Designer Insight

October 25, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

I hope that the Olympics "show" reminded the world how contemporary and fashion-forward the ancient Chinese culture is. Living in Texas, I’ve experienced, quite often, a southern city’s tendency to resist Asian influenced design. Unlike the east and west coasts of the U.S. where Asian style has always been included in decor, southern states tend to be less interested. I hope that the Olympics have broadened the view for those who think the Chinese only brought red lacquer and paper lanterns to the design world. My personal favorites for the U.S. consumer: pure white ginger jars grouped in various sizes, Tang pottery, antique ancestral chairs with custom box cushions, celadon vessels and architectural fragments on custom made metal and acrylic art stands. --Greg O'Neal

July 12, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Describe your idea or memory of the perfect summer place. Has anything about that special place in time provided inspiration for your work?

I found my summer ideal three years ago. Imagine: mountains covered in evergreens, the sound of trickling creeks and croaking frogs, and nothing but nature all around you. Here my partner and I built our second home: a contemporary, raw cedar-encrusted eco-dwelling on stilts, with three bedrooms to the rear of the house and in the front, nirvana.  Nirvana for me at least, which consists of a totally open floor plan that encompasses our living, dining and kitchen areas, the heart of our home. Through a three story glass exterior wall, I can see the raw land and 60+ foot pine trees from any room in the house. I never knew how much inspiration one could attain from a place so still, so quite and so green. After endless mar...Read More

May 25, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

The last time you shopped for home decor item(s) for your home, what did you buy? Where did you buy it? And what attracted you to that particular shop?

greg o'neal: my most recent "retail purchase" seemed to be more like a scavenger hunt, as it literally occurred days before the April High Point Market and prior to the launch of my newest furniture collections for Revco International. the space that i envisioned and created was all tonalities of gray, from lightest - darkest with only two contrasting pop colo

January 11, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Please! Please! Please! Let at least one of my predictions come true for 2008, because the 2007 American home furnishings market-place was really conservative and thus really boring (to me!). My picks for 2008:

(1) “Grandma with a twist,” a category that merges modern day design and technology with nostalgic, grandmotherly icons of days gone by – chromed cuckoo clocks, reinvented lace motifs in slick black vinyl, turned chair spindles morphed into edgy contemporary furniture pieces.

(2) ...Read More

November 16, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

It is so very hard for me to label anything "the best", just because, "the best" either get: 1) better, or 2) knocked off. So I would like to call the following my "best admirations"

DESIGNER: Ian Schrager, Gramercy Park Hotel. Why? Not because of the Hip-factor or the Hype-factor, but because of Schrager himself. He has been part of a design "establishment" for so long and a designer who has built-in design"expectation" from critics and consumers,yet, he had the...Read More