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"View Slideshow\n\nEveryone knows that intimacy is part and parcel of the interior design process. But the bond between decorator Thomas Britt and his clients Elizabeth and W. Clarke Swanson goes beyond that of a typical working relationship, transcending even the breadth of projects they have, over five decades, undertaken together.\n\nIn New York City in the 1960s, a young Clarke approached the designer\u2014both are Midwesterners, and they had a family connection\u2014to help with his Central Park South apartment. Their initial meeting was over cocktails at Britt's flat, \"a wildly colorful place,\" Clarke recalls. Britt soon created similarly vibrant interiors for the Swanson frozen-foods scion, and a rapport based on mutual regard and tastes was formed. In time, the decorator would serve as a groomsman at the Swansons' wedding, in 1969, and become godfather to the eldest of their three daughters.\n\n\"Friendship is about magic and trust,\" says Elizabeth, who is half Cuban and grew up in New Orleans. \"It's also about memory, as is decorating. We'll have fabric samples flying all over the place, and Tom will remind me that we fought like crazy 40 years ago over a fabric for our Florida conservatory. Passion, memory, and experience are the wow! ingredients for a great decor\u2014and great friendships.\"\n\nThough the Swansons live in California's Napa Valley, where in 1985 they established the award-winning Swanson Vineyards, they wanted a San Francisco pied-\u00E0-terre for urban diversions. What they found was a one-bedroom flat on Nob Hill, steps away from the magnificent French Gothic\u2013style Grace Cathedral. And since France is a favorite destination for the two, \"Clarke said, 'Let's be Parisian in San Francisco,'\" Elizabeth remembers. \"But what we have done with this apartment is much more infectious and high-spirited than we ever could have achieved in Paris.\"\n\nClarke has had considerable say in the design of other family residences over the years, but this time he left the nuts-and-bolts decisionmaking to his wife and Britt, with some oversight. \"I'm an impractical romantic, Clarke is substantial and wise, and Tom is our genius referee\u2014when it comes to decorating, we're the Holy Trinity,\" Elizabeth says with a laugh. \"There were moments when Clarke thought I'd lost my mind with this place. But I had a very chic bright-red patent-leather bag with acid-green grosgrain straps, and I said, 'Look out: This is what I want to do in San Francisco.' Everyone was fully warned.\"\n\nElizabeth explains that she and Britt lacquered the apartment's walls \"like therewas no tomorrow\"\u2014and most of them bear nine high-gloss coats of fire-engine red. After the rooms were finished, she recounts with delight, \"someone walked through the door and said, 'Oh my Lord, did your husband know you were doing this?'\" As inspirations, Elizabeth points to design legends Sister Parish, Billy Baldwin, Elsie de Wolfe, and Syrie Maugham, noting that each and every one was \"a risk taker who couldn't care less what people thought, and I put Tom in that rarefied group.\"\n\nTo be honest the pocket-size pied-\u00E0-terre is absent certain charms\u2014a sunny terrace, say, or compelling views of the city or the sparkling bay. \"Who cares about those other things,\" Elizabeth says dismissively. \"Our friends are absolutely overcome with the romance and sensuality of this place.\"\n\nThe living room is a repository of art and furnishings mostly collected in Europe; many came from the Swansons' former London townhouse, the only one of their homes in which Britt wasn't involved. (It was done in the '80s by Dudley Poplak, who decorated Highgrove House for the Prince of Wales and Winfield House for Walter Annenberg, the former U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James's.) Britt reupholstered the Louis XVI berg\u00E8res, Victorian-style button-tufted chairs, and other curvaceous seating in sapphire, chartreuse, saffron, and a bracing shade of pink that the designer calls \"pungent.\" The array of jewel tones makes a lively impression against the walls of the space and the adjoining library.\n\n\"I simply splashed the colors around,\" comments the decorator, whose vivid palette for this assignment was influenced, he says, by the midcentury American tastemaker George Stacey. Nearly every ceiling in the apartment is sheathed in gleaming gold wallpaper, which has been \"lacquered over to give it more depth and more sheen, like an exquisite box,\" Britt says. Leopard-spot carpeting starts at the front door and ends in the master bedroom, where it meets pink stri\u00E9d walls and pale-yellow moldings and louvered shutters. Marbleized door and window frames, glamorous touches that recall the architectural details of Italian palazzi, occasionally interrupt the sweep of red, as does the lavishly tented dining area, a large alcove whose black-and-white-striped fabric was also utilized for Roman shades in the living room.\n\nIt wasn't all decorating, however. Britt found the original layout \"a hodgepodge of rooms,\" so the designer strategically shifted a few walls and doorways to establish an easygoing circulation pattern that is another hallmark of his style. \"This place works,\" Elizabeth notes. \"You've never seen square footage so brilliantly used.\" Apart from the sublime balance of functionality, flow, and sheer fancifulness, the Swansons recognize that their San Francisco foothold is something much more: a glossy red valentine to an enduring personal history.\n\nView a slide show of the Swansons' distinguished San Francisco getaway."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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