Timshell Rivers: A "Fabricator" and Collaborator on the Ace Hotel and Other Top Design Projects

By Jen Smith
April 11, 2011

Breslin

Timshell Rivers generates ideas and develops custom upholstery and custom furniture designs for clients like Roman and Williams, the design firm with whom she collaborated on New York's Ace Hotel and the adjacent Breslin restaurant, pictured here. The vintage wool blankets used to make this curtain were purchased from eBay online auctions. (photos courtesy of the Breslin; bottom photo by Melissa Hom)

Timshell Rivers

Furniture and upholstery designer Timshell Rivers strides into the Ace Hotel on a stormy, cold night. The glamorous former model is all legs, and her oversized fur hat makes her one of the tallest people in the room. She is definitely the one with the biggest smile. Her enthusiastic laugh is as warm and as big as the state of Texas, where she ways born and raised, and in three seconds flat, I learn that her favorite color is pink and she is a hoarder of “kitchen stuff!”

Timshell Rivers is so at home—and happy—in the storied, New York outpost of the Seattle-based hipster hotel, a favorite hangout for creative types, celebrities and those who want to be near them—because she has spent so much time working there. Under the genius direction of architecture and design firm Roman and Williams, customer furniture and uphostery designer Timshell Rivers helped develop the hotel's industrial-meets-antique-y interiors. She also collaborated on the Breslin, the restaurant's intimate, artfully cluttered pub (it's famous for its lamb burgers) that attracts a similar crowd.

Rivers, whose company, Timshell Rivers Studio, generates ideas and develops custom fabrics, draperies, cushions and designs custom furniture, works with an impressive clientele that includes interior designers Thom Filicia and Tony Chi. But the Ace remains close to her heart because it's vibe is so similar to her own—one she describes as “Brideshead Revisited gone to Texas—but a little cleaner."

Ace Hotel

guest rooms at the Ace Hotel.

“When I began working on the project with the designers of the hotel, I felt as if I was walking into another room of my own apartment! It’s very rare and a nice surprise when my personal aesthetic mirrors one my clients,” she tells me. “We discovered we like the same interiors mix—high-end, beautiful furniture personalized with found treasures, like eclectic artwork, porcelain figurines and vases, pottery, taxidermy and other flea market finds. And we love eBay!”

Timshell Rivers describes her custom design work with Roman and Williams, as well as with her other clients, as a "fabricator": “What I do now is different from what I did previously as a decorator," she says. "An interior decorator is responsible for the final outcome of the project. What I do is take some of [my clients'] ideas one step further and make them a practical reality. We can be talking about a chair—the shape of it, the upholstery, the cushions… and I get to make the chair!”

Timshell Rivers: Work and Collaborations

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Rivers worked with design firm Open Shop on the drapery and upholstery for this space in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood.
The SoHo space.
As interior space designed by Rivers.
Rivers was commissioned by interior designer Tony Chi to help develop the draperies for the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC.
The Park Hyatt in Washington, DC.
Rivers was commissioned by architectue and design firm Own Entity to help work on these interiors.
Photo Credit: Own Entity
Interiors in collaboration with Own Entity..
Photo Credit: Own Entity

For the Ace, completing custom interior design ideas for Roman and Williams meant developing 50 sofas, 4000 yards of custom fabrics, and the 65 Brazilian sheepskins that are on those sofas for the hotel's 260 guest rooms. “The rooms are all similar," says Rivers. "The headboards are simply slip-covered in army green duck cloth; the pillows are made from the same material. No drapes—on this project, shutters were chosen for the windows.” Roman and Williams purchased a mid-century Italian sofa from Christie’s, which they used as inspiration for the couches in the rooms. What is so unique about them is that they can be turned into beds by folding down the arms and the back. “When the arms alone are down, they make a little desk," Rivers explains. “We had them re- upholstered in shoe sole grade leather—they’re extra thick—so thick you can rest a drink on them."

For the Breslin, the custom upholstery and furniture designer helped add similarly clever design elements: The drapes, made of vintage wool blankets, have hidden snaps along a secret hem and matching sockets that run up along the side of the booths. Snap them together and close the curtains and you can have your own private room. “See these vintage Hudson point blankets?" Rivers says. "Rowan and Williams bought them from eBay!”

Timshell Rivers

Timshell Rivers is full of eBay buying tips. “eBay is a good source for finding amazing fabrics—look for remnants and left-over yardage or, like Roman and Williams, rethink tablecloths or blankets! Just make sure that if you have a piece in mind you are wanting to redo, that the amount of fabric you buy is enough." She loves huge colorful prints along with prints that are soft and feminine.

"I also look [on eBay] for small upholstery pieces," she continues. Her advice for do-it-yourself-ers? Pay attention to shape and keep it cheap! “If the lines are there, you can quite economically re-upholster and have a very high-end looking piece. Ladies' chairs and slipper chairs are some of my favorites. My small apartment is crammed with them, some I bought for as low as $35.00 and dressed them up with some cool bright textiles. [Do that and] suddenly you have something awesome!”

“For me, shopping on eBay is an obsession. It is, after all, the global flea market!”

