it's never staid or boring.”
Lisa's line of textiles began over 12 years ago with her first trip to India, a locale she returns to frequently. “My first trip to India, I was absolutely speechless, breathless, everything, at all the fantastic colors and the color combinations that I'd never seen together, the patterns, the florals, the paisleys―all the things I'd always liked― just on steroids everywhere I went.”
After studying it and traveling the country more, visiting block printers, museums, villages and dyers, looking for inspiration for her own designs, she realized much of what she was witnessing originally came from Persia, current day Iran. “And so many of the motifs are centered around the garden…slightly feminine, though sometimes the flower will be geometric as opposed to romantic, that's really the basis of my textiles.”
Lisa enjoys the never-ending journey and research, and just when she decides she's completed her last development for a while, she can't help herself and produces three more. Instagram is a big tool for her, and through it she's met designers and dealers all over the world, she says. “To me, there's nothing like it; it's just the best.”
Designers: “Don't Worry”
My biggest mistakes lead to my biggest lessons.
Through the years, she says her biggest mistakes also became her biggest lessons. For example, she spent months at a time in India trying to print textiles, but couldn't get the quality control, timing and reliability needed. However, her eventual success was the result of all the frustration and mistakes. Just don't worry, she advises new designers.
“No matter how long it takes, no matter how many mistakes you make, if you're constantly evolving, don't worry about it. You don't even realize what you're learning in the process because it's not an overnight thing. It's an artistic thing; the more you experiment, the more trial and error and the more mistakes you make, the more you've learned.”