Tony Duquette Collection for Jim Thompson

A few weeks ago, we featured the new Orientaliste fabric line by design Richard Smith for Jim Thompson. Now the Jim Thompson company is showcasing the incredible imaginations of designer Hutton Wilkinson. Jim Thompson has invited Wilkinson, owner and creative director of Tony Duquette Inc., to create for them, an exclusive collection of woven and printed textiles for decorative home and commercial installations.

Wilkinson worked in partnership with American design icon Tony Duquette for thirty years before Duquette’s death in 1999. A little background for those that are not too familiar with who Duquette was:

Tony Duquette who as a young man, designed costumes and sets for Fred Astaire musicals at MGM with famed director Vincente Minnelli, was the first American to have a one-man exhibition at the Pavilion de Marsan of the Louvre Museum in Paris.  Duquette went on to design costumes and sets for Opera, Ballet and the theatre, his costumes for the original Broadway production of “Camelot” winning the prestigious Tony Award.  As well as his work for the theatre, Duquette with Wilkinson designed interiors for residential and commercial installations internationally.   Working from their home base in Los Angeles, California the designers worked in San Francisco, Hawaii, New York, Paris, France, Venice, Italy, Salzburg, Austria, Dublin, and Ireland. The team’s designs ranged from furniture to table top, from parties to even jewelry for their international clientele.  Today, one of a kind pieces of Tony Duquette jewelry which Wilkinson continues to create under the international trademark, “Tony Duquette” are coveted by collectors around the world.

Because Tony and his artist wife Elizabeth were friends of Jim Thompson, having visited him many times “at home” in Bangkok and having entertained him in their own atelier in  Los Angeles, Wilkinson was thrilled by the opportunity to collaborate with Jim Thompson on a fabric collection.  Selecting motifs from Duquette’s deep archives, Wilkinson has chosen, “Ermine Tails”, “Malachite” and “Coral Branches” to cast his spell. By our guess, Tony Duquette would have been proud.