Accents Profile-Jan Showers
By Mary Beth Harrison
Much like the designer herself, the furniture from the Jan Showers Collection exudes glamour. Maybe it’s the sweeping arms of the Villa sofa or the glimmer of the Portofino table, but you can almost imagine Myrna Loy, Juan Crawford, or any of Hollywood’s Golden Age elite lounging in a room of her designs.
Perhaps, then, it is fitting that when the Dallas-based interior and furniture designer decided to bring her collection to showrooms outside of Texas in 2004, she headed toward Hollywood and David Sutherland’s recently expanded Los Angeles showroom. Now, her line of lamps, tables, and upholstered and leather pieces—more than 100 items in all—is found across the country.
Inspired by Parisian finds, Showers offers pieces that reflect a range of periods from Directoire to 20th-centruy modern. But don’t call then reproductions. “We use pieces from those periods as reference points, but we modify by adding a curve to a chair leg or increasing the scale,” she says
Showers names each piece to give it distinct personality. Occasionally, those names even give a nod to Hollywood. “I’m a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock, so I named a new table after him,” says the designer, who also reveals the upcoming attractions of the line: chandeliers, sconces, and even fabrics.