A trailblazer in design

CLASS OF HER OWN: Taylor Interior Design founder Nancy Taylor received a lifetime-achievement award from DesignxRI and was inducted into their hall of fame in September. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
CLASS OF HER OWN: Taylor Interior Design founder Nancy Taylor received a lifetime-achievement award from DesignxRI and was inducted into their hall of fame in September. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Interior designer Nancy Taylor, founder and principal designer at Taylor Interior Design, took a circuitous route to entrepreneurship.

At 17, she trained as a nurse during a time when only a handful of professions were open to women.

“In those days you just went for an education as a backup to getting married and having children,” she added.

After graduating, Taylor served as a nurse for two years at Cleveland Clinic and eventually did marry and start a family. In 1960 she and her husband moved to Providence, but something was awry.

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“I realized I was off on the wrong track,” she said, and that her true interest lay in lifestyle choices and environments.

Taylor began to take art classes and enrolled in an interior-design certificate program at Rhode Island School of Design. Studying to better understand the ways in which people live and why, “was much more suited to my temperament and interest,” she said.

In 1967, seven years after arriving in the Ocean State, Taylor opened her business in an era when woman-owned and women-run operations were few and far between. The move was necessitated by a pregnancy. Taylor had previously been employed by a Boston-based designer, but when she found out she was pregnant she knew a change was needed.

“If I were going to be both a mother and a designer I needed to be more practical about where I was going to [work] and so I chose to [start] my own company,” she said.

In the 1960s, said Taylor, interior designers were “generalists,” dabbling in both commercial and residential spaces. Taylor, however, preferred residential spaces in which she could learn about the habits of her clients. At the start of any project she asks clients how they live and what they wish to do differently – she believes interior design affords a chance to make lifestyle adjustments.

“There is always an opportunity when you’re focusing on your environment to analyze the way you’re living and support a change with the way you orchestrate your environment,” she said.

Next year Taylor Interior Design will turn 50, a history marked by both challenges and successes. Taylor said the largest hurdle she has encountered is the wait time after placing an order in the wake of the Great Recession, because, she explained, merchants no longer stockpile high-end products.

What Taylor called “elongated time frames,” are compounded by new cost structures.

“Nothing has become more affordable,” she said of post-recession prices for everything from furnishings to fabrics, lighting and rugs.

Taylor noted her greatest achievements were projects completed in remote destinations, such as the Florida Keys and the Bahamas.

In recognition of her career’s successes, Taylor was presented with a lifetime-achievement award from DesignxRI and was inducted into their hall of fame in September. •

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