Speakers

For two decades, Clinton Smith has been regarded as one of the design industry’s thought leaders and noted authorities on matters of taste and style. He champions and celebrates the art of living well. A respected editor and writer, he has written myriad books on an array of lifestyle matters, including elegant entertaining, decorating with color, outdoor design, and living with flowers. He has also authored and co-authored a series of books and monographs for tastemakers within the design and architecture community.

Clinton has juried some of the most esteemed interior design and architecture awards competitions; moderated talks and discussions with many of the field’s leading professionals; and is a familiar face at design trade shows, from California to New York, London to Paris.

Clinton is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Hamptons Cottages & Gardens and New York Cottages & Gardens magazines. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of Hearst’s Veranda magazine, and was a long-time contributor to Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles (Editor-in-Chief), and New England Home (EIC + Editor at Large).

Clinton has also collaborated with the renown Holland MacRae company on a 20+ piece bespoke furniture collection that debuted in December 2023.

Among his numerous philanthropic endeavors, Clinton chaired the New York Botanical Garden’s Orchid Dinner for five years.

His most recent style and design discoveries—both international and closer to home—can be found by following him on Instagram at @MrClintSmith.

Considered one of the most talented names in design, Bunny is also an accomplished businesswoman, entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. A lover of dogs, gardens, and china, Bunny’s knowledge and expertise is on par with her enjoyment of life. Her business, Bunny Williams Inc., includes Williams Lawrence, Bunny Williams Home, and range of product and fabric lines, as well as her series of bestselling books.

Bunny launched her interior design firm in 1988 following a 22-year apprenticeship with the esteemed Parish-Hadley Associates, and in the following three decades, it has wrought its own indelible imprint and legacy. Bunny Williams Inc. is renowned for balancing refined beauty, welcoming livable appeal, and attention to detail. While the creation of delightful rooms is Bunny’s passion, the firm’s success is, above all, anchored in long-lasting and valued relationships with its clientele. The resulting commissions — many for repeat homeowners — are found across the United States and abroad, in city apartments, country estates and cottages; in the mountains and by the water. Bunny’s own houses and her long career have provided ample material and inspiration for eight books to date, and she is a sought-after speaker and mentor on design, decoration, gardening, and entertaining.

Bunny grew up in the countryside near Charlottesville, Virginia. A watershed moment at age 15 was visiting the Dorothy Draper-decorated Greenbrier Resort, which had a color palette unlike anything Bunny had ever seen. “It really opened my eyes and the lesson I learned was not to play it safe,” shares Bunny. Her parents encouraged her passion for the arts and led her to Garland Junior College in Boston, where she studied interior design.

Upon moving to New York, Bunny worked at Stair & Co., an antiques gallery frequented by Sister Parish and Albert Hadley. Bunny subsequently joined Parish-Hadley and remained at the venerable firm for 22 years.

“I was honored to work there and was exposed to so much; their extraordinary projects and partnership, the design process, everything. By the time I left, I’d been the secretary, an assistant, and a buyer. I had the tools and experience to run my own enterprise, which I did — starting with three people working out of my guest bedroom!”

Shortly thereafter, fueled by her devotion to gardening, Bunny opened Treillage in 1991 along with her husband, the antiques dealer John Rosselli. Considered both groundbreaking and industry changing, Treillage drew A-list designers, editors, and tastemakers to its off-the-beaten- track, Upper East Side destination for the ultimate in home and garden. “We had Treillage for twenty-five years, but all good things come to an end. Now, with Bunny Williams Home, I’m proud to show an entire line of furniture, lighting, art and accessories under one roof.”

Never one to rest on her many awards, accolades, and honors, Bunny keeps her eye on what’s next, whether it’s a new interior design project with her business partner at Williams Lawrence, Elizabeth Lawrence; her new collections for Bunny Williams Home; her collaborations with Ballard Designs; a new fabric line; or her next book. Follow along with Bunny’s personal adventures on Instagram @bunnys_eye.

