{"id":113,"date":"2020-07-17T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pagodared.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/09\/tom-stringer-adventurous-life\/"},"modified":"2020-07-17T17:55:10","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T17:55:10","slug":"tom-stringer-adventurous-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pagodared.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/17\/tom-stringer-adventurous-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Stringer: An Adventurous Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tom Stringer<\/a> is well known for his worldly and client-centered approach, which he takes further than most designers. His process often involves traveling with<\/em> clients, searching and shopping together as they make their way across markets, cities and countries. For him, it\u2019s a natural extension of the design process. He explains:<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the process just involves asking the right questions and being willing to listen. I\u2019m enthusiastic about other people, and they come to me because I have the patience to figure out what they\u2019re interested in.\u00a0It would be so boring if clients came to me just for my own ideas. The golden moment happens when both me and my client are learning something new together. That\u2019s what makes the project ours.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His book, An Adventurous Life<\/a><\/em>, documents many of those expeditions, with Tom\u2019s own travel photographs alongside rich interiors and personal essays.<\/p>\n

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Tom Stringer and his new book<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A central theme of his life and practice, traveling gives both Tom and his clients a chance to escape their everyday lives and see from new vantage points. Itineraries are filled with evocative places that appeal to every sense: the streets of\u00a0Marrakesh, a wildlife preserve in Kenya, Myanmar\u2019s Inle Lake region. The journey is as important as the destination, Tom explains:<\/p>\n

\u201cDesigning a home for someone is a tremendously intimate thing \u2014 if good design is storytelling, I need to understand who people are at a base level. Travel can be a metaphor, but it\u2019s also a place in time, in which I get to absorb who they are and figure out how to tell their story.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s rarely a direct correlation between the destination and the design \u2014 it would be \u201ctrite and boring if that were the case,\u201d Tom says \u2014 but rather a narrative that threads through objects and ideas. The cover project for\u00a0An Adventurous Life<\/em> is a prime example. Inspired by the way Moroccan screens filter light, Tom and his client used the screens in the architecture of a Florida home. \u201cWe found crossovers in the way sunlight interacted with the environment, from Marrakesh to Southern Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A collage of Tom Stringer\u2019s travel photographs<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For another client, a collaborator of 20 years, Tom designed a yacht. They took a series of sea voyages together, and applied those experiences to the program for the boat. Once it was finished, they sailed it together. \u201cThat was the design voyage of a lifetime,\u201d Tom says. \u201cI got to build the yacht and sale it around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tom Stringer\u2019s home, featured in An Adventurous Life<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In the home Tom shares with his partner Scott, just one block from Lake Michigan in Chicago, the narratives have been woven from a lifetime of travel and collecting. Ceremonial objects, rich in history, abound:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy lens doesn\u2019t focus on how expensive or even how fine things are \u2014 it\u2019s more about where they\u2019ve been, where they came from, what they represent. An object that was used in daily life for ceremony is imbued with the spirits of its previous owners.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A pair of Oceanic figures grace the mantel. Acquired from an Australian collection, they\u2019re made from mud, shells, teeth and hair \u2014 all elements charged with ancestral energy. A set of simple wooden bowls were bought off the back of a carved wooden canoe while diving in the Solomon Islands. Everything holds emotion.<\/p>\n

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Tom Stringer\u2019s home, featured in An Adventurous Life<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As Tom\u2019s friend and fellow designer Holly Hunt explains in the foreword to his book, he is \u201ca relentless seeker of the unknown, the exotic, the transformative and eternal.\u201d In some ways, it is not so much the object itself, but the soul it embodies, that attracts him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was raised to value human experience over material things and now, ironically, I live in a very material world,\u201d he says. \u201cBy imbuing human experience into the interiors I create, that helps me heed the lessons.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For more valuable lessons, told through personal memoir and inspiring interiors, we highly recommend his book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All images from\u00a0An Adventurous Life: Global Interiors by Tom Stringer, courtesy of Images Publishing.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Are you an architect or designer with a story to tell?<\/h2>\n

Join Our Trade Program<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Register with us<\/a> to receive exclusive discounts and benefits, plus free shipping on your first order. Trade professionals are also eligible for collaborative features on our blog and social media channels. Please note that trade registration with PAGODA RED is only open to interior design and architecture professionals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Stringer is well known for his worldly and client-centered approach, which he takes further than most designers. His process often involves traveling with clients, searching and shopping together as they make their way across markets, cities and countries. For him, it\u2019s a natural extension of the design process. He explains: \u201cPart of the process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nTom Stringer: An Adventurous Life - PAGODA RED Stories<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pagodared.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/17\/tom-stringer-adventurous-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tom Stringer: An Adventurous Life - PAGODA RED Stories\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tom Stringer is well known for his worldly and client-centered approach, which he takes further than most designers. 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