Interior designer Dennis Duffy appeared on the Boston design
scene some 13 years ago, but it seems like he’s been a part of the local fabric
forever. He moved his eponymous firm to the South End’s SoWa district about
three and half years ago and opened his D Scale furniture store, featuring his
own designs, there in November 2007. Duffy has done a number of notable
projects in the region, including the interior at Rocca, his South End
neighbor. Duffy has a reputation for gracefully handling even the most demanding
clients, so we wondered, where does he find his inspiration? It turns out that
ever since he read The Prophet while in junior high, he’s been
inspired by imagery of wings. So we decided to try Duffy’s
patience and talk to him about wings and the state of the world of design. Of
course, he kept his cool throughout.
So the imagery of wings is a spiritual thing, but not a
religious thing? That’s correct. It has two meanings for me. First,
I’m not a Catholic; I was raised as one, but I’m not a practicing Catholic. But
I do believe in spirituality. I believe there are guides and forces that help
you through things. We all have those beings that help us. It’s just a question
of how to call upon them. The wings for me have that connotation. It’s
evocative of support. The image of wings to me is “Yes, I can.”
What kinds of winged things have you collected over the
years? I keep a diary I got in Venice. It’s leather-bound and it has
a figure of angel wings on the front. I wear a ring from Diesel that is a circle
of wings. It might be a T-shirt. Once I found in an antique market a candy dish
in the shape of a wing.
Back to the world of design. Is there a Boston aesthetic?
When I got here 13 years ago, we were still considered to be a traditional
design community. Celeste Cooper was considered to be innovative and even
scared people — yes, with her white walls.... Boston has changed, however. It’s
not nearly as formal as it was 10 or 15 years ago. It’s very relaxed. So it’s a
relaxed aesthetic. It’s not cheap or unfinished, but it’s now relaxed.
There’s a lot of talk about people cutting back when it
comes to things like home repairs and upgrades, except for emergencies. Is the
interior-design biz going the way of daily newspapers and the
airlines? Oh, my yes. Completely going the way of those industries
facing their greatest crisis of their existence. I’ve been very honest about
telling people I had not had a new project for about a year. Just last week we
got a new project going. A lot of commercial projects we were working on just
got put on hold.... I used to have an office of seven people. Now it’s two.
Are there bargains to be had? Do we have to give up on
design? There are bargains and people are becoming more informed
through the internet, and I think that the economic downturn will provide the
impetus for the professionals to change how they do business and get away from
the old-style gatekeeper way of doing things.
Does that mean the world is going to be an unattractive
mess? No, it doesn’t have to be an uglier place. What I think can
happen is that clients will have more knowledge and designer professionals will
be stronger. I hope it leads to more trust between design professionals and
their clients. This doesn’t always make me popular with some, but the era of
the rarified design temples is gone. It’s going to be a better design world.