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Elizabeth Lawrence is a partner at Williams Lawrence. She has spent her career working alongside Bunny, designing projects across the country, from Manhattan to Palm Beach to Los Angeles. Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, Elizabeth attended the University of Richmond and then the New York School of Interior Design. She was honored by The New York School of Interior Design at their annual gala in 2020 and her work has been widely published in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Veranda, Galerie, House Beautiful, and many others. A few of her current projects include a new country estate, a glamorous New York City townhouse, a Palm Beach getaway and a young family’s apartment overlooking Central Park. The firm’s newest book, Decoration, will be published by Rizzoli in the fall of 2026.

Elizabeth and her family live in New York City and Elizabeth often shares snapshots of her work, travels, tablescapes, great design finds, and other adventures on her personal Instagram, @elizabeth_m_lawrence.

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Young Huh Interior Design is a full-service design firm specializing in residential and commercial interiors. A Detroit native, Young attended the Cranbrook School, received a degree in English from Smith College and a law degree from Fordham University. While pursuing further education and an internship in interior design, Young discovered her true calling and founded her eponymous New York City-based design firm in 2007.  

Resetting the design narrative for each project, YHID’s work is about finding harmony and dynamism through the application of classic and modern design principles. Thoughtful architectural details provide the groundwork for warm and welcoming interiors, each animated by sophisticated surface treatments, a singular play of pattern and color, and a touch of wanderlust. YHID continues to expand beyond its original repertoire to include large commercial and hospitality projects, as well as a growing line of licensed collections.  

For the last five years Young has been included on Elle Decor’s prestigious A-List and is included among top talent on Architectural Digest's AD100 2023-2026 lists. She was named one of Vogue’s five interior designers on the rise, included as a finalist in the Andrew Martin Design Review Volumes 24 and 25 and, in 2011, she won the Connecticut Cottages & Gardens Innovator of the Year Award. Her work can be seen in the pages of Architectural Digest, Domino, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Interior Design, Luxe, The New York Times, Real Simple, The Wall Street Journal, etc. Young actively bolsters the local and global design community, participating in speaking engagements and charitable events including, among others, the Kips Bay Decorator Show House and NKBA Board of Directors. Young also sits on the board of Olana, is Secretary of the Board of NYSID, Decorators Club Committee Chair, co-chair for Design on a Dime, sits on the Salon Design + Art Advisory Council, and is a founding member of AAPIDA. In early 2026, to much acclaim, Huh published her first book, A Mood, A Thought, A Feeling.

Stan Dixon, AIA, is the founder and president of D. Stanley Dixon Architect, Inc., the Atlanta firm he established in 2006. Raised in Sumner County, Tennessee, along the Cumberland River, he was drawn to architecture early by the region’s pastoral landscape and historic houses. Their simple materials and authentic beauty still inform his design philosophy.

Dixon earned his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee and attended Britain’s Attingham Trust School for the Study of Historic Houses and Collections. In Atlanta, he gained experience at both residential and commercial firms before refining his residential practice with the esteemed firm of Norman Davenport Askins Architect.

His edited approach to classical architecture creates an understated aesthetic, grounded in history and open to modern influence. Through contextually sensitive work that is attentive to style, scale, and proportion, he gives each building a sense of permanence and delight.

Garden & Gun named Dixon one of “The New Faces of Southern Style.” He is a three-time winner of the Southeast Architect of the Year award from Veranda and the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center. He has received the Philip Trammell Shutze Award from the Southeast Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) 24 times, and he was awarded the Addison Mizner Medal for his work in Palm Beach. His firm’s portfolio includes projects across the South and in Colorado, Indiana, Illinois, New York, and Washington, D.C.

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Tammy Connor is the founder and creative director of Tammy Connor Interior Design. Her liberal arts education, background in studio art and art history, and degree in interior design shaped the distinctive voice she brings to luxury living. Equally adept at the art and the business of design, she guides and mentors her team with the same rigor she brings to every project.

Connor’s process begins with the architecture and setting of each project, then joins that sense of place with the goals and lifestyle of her clients. Her precise approach is meant to inspire confidence from the outset and free clients to enjoy the experience. Whether composing a country house, townhouse, estate, or country club, she draws history, character, structure, and meaning into interiors that resonate with those who live in them.

An intentional listener and communicator, Connor is a perceptive partner to clients, architects, and consultants alike. Her collaborative approach yields comfortable, enduring rooms that feel like natural expressions of the people who inhabit them.

