Design Legend Anthony Hail

The late Anthony Hail is a designer about whom I know little. But I will say that I have been struck on more than one occasion by old photos of his interiors. I feel that only an elegant person could have created beautiful interiors such as these.

What I have been able to find out is that Hail was either a Texan or a Tennessean (conflicting reports on the internet) who was raised in Denmark and France. He studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, served as a correspondent for various magazines, and set up his own interior design business in San Francisco in the late 1950s. For years, Hail was the éminence grise of the San Francisco design community. In his obituary from 2006, Hail was described as one who understood living on a grand-scale. It also seems that Hail was a bon vivant who counted Alexis, Baron de Rédé, Arturo Lopez-Willshaw, and Truman Capote as friends. This worldliness of Hail's certainly seemed to shine through in his work.

If any of you have additional information on Hail, I'd love for you to post it in the comment section.