Charles Allom

For the grand rooms in Frick's New York house, Sir Charles, whose London workshops produced the plasterwork and boiseries, kept the furnishings muted, not to compete with Frick's collection of paintings. In 1925, when William Randolph Hearst purchased an ancient castle, St. Donat's in Wales, his choice to furnish it fell upon Sir Charles.

• Name — Sir Charles Allom • Born — 16 June 1865 • Birthplace — Kensington, London, England • Died — 1 June 1947 • Place of death — Potter's Bar, Middlesex, England • Occupation — Decorator and architect • Illustration — Insignia of a Knight Bachelor

In 1914, Allom and Charles Ernest Nicholson of Camper and Nicholsons, a boat-building firm, formed the Gosport Aircraft Company. The firm built a number of flying-boats for the British Government and proposed a series of designs during 1919. The venture closed in 1920 following the death of its chief designer, flying boat pioneer John Cyril Porte. Shortly after World War I, Allom decided that he needed a more prominent position in New York. He purchased the house on Madison Avenue built by Carrère and Hastings in 1893 for Dr Christian Herter which the firm White, Allom & Company occupied until 1933. Allom divided his time between London and New York. Returning to London from one of his transatlantic trips in 1925, Sir Charles remarked on the American work ethic and was quoted in Time magazine. In 1931, White, Allom was among the stellar cast of furnishers and decorators creating a grand but homey atmosphere for the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. The style generated by Allom, White was distinctly old-fashioned. It appealed to Queen Mary, who was a connoisseuse of eighteenth-century English porcelain and furniture. And when the Empress of Britain was launched the same year as the "new" Waldorf-Astoria, among its modern Art Deco decors, the "Mayfair Lounge" by White, Allom was the one space in Edwardian Renaissance manner. Sir Charles died in 1947.