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We here at Garden Design have an enduring enthrallment with Dawnridge , the legendary Beverly Hills , California , abode of Tony Duquette ( 1914 - 1999 ) , one of the twentieth 100 ’s most prolific and influential designer . We asked contributing editor Paul O’Donnell to talk to its present owner , Hutton Wilkinson , longtime business partner and ally of Duquette . Wilkinson not only maintain the house and garden but managed to transform the estate into an ever - acquire laboratory of ideas . Here , Wilkinson reminisces about his kinship with Duquette and his continue vision for the home and its magnificent garden .
A Vietnamese wedding sauceboat painted in Tony Duquette ’s signature tune colors of coral and turquoise float on a koi - stocked pond , some specimens of which are 3 foot longsighted . The three - condescending marquee at the far right is covered with ornate carved screens from India . picture by : Dominique Vorillon .
I start working with Tony Duquette when I was still a adolescent . I first saw Dawnridge , which is now my home , sometime in brief later . The body politic then was still covered in sage brush and native scrub with pine trees and eucalypt reaching to the upper narrative . Tony and his married woman , Elizabeth , make the house in 1949 but moved to Paris shortly afterward , so they had n’t done much with it . Their neighbors filled in the canon to build their tennis courts and swimming pond , but Tony and Liz hold on the topography as it was . Then , not long after I choke to work for Tony , the house next threshold to Dawnridge burned down and he and Liz bought the land . That ’s when we began moving the jade trees and other succulent that remain in the garden today from his ranch in Malibu .
The one - acre estate of Dawnridge is built on a serial of bench , and this horizon reveals the one situated at midlevel . Among its most spectacular element are the pagoda social structure with a imaginary onion dome , elaborated statuary fashion from iron and wire , and oil drums cut into sculptural forms . Photo by : Dominique Vorillon .
Tony was not a terribly need plantsman . He had no interest in the one pure rose . Instead , he like to use masses of one plant life to double pattern . For one of his node ’s party , he once flew in every uncommitted anthurium industrial plant in Hawaii and manufacture a 20 - fundament tree out of them . The plants we brought over from Malibu were local species that in the beginning grew in the Chavez Ravine , which became the site of Dodger Stadium in the mid-1950s . The native vegetation was dig up for the bowl ’s foundation , and Tony move to the worksite for a few days running , gathered all the plants they discarded and adulterate them into his truck .
Today that glide slope of his would be called sustainable , and Tony would be praise as a paladin of the endemic . The trueness is that Tony was a recycler before anybody thought to set about design that way . Tony made his name in Hollywood in the ’ XL and ’ 50s as a set interior decorator and costumer and as a decorator who composed outrage , idiosyncratic inside . In the rest home he decorated for his friends and client he used what was at hand , turning plaster bandage - off materials into art — and he built the garden at Dawnridge the same way . Long function now is a sort of frieze he put on one of the follies that was made from skateboards he ’d acquire from a society that went out of business . The virtue in it was not really environmentalism but , rather , Tony ’s inventiveness and restlessness . It was Tony being Tony .
The treehouse marquee is filled with classic Duquette — his Palmer chairs cover in a malachite print , plant life stands made from stamp clamshell , and a metallic element chandelier Duquette designed for Elizabeth Arden . Photo by : Dominique Vorillon .
The wonderful affair about working with native plant is that they farm promptly without a quite a little of concern . You just stick them in the primer coat and they go . What Tony liked about them was all their dissimilar shades of green . He paint his garden with plants .
What really makes the garden a piece of work by Tony , though , are the social system . Tony loved pavilions , which I think come from his love for birdcage — not caged birds , but the actual cages . He would have loved to endure in one with a metal ceiling adorned with little tassels .
Duquette came by his nickname , Tony Abalone , honestly . Throughout the garden , ear-shell shell look as decor . Here a duo of dagger is compensate in crushed abalone , framing a chandelier centered with a glittering disco ballock . succulent , cactus , agapanthus , yucca , and true pine trees fill the garden . exposure by : Dominique Vorillon .
There ’s a treehouse with a pear-shaped tabular array inside that is typical of Tony ’s flair and the whole spirit of the garden ’s construction . Its dome came from the filmThe Gazebo , a black comedy from 1959 that starred Glenn Ford , while the alloy wall panels , with their energetic pattern of circles , are made from the temporary landing strips used in World War II . In the same path , the prop ’s other minuscule houses , all with an Eastern tactile sensation akin to pocket-size pagodas , are compendium of material — old window from a Taiwanese planetary house , part of Victorian house , a roof from Thailand , a cast resin piece of a picture show lot . They are well - put - together , but they are almost sculpture more than building .
Tony took parties very seriously . The garden would be transform when he entertained — he lit up every tree and bush . Everything had to be bring in from storage warehouse ; he ’d give ear chandeliers and order peculiar tablecloths . There was unremarkably some kind of alien entertainment — Balinese or gypsy dancing dancers , for instance . The waiters had to be in costume .
Also situated on the grounds of the ranch is an indoor / outdoor room cover in patinated Sir Henry Wood panel from Thailand . Within is a carven statue depicting the phoenix rear from the flames and flank by two Balinese figures supporting wanderer plant on their head . Photo by : Dominique Vorillon .
You ’ll often find out people say “ over the top ” when they spill about Tony ’s elan because of his repeating of approach pattern and utilisation of strong colour . Any description of those parties seems to prove the percentage point . But his design actually demanded a hatful of control . If you look at one of his pendant , it ’s a simple piece of telegram with some twigs bent into it . Everything is greater than the sum of its parts . So the consequence is not overwhelming but intriguing .
Tony take me on as his business mate because we shared that aesthetic . I was more organised and earnest than he was , perhaps , but from the start we were on the same plane . I bought the house to economise it but also to preserve the property as a living place . So many historic place in Los Angeles finger dead . We have something like 1,000 pots spread out around the attribute , and we keep them planted and we move them around . I keep Pisces and turtle in the pool . And I constantly give parties .
In plus to Dawnridge , Duquette and his married woman , Elizabeth , buy this 100 - acre ranch in Malibu , California , in the 1950s . It is prolific again following a fire in 1993 . The belongings takes in outstanding open vista of the Santa Monica Mountains , specially Boney Mountain , on the slopes of which the twosome ’s ashes were spread . A pavilion from the 1959 filmThe Gazebooccupies a mound covered with low - sustentation , drought - kind cactus , yucca , and succulent . Photo by : Dominique Vorillon .
Tony is a design picture . He was the adept at what he did . His archives should be saved and his memory preserved , but it ’s just as important that this living , farm invention of his be allowed to thrive .
