“Some places are like people. Some shine and some don’t.” — Dick Hallorann, The Shining
Want to make your home truly shine?
Like, the way a haunted hotel in the Rocky Mountains, ahem, shines?
Then be inspired by Film and Furniture, a marketplace for handsome decor from classic films and TV shows, online now.
Originally a design resource for movie fanatics, F&F is now an online store where you can purchase (or find guidance on purchasing) the rugs, chairs, lamps and assorted other home goods you covet from classic films. (And not so classic … like this lovely Carlo Bugatti chair from Alien: Covenant.)
Founder/editor Paula Benson — a partner at London design/branding studio Form — also provides a fairly detailed backstory on every item, whether it’s the iconic whiskey tumblers from Mad Men, the brutalist designs and saturated styles that adorned A Clockwork Orange or the Djinn chairs in 2001.
Speaking of Kubrick, the site recently debuted a line of officially licensed rugs and runners you’ll certainly recognize from The Shining. These hexagonal, orange and brown carpets were inspired by the original design by David Hicks — who, fun fact, also worked with everyone from Vidal Sassoon to the Prince of Wales.
We spoke with Benson about the rugs, the site and her favorite film-inspired decor.
InsideHook: How hard is to get an officially licensed product into the store? I’m assuming the Kubrick estate or the studios must be pretty careful with licensing …
Paula Benson: Herein lies an interesting story! The very reason I founded the Film and Furniture website a few years ago was initiated by my personal fascination in the dynamic hexagonal carpet in the Overlook Hotel of The Shining. My quest to find out more about the corridor carpet took me on a few diversions and down several rabbit holes — the film has given rise to a series of conspiracy theories (as is often the case where the fastidious and symbol-laden director Kubrick is concerned). I began to realise that there were many people like me who were interested (or rather obsessed) in the iconic details for furniture and décor in the movies and the hidden narrative they tell, and thus Film and Furniture was born.
IH: So how did you end up securing the carpet?
PB: I did a lot of research on the Overlook Hotel carpet and even had the official Kubrick archivists here in London searching through all their files and production notes on the film. I eventually found out via other means that this bold design was created by the legendary interior designer David Hicks. Hicks, however, did not collaborate on the filming of The Shining. As far as we can ascertain, the “Hicks’ Hexagon” carpet was in production in the 1960s prior to The Shining’s release in 1980, so the carpet which appeared in The Overlook Hotel was either an off-the shelf purchase for the film or a copy made for filming — we are not certain. After more digging, we found the license holder of the original Hicks Hexagon design and have made an agreement with them to make rugs, runners and carpets of the original David Hicks carpet design for Film and Furniture — they do not sell direct to the public.
IH: How hard is it to figure out the decor from a movie? And then how do you decide what to feature?
PB: Myself and my fellow furniture fanatics have formed a combined encyclopedic brain and can recognize many items we see in films, movies and on TV. We attend a lot of furniture and interior design trade shows and it all seeps in. If we don’t know it, then we’ll ask the production designer or set decorator of the film, and it’s always a pleasure to find out more about the stories behind their choices.
IH: Besides the recent 2001 and The Shining additions, what’s your favorite item on the site?
PB: Currently my favorite piece is the E63 table lamp as seen in Blade Runner 2049. Originally designed in 1963, I love its brutal but oh-so-beautiful aesthetic and it’s a very clever choice of light by set decorator Alessandra Querzola to appear in Joshi’s (Robin Wright) 2049 LAPD office. We see it in several scenes where K (Ryan Gosling) visits his boss.
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
