Famous Interior Designers Series - Emilio Terry
Cuban-born Emilio Terry who was well-known for introducing the architectural style called the ‘Louis VIII style’, was an interior designer, artist, landcape artist, and architect. His Louis XVII style was both baroque and classical. Terry was a developer of furniture, objet’s d’art and tapestries. He refined proportion and line, and did interior design for châteaux and apartments and also designed gardens and houses. He was well recognized as the ‘he’ of tastemaker Carlos de Beistegui’s country house called Château de Groussay. Terry’s work achieved a one-of-a-kind synthesis of romanticism, classicism and surrealism.
Jose Emilio Terry y Dorticos (Emilio Terry) was born in 1890 into a family of Hispano-Irish origin. The family earned their fortune through sugar plantations. For a period of three decades, up to the conclusion of World War II, Emilio Terry’s life was split between Havana and Paris. He owned a Paris apartment and a villa. In addition, in 1914, he acquired Bone de Castellane’s Paris residence. In June 1934, Terry purchased the renowned château de Rochecotte from Stanislas – his brother-in-law.
Effect meant everything to Terry. For him, a “room without a cornice” was like “a man without a collar”. Terry worked for Rainier III of Monaco to embellish an apartment meant for Princess Grace. He also worked for the Beauvau-Craon family, changing the design of the gardens surrounding their château d'Haroué. In the 1940s, he designed a library for Marie Blanche – the then Princess of Polignac.
An important interior design project which Terry took up in the 1950s was for the 1825-built Château de Groussay. This château had been acquired by Charles de Beistegui - a millionaire, in 1939. At the château, Terry made use of blue and white tiles to cover ceilings, floors and walls. He designed a Turkish tent, created out of painted metal and similar to a tent in Sweden’s Drottningholm Palace. Terry’s interior design of a library in the château includes many tonalities and textures. The room conveys the feeling of comfort, wisdom and warmth. Other design tasks which Terry performed for the château included design of a new, English style park; design of furniture; bringing in the styles of the buildings of the 18th century; and development of a theatre for ‘Comédie-Française’ artists. Terry also designed beech garden chairs, painted green, for the Théâtre de Verdure.
The setting for the television broadcast of ‘Plaisir de France’ was the bibliothèque de Groussay. The parc and the château de Groussay appeared in ‘Le Bal du comte’, a film by Marc Allégret. The great interior designer Emilio Terry died in 1969.