Tony Duquette book bash at Saks (Where else?)

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Hollywood designer Tony Duquette -- who created sculpture, film sets, gardens, interiors and jewelry for the jet set -- is a more-is-more kind of a guy. Just look at what he did for James Coburn, the suave star of the ‘Flint’ films, which rode the James Bond bandwagon in the mid-1960s. The zebra skin rug, turquoise silk upholstery and walls, a coral iron railing and a chandelier built around a disco mirror ball are pictured above.

What might he have done for a female client? For the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center, which recently stood in for the Rome Hilton circa 1963 on ‘Mad Men,’ he tiled the walls in abalone shells.

‘We called him Tony Abalone,’ says Hutton Wilkinson, president of Tony Duquette Inc. and author of the recently released ‘More Is More.’ The 368-page book is a follow-up to last year’s coffee table smash ‘Tony Duquette,’ which has been through three editions, Wilkinson says. The new book delves into the creative process of the man who could take the plastic grillwork used to separate wires under office floors and transform it into mammoth Chinese arches in his garden.

Wilkinson will be at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 22) to present the book. You’ll find him, as the invitation says, in ‘Fine Jewelry on One’ near the glass cases that hold his designs for Tony Duquette Fine Jewelry. To make sure you recognize him, look at the photo after the jump.

Above: Hutton Wilkinson, right, with Tony Duquette, who passed away in 1999.

-- David A. Keeps

Photo credits, from top: Eliot Elisofon Photography Collection / Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; and Ken Levine / Berliner Studio / BEImages. Both are courtesy of Abrams Books.