A Touch of Glamour
By Daniella Brodsky
Though she’s logged 27 elegant years in the business, Jan Showers was born a designer. “My mother and grandmother were very into design and had wonderful personal taste. I was always around it, antiques shopping and such,” she says. “As a girl, I would move all the furniture around. My mother would be so surprised when she came home.” If this wasn’t evidence of her calling, perhaps the “publications” she’d compose were. “They were very elaborate: how to divide up sitting rooms, etcetera.”
In 1980, Showers designed part-time around her children’s schedules, and her career took the express track. From the beginning, she had very good clients and positive feedback from pros. “You either have it or you don’t,” Showers says when it comes to taste. A sample of her acclaimed taste: distinctively mixing time periods, namely 18th century with the 1940s, and finessing it with her signature dash of glamour.
Over the years, Showers found herself creating furnishings when nothing on the market fit the bill. “I do my best thinking on vacation, and when I was in Santa Fe in the late 90s, the idea came to me to create my own collection. I already had the beginning of it from all of the custom work I’d done,” she explains. Her collection, available through seven showrooms nationwide, now includes 130 handcrafted pieces; pieces can be customized to the consumer’s taste, and all of it is made right in Dallas (except for the Venetian glass). “I love something with a nice shape, or a beautiful lacquer pr faux skin. And I think tufting is perfect for a whimsical look,” she points out. The Mercer Bench—originally made for her own bedroom—is a top seller and reflects most of those characteristics. The items not born of necessity are inspired by pieces Showers collects in France and London for her business of selling antiques and vintage pieces. Keeping count? That’s 1—a design firm, 2—custom furnishings, and 3—an antique retailer, from her Slocum Street showroom.
In her design work, personalization is paramount. She says, “If the family isn’t reflected, it just looks like a hotel room.” As for inspiration, it seems Showers will never run short of it. She experiences and takes in life with an artist’s sentiment and funnels just about everything out through her designs—from the colors of St. Barts to Hitchcock films to the decorators Elsie de Wolfe and Francis Elkin. She muses, “Timelessness is my favorite word.”