Based in Charleston, South Carolina, the firm has completed residential projects throughout the United States, from town and country houses to mountain and beach retreats. Its work has earned numerous awards from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, including the Philip Trammell Shutze Award and the McKim, Mead & White Award. Connor has served on the Southeast Chapter Board of Trustees of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, as well as the Design Leadership Network and Leaders of Design Council. The firm’s work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Veranda, House Beautiful, Traditional Home, Luxe, Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles, and FREDERIC.

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Martin Brudnizki is the founder and principal of Martin Brudnizki Design Studio (MBDS). Born in Stockholm, Martin’s love for design started from a young age. His mother was a stylist and his father a structural engineer; the combination of these elements embedded a deep understanding of aesthetics alongside a grounding in functionality. Having gained a degree in Economics at the University of Stockholm, Martin enrolled at The American University in London to study Interior Architecture where he was deeply inspired by architects and designers Carlo Scarpa, Paul Dupree-Lafon and Dorothy Draper. Following a series of successful roles at renowned interior design firms, Martin founded his eponymous studio in London in 2000, followed by a New York studio in 2012.

MBDS is now a globally recognised interior architecture and design practice, renowned for its creativity and attention to detail. With a team of over 100 designers, architects, lighting specialists, and product designers, the Studio has reimagined spaces ranging from hotels, restaurants, bars, and private members’ clubs to residential developments and private homes. MBDS’s portfolio features collaborations with esteemed clients such as LVMH, Belmond, Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, Four Seasons, Six Senses, Soho House Group, Caprice Holdings, and The Birley Group.

In 2015, Martin established And Objects, a product design studio built on his extensive experience in interiors. The studio has since developed collections of furniture, lighting, and accessories, while also collaborating with leading brands such as Porta Romana, Drummonds, and The Urban Electric Co. In 2023, And Objects opened its first shop on London’s Pimlico Road, and a showroom within the MBDS New York studio.

Martin is listed within the AD100, House and Garden’s Top 100, Elle Décor’s A-List, Who’s Who, London Evening Standard’s Progress 1000, Debrett’s 500 Most Influential People in the UK, and Wallpaper* Magazine’s Power 200, with the latter describing him as ‘one of the best restaurant and hotel designers of his generation’.

Beata Heuman is the founder of Beata Heuman, the London interior design studio she established in 2013. Born and raised in Sweden, she studied fine art in Florence before moving to London, where she spent nine years working for the celebrated designer Nicky Haslam. That apprenticeship taught her to make every space truly singular, a principle that still guides the studio’s work.

The studio is known for playful, original interiors marked by a balanced use of color, clean lines, imaginative details, and a Scandinavian attention to longevity. Heuman takes an immersive approach, designing both the interior architecture and the furnishings of each project. She has built a growing collection of fabrics, wallpapers, lighting, and furniture, available through her online shop, Shoppa.

In 2018, Heuman received House & Garden’s inaugural Interior Designer of the Year award, and in 2020 she was named to the AD100. Her best-selling monograph, Every Room Should Sing, was published by Rizzoli in March 2021. In January 2025, she released a 20-lesson BBC Maestro course on the principles, process, and practice of interior design.

The studio’s current projects include a home in Hollywood, the reinvigoration of a rural estate in Scotland, and the renovation of a palazzo in Istanbul.

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Rebecca Atwood is an artist and textile designer whose namesake company creates fabrics, wallcoverings, and home goods drawn from her original hand-painted artwork. Raised on Cape Cod, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007 and launched Rebecca Atwood in Brooklyn in 2013, beginning with hand-dyed and hand-painted pillows.

Her designs start in her sketchbook in watercolor, gouache, and ink and are produced through digital printing, screen printing, weaving, and embroidery. In 2019, she created Hunter Douglas’s first artist collaboration, a collection of shades and drapery and also boasts partnerships with Pottery Barn and Method for Target. In 2024, Atwood painted a custom mural for Southern Living’s Idea House on Johns Island.

Atwood is the author of three books: Living with Pattern (2016), Living with Color (2019), and The Harmonious Home (2025). After several years in Brooklyn, she moved her business to Charleston around 2022, and currently lives in Charleston with her husband and daughter.

