"Celebrated American Decorator" Mark Hampton '62 Honored Posthumously by HS Alma Mater

June 26, 2010

June 26, 2010, Greencastle, Ind. — Mark I. Hampton Jr., a 1962 graduate of DePauw University, has been posthumously inducted into the Plainfield (Indiana) High School Hall of Fame. Hampton was "a  noted interior decorator whose clients have included President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush and Estee Lauder," notes the newspaper.  Hampton was among the inaugural inductees of the new Hall of Fame, which was launched at the 110th annual Plainfield Alumni Banquet.  Others who were honored included former NBA coach Del Harris.

Hampton, who died in 1998, was "the last of the 20th-century American gentlemen," according to the New York Observer and, notes Jesse Kornbluth of the Huffington Post, "the most celebrated American decorator of the 1980s and 1990s." The New York Times called him "an icon of American Style."

A synopsis of the book, Mark Hampton: An American Decorator, which was published in April and is written by Mark Hampton's widow, Duane, states, "A classic American success story, Hampton grew up in small-town Indiana and went on to worldwide fame. He began his career working for some of the greatest interior designers of the age: Mrs. Henry Parish II, David Hicks, and McMillen, Inc. He later went on to design for such clients as Brooke Astor, Estee Lauder, Jacqueline Onassis, and the Henry Kissingers, in addition to his work on the White House, Camp David, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the American Academy in Rome. Known for the tremendous depth and breadth of his knowledge, Hampton refused to be pigeonholed into a trademark style, moving effortlessly from sleek modernism to English country and back again. A highly popular lecturer who drew crowds, Hampton was also the author of two books, as well as a designer of both furniture and fabrics."

Learn more at Barnes & Noble.com.

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