With over 20 years of experience collaborating with architects, designers, contractors and clients, Beth’s creative approach to design is consistent from programming through construction, to produce an interior environment that not only meets the budget and schedule but also creates an impactful interior experience.
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Beth Cowan: The thing we rely most on our suppliers for is support. We don’t like to be sold, we know the products, but we want them to be part of the team, particularly when you do high end residential and the size that we do. We’ve got 60 suppliers on a team, on a build, and I need to know that I can call somebody up and just throw at them what I need.
I’ve known Minotti for years and years and years and if you look back through all of my student work at every presentation there’s a Minotti image in there because it’s just a good generator for a clean contemporary look, for casual luxury. They’ve always got great ideas, there’s a timelessness to it that we all strive for.
And particularly from an architectural background, interiors are very difficult for architects to get their heads around. It’s very difficult for them to say, let’s talk about cushions now. Very hard for them. But being able to go into a Minotti show or show people Minotti images, it opens up that dialogue with architects and makes them a lot more comfortable.
It varies. Showing somebody something in print is one thing, they either like it or they don’t. If I can get them to the showroom or I can get them anywhere, just into a piece of furniture, that’s always a different reaction.
We generally tend to use Minotti in almost all of our projects. I’ve used it for a lovely couple who are, I think they’re 88, both of them, and they wanted a very elegant house, a very London house. They’ve always had very traditional houses and we put Minotti in there because it’s a good link between tradition and contemporary.
They weren’t really ready for full on contemporary, very slick Italian, they weren’t ready for that, but Minotti bridges that gap for them, which worked really well.
They’re brilliant. I’ve never had a problem with them. If there is a problem, they just sort it, which is great. Again, when you’ve got a big job, and you’re dressing 30,000 square feet, you don’t have time to deal with all the little issues. And the girls in the London showroom are brilliant, they are brilliant, they sort everything.
They’re always anticipating what I need, they’re calling me constantly, “Hi, do you remember this. Hi, do you remember that?” It’s fantastic. It is like having another team member and sometimes you just need that.
Well, the garden room that we had done, I think it was two years ago, all the furniture in the garden room is Minotti. And that has been so popular, everyone wants that. Every comment we get, they start with the architecture and they always end up with the sofas, everyone wants to know where we got them.
We know we got it right, we know we got it spot on. It might not be your lifestyle, but everyone reacts to that.
It is, because outdoor is such a hard thing to find, either it looks like it belongs by a pool or it looks like it belongs in a mall food court.
There’s very little in between so having a company like Minotti, train their eye to it and say, “No, we can do better,” it’s fantastic. The number of times I get clients saying, “I’ve got a pool, I don’t want it to look like a pool.” Okay, I don’t know how to do that, but Minotti’s really made it much easier for us.
Younger clients, especially 30, 40, 50 year olds love the look because it’s clean and it’s calming and they have very chaotic lives so they respond really well to those very calm, pastoral scenes that Minotti is so famous for producing.
Minotti’s one of the ones that I can just bring in every time. I’ve used them in the US, I’ve used them in Ireland, I’ve used them here, I’ve used them everywhere I go because they’re just universal.
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