And what's up next for custom designer Timshell Rivers? Later this spring, she is launching a website to showcase her various design projects and to feature a soon-to-be-revealed new fabric collection of upscale white linens, in different weights, all made in a 250 year old Irish mill. For now you can “friend” Timshell Rivers Studio on Facebook and check out some of her creations.

Here, her eBay wish list.

Roll over items for details

Nicholas Takis Vintage Signed Portraits

(buy it now price, $314.99)

Antique Orange Velvet Club Chair

Vintage Art Deco Geometric Arabesque Diamond Wallpaper

Vintage Mounted Bull Horns

(buy it now price, $499.99)

Taxidermy Animal Klipspringer

(buy it now price, $1,750)

Billy Baldwin Decorates 1973 Interior Design Book

(buy it now price, $59.95)

Antique Nouveau Oil Canvas Portrait

Set of Six Red Leather Chrome Chairs

Vintage Dutch Woolen Wool Blanket

(current bid, $39.99)

Set 12 Antique Turkey Oyster Plates

(buy it now price, $2995)

Vintage Fabric Barkcloth Era Drapes

(buy it now price, $225)

The Cook’s Room, Kitchens of the World

(buy it now price, $24.95)

1. Antique Nouveau Oil Canvas Portrait: “I love portraits,” says Rivers. “I have a few already—some from my family, some I found in the trash and some I purchased... I almost don’t have any wall space left with all the artwork, horns and plates that I have going on! But (sigh) I might have to make room for this gorgeous girl.” (Rivers did, in fact, purchase this exact portrait. She bought it with the intention of telling people it is a painting of her grandmother).

2. Antique Orange Velvet Club Chair: “This is a whole lotta chair!” exclaims Rivers. “It’s very whimsical. I normally opt for subtle expressions, but sometimes a shock of color is a perfect surprise. I see this chair in a very clean-lined, clean-colored room.”

3. Vintage Art Deco Geometric Arabesque Diamond Wallpaper: For Rivers, eBay online auctions are perfect sources for finding remnants of old wallpaper that is worthy of art status. A scrap of it well framed becomes a beautiful piece of art, she notes. She loves huge scale wallpaper and is a big fan of Flavor Paper, which she often hunts for on eBay. “Framing just one sheet in a very large frame will give you a very major art impact for a fraction of the cost of something you would buy in a gallery,” she says.

4. Set of Six Red Leather Chrome Chairs: ‘The legs on these chairs are super sexy! And of course I would redo the upholstery—I’m thinking loden green leather or vinyl with a contrasting cream colored trim.”

5. Vintage Mounted Bull Horns: Rivers collects animal horns and “anything with birds, fish, hunting themes, framed bugs and butterflies... “I have quite a few mounted horns mixed in with some very high-end plates and ceramic figurines, which I arrange in gay Brit hunting lodge fashion on my walls.”

6. Nicholas Takis Vintage Signed Portraits: Rivers adores hats and collects them. She fell in love with these two paintings, declaring them very “Kees Van Dongen –ish" after the artist, one of the Fauves, who often painted society ladies. Rivers would hang these above her bed because nothing would please her more than to “wake up every morning to see these ladies all dressed up and wearing their hats.”

7. Billy Baldwin Decorates 1973 Interior Design Book: "I was fortunate enough to be purchasing for a client at Sotheby’s when the Villa Fiorentina Estate (owned by Mary and Hardy Laurence and designed by Billy Baldwin) went to auction, designed by Billy Baldwin. I not only purchased a few items for my client, but also snagged a wonderful incomplete set of dessert and coffee dishes” Royal Worchester Blue and White parcel gilt, for 150.00, who knew you could get a bargain at Sotheby’s.

8. The Cook’s Room, Kitchens of the World: “I love to cook and entertain, and I love to read cookbooks. For ages I was obsessed with The Cook’s Room, a book featuring beautiful kitchens from all over the world. Sir Terence Conran is one of the contributing editors.”

9. Vintage Fabric Barkcloth Era Drapes: “At first I passed these over, but can’t you see them in a room with the walls painted in Benjamin Moore silver satin paint, crisp white trim, and lots of pale furniture?" says Rivers. "I’d hang the drapes on clean hardware and give them a nice French pleat—think a ladies' boudoir in a castle. “

10. Taxidermy Animal Klipspringer: “I grew up with a moose head in my bedroom,” says Rivers. “I still go fishing and hunting at least once a year. I haven’t changed all that much.”

11. Vintage Dutch Woolen Wool Blanket: “The bright colors of this blanket are so feminine. I would upholster an ottoman or a small ladies' slipper chair with it,” says Rivers.

12. Set 12 Antique Turkey Oyster Plates: Rivers found an extravagant set of six extremely rare oyster plates first commissioned by U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes. Thomas Edison also owned a set. We couldn’t help but ask: “Timshell, would you really plonk down almost $3000 for a set of oyster plates?" Big laugh. “If I won the lotto, I totally would!" she answers. "I love oysters so yes, I can imagine owning these plates! I would eat oysters from them every day!”

(Unless otherwise noted, all interiors and portraits courtesy Timshell Rivers)

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