Two Fine Artists . . . Working Together

Matthew Patrick Smyth lives in the rarefied world of high interior design where rooms often say more about the designer than the clients. You know a Buatta or Donghia room when you see it. Yet Smyth’s style — restrained, unpretentious, more classical than baroque, filled with small details rather than grand statements — gives clients spaces to live as they want, not as he wants. In his first book, “Living Traditions,” some of Smyth’s favorite rooms — including his own in New York City, Paris and Sharon — are captured in beautifully elegant photography by Lakeville resident John Gruen and reproduced in gorgeous color by Monacelli Press. Smyth’s narrative, like his design ethos, is low-keyed, restrained. He tells us enough and then moves on: Early life, “accidental” decision to attend design school, apprenticeship with the fabled David Easton, his own “rules” of design (often broken) and color (a lifelong aversion to camel) are dispatched efficiently. And his gratitude to teachers, mentors, clients and friends is sincere and touching. Gruen’s photography is a revelation, as carefully composed as Smyth’s rooms. Light is a design element for both men — Smyth always considers the time of day when a room will be used most — and light is almost palpable in many of Gruen’s digital images. His focus is straightforward, concerned with bringing rooms to life, something he learned from photographing fashion for magazines and catalogs before turning to interiors. There is a European quality to his work (he spent two years in Milan), as well as an eye for the commercial (Gruen worked for three years at The Bon Marché in Seattle, then freelanced for Eddie Bauer). Gruen first worked with Smyth to photograph the designer’s renovated interiors at the White Hart Inn. They worked together so easily and well that Smyth included Gruen among four photographers he submitted to Monacelli, which selected Gruen. Together Smyth and Gruen have produced an incisive book about the process of interior design. Smyth, an avid cinephile, compares his job to that of a movie director drawing the best work from artisans and craftspeople, fabric houses and furniture sources. Gruen, for his part, lets the designer’s work glow in elegant, telling shots, rather like movie stills. This is one coffee table book you can both enjoy and learn from. Matthew Patrick Smyth and John Gruen will sign their book at Salisbury’s Johnnycake Books, 12 Academy St., on Saturday, April 30, from 5 to 7 p.m.