Singled Out For Special Honors

Jack Lenor Larsen, whose 40-year career as a designer of fabrics, carpeting, leather, and furniture has transformed the field of commercial design, will be honored next month as the first recipient of a special Guild Hall award for across-the-board cultural contributions.

Since 1986, Guild Hall's 123-member Academy of the Arts has presented three awards each year for excellence in the literary, visual, and performing arts. "This new award recognizes interdisciplinary achievement," Henry Korn, Guild Hall's president, said this week.

"The leadership of the academy was concerned that there were significant lifetime achievers who didn't fall neatly into any of the three categories," Mr. Korn explained.

Fabric's Possibilities

"I've been voting for a decade on these awards," Mr. Larsen said Monday from LongHouse, the foundation and garden showplace on Hand's Creek Road in East Hampton that doubles as his residence. "It never occurred to me that I'd win one."

The playwright Edward Albee, a longtime friend of the designer's, will present the award to him at the Plaza Hotel on Dec. 2. Peter Jennings will be the evening's master of ceremonies.

Mr. Larsen founded the firm that bears his name in 1953, two years after moving to New York from Seattle. As a student at the University of Washington he was interested in interior architecture, but became intrigued by the possibilities of fabric design.

Good Press

He used to think his business started out slowly, said Mr. Larsen, but he has come to realize that "in fact, it grew rapidly. It's amazing that so much happened in such a short time."

Good publicity was a big help. "I always had good press," the designer said, "and I won awards from the start. I thought in those years that even if I starved to death - I wasn't making a lot of money at first, despite critical success - I'd still have an obituary in The New York Times."

By the mid-'50s, the business had expanded to Europe, with a base in Zurich. Over the next decade it became increasingly successful, accumulating not only healthy profits but critical acclaim as well.

For The Airlines

Millions of people have seen Mr. Larsen's work without knowing it. One of his early commissions, for example, was to design the first fabrics for Pan American Airlines jet planes, in 1958.

In 1969, for Pan Am and Braniff International, he designed the fabrics for the first 747s.

He also designed the draperies for Lever House, the Mies van der Rohe masterpiece in midtown Manhattan, and a collection of sheets, towels, and blankets for J.P. Stevens.

What has become known as "the Larsen look" in design circles began with handwoven fabrics of natural yarns in random repeats.

Paris Retrospective

Mr. Larsen's many honors include Gold Medal awards from the American Craft Council and the American Institute of Architects. A retrospective exhibit of his work was presented at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the design museum of the Louvre.

The designer first came to the East End in 1952. In 1962, inspired by African art and design, he built Round House, which he sold some years later.

LongHouse, which occupies 16 acres, was designed after a seventh-century Japanese shrine. The gardens, which, said Mr. Larsen, "present the designed landscape as an art form in its own right," sprout thousands of daffodils each spring and are home to a vast number of tree and plant species.

At LongHouse

The designer's LongHouse Foundation has presented an increasing number of cultural events there in the past several years, 16 altogether in 1997. The dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones and the theater artist Robert Wilson have appeared at LongHouse, as has Mr. Albee, who gave a reading there last summer.

Mr. Korn described LongHouse as "a 16-acre free zone, where environmental artists and sculptors have an opportunity to show their work in an optimal setting," in pointed contrast to the display of art elsewhere.

"In general, East Hampton regulates very stringently the placement of artworks in outdoor sites," said Guild Hall's president.

Collaborators

In the past few years Mr. Larsen and Guild Hall have collaborated on several events. Mr. Wilson, for example, appeared at both LongHouse and at the John Drew Theater, as did the noted glass artist Dale Chihuly, a fellow student of Mr. Larsen's in college and a friend ever since.

"I hope to do more with Guild Hall in the future," Mr. Larsen said. "We've very much enjoyed the relationship, particularly working with their children's groups and some of their art classes."

Next year and in 1999, he said, LongHouse plans programs focusing on Japan in the third century, "and we hope to present some events in conjunction with Guild Hall. Their theater and meeting spaces are assets we don't have."

In addition to Mr. Larsen, the artists who will receive Guild Hall laurels in their respective fields this year are the sculptor William King, for visual arts; the playwright Wendy Wasserstein, for literary arts, and the musician and composer Billy Joel, for performing arts.