Our Life’s Work is Here

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Here at 907 Broadway, in the Stanford White building MEIER has occupied since 1985, are the columns my mother painted the month we moved in. Here too is the wonderful paisley pen-work mirror she created with her closest friend, Kakia Livanos, at the Isabel O’Neill studio, where they both held forth and maintained the flame as directors and teachers, when Isabel grew too frail to continue instruction. And here is the big paisley wall I painted to set it off. My Flintstone answer, perhaps, to her elegant refinement. But it’s mine. Complete with little gold leaf details.

Our life’s work is here. The ads we’ve made, the books we’ve written. A John Kirby painting that graced the cover of Frank’s first novella, hangs below one of his more recognizable portraits. And a wall of Reynolds Stone bookplate engravings came from the same artist who illustrated The Folio/Hutchinson Book of Essays, which Frank edited. I have art glass from our clients, Orrefors and Kosta Boda, perched through the space, as well as some of my Andy’s and ADDYs and Clios, holding up books. Also on the bookshelves sit many of Frank’s books, including his American output: Ireland, Simple Courage, Shannon and Tipperary; and my books, The New American Wedding and the advanced reader’s edition of The Season of Second Chances – my first novel, due out at the end of March.

We have the books we use in our commerce: art books and design books along with the volumes of illustrators and photographers sent by reps and image houses. We have paper samples and perforated pantone chips in linen covered binders. And around them all, an overflow from our homes, sit Oscar Wilde and Henry James, Capote and Vidal, Wolfe and Fitzgerald, and the books of my grandfather, Frank Meier, who wrote about the sea. They stand shoulder to shoulder with the books of our friends – Sally Pritchard’s brilliant Crackpots, Katherine Lanpher’s Leap Days, John Colapinto’s About the Author and As Nature Made Him, Richard Cohen’s By The Sword, Jamie Saul’s Light of Day, Frances Kiernan’s biographies of Mary McCarthy and Brooke Astor. We are surrounded by books that are friends or books that are by friends.

How do you get a room like this? Well, one way is to live long enough and throw out very little. And – I will risk the sound of one hand clapping to say it – because this is an office, and talent is what we sell - it helps to have talent. Talent far beyond money. I’ve worked with some of the world’s greatest photographers and stylists. And, when budgets wouldn’t allow a full team, I’ve done a slew of set design projects on my own. We even had a project with a budget so small we built a white canvas set and painted the furniture directly on to the walls and the rug on to the floor, in actual size! I once filled a huge cabinet with casaba melons as a backdrop to a fashion shot of a minimal Asian jacket. Casaba melons. Not priceless porcelains. It’s witty and fun – but it costs next to nothing. And it’s proof that Style does not come from a checkbook.

It was natural, I think, that this energy would also be expressed in our office. As my work moved from the necessity of half a dozen folks preparing ads and art work to go to press in “real-size,” to the modern scale of a few geniuses on computers, our needs for space changed radically. Add to this the entrance of Frank who brought with him to the United States a life of publishing, screenplays, broadcasting and four thousand books.

This was the fourth major renovation for this office in our twenty-five years here. But it has been the most satisfying. It completely embodies the working atmosphere we find ideal. Our team often meets for breakfast tea at the green marble counter in the morning. We eat lunch together every day around the round library table, and often there is another break for tea at four in the afternoon. We can go to our offices and close the door, or sit in a pretty corner and read. We work very hard, often at our desks far beyond the hours others have long gone home, but because of our contact, it’s rare that we don’t know where things stand with a project, a client or a personal story. Our work is enhanced by an office that encourages collegial activity. But even more so, our lives are enhanced by the civilized proximity and grace this office allows.

From the art direction of ads, to the creative direction of a living, breathing interior; from the idea that an office should be nothing less than a reflection of the delight in a well-lived life, with no artificial boundaries about style or self-expression – that’s what 907 is all about.

And to those who act as though a career as a novelist has now put our marketing work on the back burner, I say balderdash! Well, actually, I say a word I won’t write here, but if you know me well enough, you can fill in the blank. You may not be able to ‘do it all’, but chances are you can do a heck of a lot more than the nay-sayers suggest.

Out of this office, and along with a new graphic identity for the mega-florist, Zezé, the re-launch of one of America’s oldest doll companies, and a huge project that we believe will revolutionize accountability and the predictability of marketing choices, I’ve created a novel where the protagonist has bought into all of the limitations her gender, her age and her career might well have imposed. But Joy gets a second chance. The truth is, she takes a second chance. It was there, all along. Just as it is for all of us. It’s not necessarily a life adjustment, it’s an attitude adjustment. And if this office can illuminate for you the idea of rule-breaking self-expression -- in all you do, then hurrah! Let us know! There might be a book in it.