Tony
Duquette

Tony Duquette was Hollywood’s great fantasist — artist, decorator, costume designer, and jeweler who spent six decades building a world of extreme beauty from unexpected materials: seashells and semiprecious stones, coral and colored glass, gilt bronze and beetle wings. He made not only jewelry but objets and sculpture — beauty for the body and the room alike. His maxim was unapologetic: ‘More is more, and less is a bore.’ Nobody who has seen the work disagrees.

Duquette dressed Doris Duke and the Duchess of Windsor; his work appeared in Vogue under Diana Vreeland, and his collectors today still include figures like Sharon Stone. The pieces are theatrical in the best sense — not costume, but costume’s magnificent older sibling, made in precious materials by hands that never stopped imagining. He was the first American artist granted a solo exhibition at the Louvre. Today the house is continued by his protégé Hutton Wilkinson, who maintains the archive and works with the same extravagant commitment to beauty for its own sake.

There is no better place in the country to encounter Tony Duquette’s world than here — Cayen carries the largest selection of his work in the United States, the source design editors at titles like Veranda and Town & Country turn to when they feature his pieces. Hutton Wilkinson, who carries the house forward, visits the salon each summer, bringing new work, archival knowledge, and the stories behind the objects from the man who knows them best. We have spent years building that.