In the opening pages of Alidad's first book, The Timeless Home, the London-based interior designer, lauded for his gauche-less brand of heady layering and moneyed internationality, is described as "a collector and interpreter of ideas," and, yes, Alidad's team of ghost writers and photographers spend the next 250 pages proving that the Iran-born, lover of stamped leather and "antique silver-threaded embroidered textile," who was schooled in the vicissitudes of fine furnishings at Sotheby's auction house, is nothing if not a well-trained mixologist of histories and pattern.
"My heart and soul goes into working with my clients and to provide them with the space they dream of through my interpretation," the designer, who, in his own apartment, has even managed to make beige look glam and global, writes by email. In the same note, he references "finding and re-instating original colors" of an historic English country house, commissioning a replica of "beautiful Lyons brocade damask ... made in the early 19th century," and "working on the historically listed buildings" in Paris, underlining the point that his work is an amble through a traveller's dreamland; his book a concentrated dose of hand-printed papers, hand-painted portraits, Japanese Imari ceramic plates, and verre églomisé. Actually, that's just one dining room. Flip through, below.
↑ For the hall and dining area of this Queen Anne London house, Alidad paneled the teal walls with inlaid portraits of a "fictitious Ottoman Sultan," designed "for the sheer beauty and fun of color and light reflection." Presiding over the golden room is a 17th-century portrait (note the collar) hung amid an 18th-century textile, creating "an immediate sense of historical intrigue and authenticity even though these rooms were created from scratch in 1999," Alidad explains.
↑ This antechamber was inspired by an Ottoman yalis, or the elaborate wooden villas first built by Istanbul bigwigs of the 1600s. The idea was to devise a warm and moody space for after-dinner tea and coffee, calling on "a combination of intricate but highly geometric Islamic patterns," velvet banquettes, and cornice and ceilings "finished with hand-printed papers."
↑ In the conservatory of a Lebanese house, Alidad plated walls in faux Iznik tiles (the real ones were made in a town in western Anatolia from the late 1400s to the late 1600s) and placed figs in chalices. It also "has the owner's tughra, or insignia, carved and gilded" into the space.
↑ Meant to "express both an austere masculine and light-hearted feminine quality," this hallway was given ivory, gold, and blue-black stripes to punch up the delicacy of the Mashrabiya grillwork on the windows. The hibiscus-colored settee is "totally modern," but finished with chunky traces of gold (tassels! studs!) to keep it from dissolving into the world of marble banding and Turkish mosque lamps.
↑ "Of all the wall installations I have done, this dining room scheme has proved to be the most rewarding," Alided writes. Japanese Imari plates sit against hand-printed panels and are sided-saddled by over-painted antique glass. In the middle of it, a contemporary studded dining chair upholstered in "specially woven damask and velvet."
· Inside Renowned Decorator Alidad's London Apartment [Curbed National]
· All On the Books posts [Curbed National]