Q + A: Dealer Turned Designer Beth Webb Talks Art and How Beauty Will Save the World

Interior designer Beth Webb is a master in creating richly layered spaces that are beautifully proportioned, impossibly elegant and always inviting.  Her designs, which often incorporate fine art and one of a kind antiques, are largely informed by her extensive background in the arts.  She studied at Sotheby’s London, spent time immersed in the New York art world with Hirschl and Adler Galleries and was a private art dealer before transitioning to interior design.

Webb, who founded Beth Webb Interiors in Atlanta over twenty years ago, has been the recipient of numerous accolades, including the 2015 Southeastern Designer of the Year Award given by the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center and the 2015 Bath of the Year Award by Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles.  Webb’s interiors have been featured in an array of regional and national publications, including Veranda, House Beautiful, Traditional Home and Milieu.  She has served as a member on the board of the Florence Academy of Art, a school dedicated to the training of young artists in classical methods of drawing, painting, and sculpture, for over twenty years.  Webb is also an active member of the Leaders of Design Council and the Design Leadership Network.  Both the LDC and the DLN operate as exclusive educational organizations for designers, architects, landscape architects and other industry leaders and with a mission statement to improve the welfare of the design industry as a whole.

We caught up with Webb to discuss designers, past and present, who inspire her, her number one rule for selecting art, and much more.

InCollect: Who are some of your favorite designers?

Beth Webb: I’ve always loved David Hicks and Elsie de Wolfe.  What I love about Elsie is that she started at forty and was completely untrained, which sort of speaks to my story.  I started late and did not initially set out to do what I am doing.  I admire that Elsie rebelled against the Victorian norm and pioneered interior decorating as a profession.  There’s a great quote from Elsie – she called herself a “rebel in an ugly world.”  She diligently sought to lighten and glamorize the interiors of her day.

As far as designers working today, I just had the great fortune of working alongside Nina Campbell in Los Angeles at the Greystone Mansion for Maison de Luxe.  She is so, so brilliant intellectually – a quality I admire in Charlotte Moss as well.  I’m so in awe of their endless intellectual curiosity.  Stylistically, I love Stephen Sills, his background was also in fine art and antiques.  Stephen’s interiors are so highly curated, and infused with extraordinary objects and art, as is the case with both Charlotte and Nina.  What I admire most about designers like Sills, Vervoordt or Jean-Louis Denoit is their passion for extraordinarily fine, curated objects.

InCollect: What is your favorite room to design?

BW: I really don’t have a favorite.  I can get just as excited about designing a laundry room as I can a library or dining room.  It’s all about the challenge.  I heard Oscar de la Renta speak in New York, before he died, and he said that before every collection, he is full of self-doubt because he wonders if he can do it all over again.  I think we all have that in us.  I approach each project with my client in mind and listen very carefully to what they want, what they need, and how they live.  Listening is a true art, I always tell my clients, it’s your house -- I’m not the one who has to live there.  I want each project to be warm, welcoming and everything the client wants it to be.  It needs to reflect who they are, not who I am.

InCollect: Fine art has played a major role in your career – you studied at Sotheby’s in London, worked at Hirschl & Adler in New York and spent some time as a private dealer. When did you realize you wanted to transition to interior design?

BW: It happened completely by accident.  I was having a dinner party one night and a friend who had recently purchased a house built in 1892 for their foundation was looking for a designer.  He told me how much he loved our house and asked if I would take on his project.  I took the job with no prior experience and went from the frying pan into the fire.  It was an exercise in experiential education, which goes back to my point about Elsie de Wolfe.  I think that my innate love of beauty played a pivotal role in how my sensibilities as a designer were formed.

InCollect: How did your experiences in the art world influence your work as an interior designer?

BW: I tell aspiring designers this all the time -- you learn by looking.  During my time at Sotheby’s, our classrooms were the great English country houses and the Victoria and Albert Museum.  We would crawl under furniture, look at the joinery and examine carefully how things were made.  It’s about looking, looking and looking again.  It’s subliminal and it is how you learn.  Looking informs everything from your sense of scale to your color palette.

InCollect: What are your favorite styles, movements, etc. when it comes to art?

BW: There are so many.  I have such an appreciation for all kinds of art, whether it be Contemporary, pre-Columbian, or Impressionistic -- art is art.  My specialty was 19th and early 20th century American art, which started because one of my mother’s friends was Andrew and Jamie Wyeth’s art dealer.  I also grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee where there were some major 19th and early 20th century American art collections.  It’s something I grew up with and loved because I was exposed to it as a child -- we were actually taught art history in kindergarten.

InCollect: What are your top tips for incorporating fine art into an interior?

BW: I’ve helped a lot of clients with their collections and I always say that a work needs to speak to you on a visceral level.  Even offering art as a dealer, you cannot really sell anyone art – it has to move you.  It has to evoke passion.  Art has to be something that speaks to you.

When I am putting together art in a room, I don’t like the room to have, for instance, all oils.  I like to mix mediums.  If I’m putting together a living room, I look at the all of the pieces I want to incorporate, which could include a mix of works on paper, oils, wax encaustic pieces, sculpture, fine ceramics, or glass.  The mix is what makes it interesting.  I also say that “good art should not match your sofa.”  If art is good, it can stand on its own.  Sometimes, clients will ask if a work is too small for a space, but it all depends on the power of the piece.  Often, even a small work can hold an entire wall--just look at Vermeer.

InCollect: What are the biggest challenges you face as an interior designer? What are the greatest rewards?

BW: One of the challenges is educating this new wave of clientele – the younger, internet savvy clients.  They often tell me that they can pick out pieces, but they are unable put it all together, which is why we, as interior designers, still have jobs.  Educating the client and informing them as to what it takes to do what we do—including the millions of moving parts involved—is a challenge.  An even bigger hurdle is we live in a world of immediate gratification -- I am often reminding clients that good things are worth the wait.

The biggest reward, for me, is in the moments right after installation, when the client walks in and sees their home for the first time and we enjoy a glass of celebratory wine together.  It’s all about making a happy home and creating comfortable, warm, inviting interiors.  I also love when my clients have parties in their homes, you get the chance to see and feel how the house really works when their family and friends are there.  There is so much gratification from that, it is often the thing that keeps me going.

InCollect: What is something our readers might not know about you?

BW: I’ve always been passionate about travel – that is something that was instilled in me by my grandparents.  I’ve created whole businesses to support my travel addiction.  My new guilty pleasure is photography.  I’m completely addicted to my iPhone camera.  Not in the selfie sort of way, but in the “beauty will save the world” kind of way.  I’ve even started a hashtag on my Instagram for it.  Beauty every day in anyone’s life is affirming.

A goal of mine is to live in Paris.  It’s something I want to do before I die, that or Tuscany.  I love to cook, I love to entertain and I love a good dinner party.  It’s therapeutic for me.  There is a rhythm and a therapeutic quality to cooking.  I think it’s the ultimate luxury to have the time to prepare a meal for others.  If I am invited to someone’s house for a dinner party, I consider that the greatest gift.

Click here to view more inviting interiors by Beth Webb.