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Aldous Bertram is an Interior Designer and Artist living in Charleston. Originally hailing from the UK. Aldous obtained a PhD from Cambridge University, focusing on the historical influence of China upon English gardens and architecture. Building upon this subject, Aldous published Dragons and Pagodas, A Celebration of Chinoiserie in 2021, which looks at all aspects of Asian influence upon the decorative arts. Having previously worked for Amanda Lindroth, Aldous now draws upon his British design sensibilities to create memorable and joyful interiors, mixing antiques with layers of color and pattern to achieve a timeless, collected look. A long-time artist, Aldous also produces room portraits and watercolor paintings for sale, as well as a number of product design collaborations.

Arun Drummond did not set out to become a painter. A South Carolina native raised in the Upstate, he moved to Charleston more than two decades ago, and in 2004 he went to work at Gallery Chuma for Gullah artist Jonathan Green. For nearly 20 years he managed the gallery, teaching visitors about Gullah culture and folk art, and that daily immersion shaped his life’s mission. Entirely self-taught, he began painting that same year, first abstract works built from scrap wood and found materials, then the clean-lined, symmetrical folk style that defines his work today.

Drummond’s mixed-media paintings center on Black figures and the sweetgrass baskets of the Lowcountry. He works directly with three basket-weaving families, setting their baskets into his canvases. On unbleached linen, figures fade into the fabric, faces go without features, and baskets are left unfinished or missing altogether, reminders that a culture endures only when it is deliberately carried forward.

His work has been exhibited at Brookgreen Gardens and at Arts Warehouse in Delray Beach, Florida, and has been sold in the museum stores of the International African American Museum and the Gibbes Museum of Art. He serves on the boards of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art and Redux Contemporary Art Center.

In 2025, Drummond opened Drummond Studio Gallery on Line Street on Charleston’s East Side, a space devoted largely to Black creatives. In 2026, the gallery presented Forged, a group exhibition honoring master blacksmith Philip Simmons, whose home and workshop stand just blocks away.

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Kirby Caldwell is an interior designer and the founder and principal designer of Kirby Caldwell Inc., a Charleston-based studio focused on boutique hospitality and residential interiors.

Kirby Caldwell came to interior design by way of the backcountry. After studying fine arts and architecture, the Southern-raised designer skied Oregon’s backcountry and worked in the wine industry there before landing in New York, where she spent roughly a decade immersed in the city’s design world. She dealt in vintage furniture, designed textiles and furniture, worked on the interiors team at Soho House Design + Build and in product design at The Rug Company, and traveled frequently designing boutique hotels and clubs for an international firm.

When her first child was born, Caldwell headed back South and founded Kirby Caldwell Inc. in Charleston. She runs the studio as a one-person practice by choice, staying close to every project and working hand in hand with architects, contractors, and clients from first concept to completion.

Her work centers on boutique hospitality and residential interiors, and her portfolio includes the Post House Inn, Common House, Pendolino, The Douglas, and the Transcard Office. Caldwell favors rooms that feel gathered over time rather than overdesigned. Antique and vintage finds sit alongside custom furniture and lighting of her own design, and the architecture of historic spaces is always given its due.

She lives that approach at home, too. Caldwell, her husband, and their two daughters live in a Charleston carriage house dating to about 1740, a home featured on HBO Max’s Where We Call Home.

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Anne Harris has had 30 years of professional experience as a muralist and color consultant who marries design and a traditional painter’s aesthetic. Her practice draws from a multitude of styles spanning not only the globe but the history of art, ranging from Pompeii to Picasso. Anne’s honed understanding of style and color, as well as her fluency in a wide range of historical styles and techniques, produces work with long-lasting significance and creative integrity that stands the test of time. Her projects have been featured in House and Garden, Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, The New York Times and The Current and can be found throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Stephanie Hunt has built a freelance writing career of more than 25 years on wide-ranging curiosity and a natural way with words. Her bylines span reported features, design and travel stories, profiles, essays, and the occasional book review.

Based in Charleston, South Carolina, Hunt is the author of three books, including Enchanting Gardens: Inspired Landscape Design. She is a contributing editor for Veranda and editor-at-large for Charleston Magazine. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Veranda, and FLOWER, as well as Faith & Leadership, Orion, and Southbound, among others.

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Sebastian von Marschall is the principal of Sebastian von Marschall Architect, a boutique residential architecture firm he founded in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2020.

