DENNING & FOURCADE
SPECIALISTS
A special section of the February 8 Doyle at Home auction showcases furniture, decorations and art from a Fifth Avenue home decorated by Denning & Fourcade. For forty-five years, from 1960 until 2005, the design partnership of Denning & Fourcade created luxurious interiors for such influential tastemakers as Oscar de la Renta and Carolyne Roehm. The pair’s signature style, an extravagant marriage of le goût Rothschild with its rich brocades and lavish passementerie and English floral chintz in a dizzying color palette, was uniquely their own. Denning & Fourcade’s clients included Lazard Frères chairman Michel David-Weill and his wife Hélène, Lillian and Ogden Phipps, Francoise and Oscar de la Renta, Bolivian tin magnate Antenor Patiño, Fiat heiress Susanna Agnelli, Henry Kissinger, Diana Ross, Jean Vanderbilt and Jayne Wrightsman. In 1985, Denning and Fourcade completed their best known project, the Park Avenue duplex of fashion designer Carolyne Roehm and her then-husband, financier Henry Kravis. The interiors of this luxurious residence served as inspiration for the film version of Tom Wolfe’s novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Denning and Fourcade redefined luxurious interiors with their unique interpretation of Belle Epoque opulence. Extravagance in color, pattern and texture informed every design decision, from furniture and decorations to wallcoverings and upholstery. Chairs and sofas weren’t simply upholstered, they were couture creations of billowing tufts and pleats executed in richly patterned fabrics fastened with decorative tacks in elaborate patterns or trimmed in deep bullion fringe. The rich passementerie of the draperies recalled the flamboyant costumes of a grand demimondaine of the fin de siècle. Every room glowed with flattering rosy light emanating from the pair’s trademark lamp shades, fantasies in silk pleats, elaborate braiding and multicolor fringe. No detail was deemed too small, no decision deemed too minor; the whole was a marvelous sum of myriad unique parts, each skillfully selected by two remarkable designers. Property from a Fifth Avenue home decorated by Denning & Fourcade comprises lots 150 through 218.