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The firm specializes in traditional design, pairing classical principles and close study of architectural precedent with spaces suited to contemporary living.
Von Marschall received both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia. His design approach took shape during 3 years at Peter Pennoyer Architects in New York, where his involvement with the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art broadened his understanding of classical design principles. He later moved to Charleston, his wife’s hometown, and worked as a senior project architect at Beau Clowney Design before establishing his own practice.

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According to the firm, it has completed new construction and renovation projects from Maine to Georgia, ranging from historic Charleston residences to an apartment in New York’s Carnegie Hill neighborhood.

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In 2024, the firm’s South of Broad Garden Folly in Charleston received a Philip Trammell Shutze Award from the Southeast Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA). The small garden pavilion recalls 18th-century Chinoiserie with its pagoda roof, yet every element was fabricated digitally and assembled on site.

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Kevin Paulsen’s murals look as if they have always been there. Painted in the manner of the itinerant artists who once traveled New England decorating early American homes, they carry cracks, combed patterns, and sepia-touched greens that suggest the passage of centuries, yet they belong entirely to the present.

Raised outside Kansas City, Paulsen trained as a fine artist at the Kansas City Art Institute. His real education in decorative painting began on Nantucket, where he arrived in 1983 planning to stay one summer and remained some 20 years. He moved from house painting into restoration and decorative work, and alongside Sandi Holland of Nantucket House Antiques and Interior Design, he studied the authentic methods of early 19th-century itinerant painters such as Rufus Porter and John Avery. Nantucket House has long represented his paintings and murals, and the island is also where he met his longtime collaborator, David Wiggins.

Since the late 1990s, Paulsen has painted from a top-floor studio in a former department store on Wall Street in Kingston, New York, balancing commissions with his own projects. His murals fill dining rooms and restaurants across the country, and his work has appeared in the Fifth Avenue windows of Bergdorf Goodman and in House Beautiful, Traditional Home, and Architectural Digest. He also helped found Kingston’s O+ Festival.

Paulsen describes his work as pulling tradition into the contemporary, moving from realism into fantasy and from light into dark, always responsive to its setting and grounded in authenticity. Follow Paulsen on Instgram at @KMartinPaulsen

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Tom Podhrazsky is an artist, designer, and craftsman. After growing up immersed in the arts, he graduated from the American College of the Building Arts in 2013, and then worked under the designer Andrew Gould for ten years. During that time, Tom has been involved with various facets of the building process: From hands-on restoration and construction, to building documentation and design.

In 2023, Tom founded his own design studio, Tom Henry Design Company, an award-winning firm dedicated to the cultivation of beauty in architecture. In addition to his studio work, Tom is a professor at the American College of the Building Arts where he teaches design, and a Georgian Paper’s Programme Fellow at Mount Vernon where he is researching the history and development of plaster raised paneling. Tom’s combined skills as an artist and craftsman makes him particularly good at designing beautiful buildings and spaces, and he brings that expertise to every project he works on. He regularly travels, takes classes, and conducts research to improve the quality of his work.

Sonny Sisan sees flowers the way a sculptor sees clay, and for good reason: he works in both. A Spartanburg native of Laotian and Thai descent, Sisan moved to Charleston in 2014 and studied historic preservation and urban planning at the College of Charleston. He went on to work in city planning before turning toward smaller creative roles, including interiors.

A pottery class in 2017 changed his course. In 2020, he formally launched Studio Sontosis, making small-batch stoneware vessels, planters, dinnerware, and furnishings in soft satin glazes, guided by Japanese ceramic traditions and a love of objects that invite people to slow down. His recent work has grown more sculptural and larger in scale, and he is a co-founder of PaperWeight, an artist-run gallery that has staged shows at the Navy Yard.

Flowers arrived almost by accident. After working with a Charleston floral shop, Sisan began creating arrangements for friends’ events, and by around 2022 that side project had become Floral Studies, a studio designing for weddings and events of every size, often in vessels he throws himself. His arrangements are loose, whimsical, and sculptural, pairing the untamed abundance of the Lowcountry with a disciplined eye for color. As he puts it, color has weight.

Sisan draws inspiration from museums, trips to New York, sketching as he works, and meditative walks through Hampton Park.

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