User:EllenZoe/sandbox/The Wiseman Group

The Wiseman Group is an American interior design firm founded in 1980 by Paul Vincent Wiseman. Wiseman is the company's lead designer, Kevin Peters is President and CEO/CFO, and its San Francisco-based offices has a staff of 23 designers.

The company has completed over 130 projects around the United States and internationally, both residential and commercial.

"The Wiseman Group’s philosophy of comfort is classically Californian; even luxurious traditional interiors, such as chintz-bedecked parlors dotted with important antiques, manage to be accessible. Especially significant to the firm is appropriateness, with the decoration of a room intended to complement the building around it as well as the landscape beyond," wrote Architectural Digest of their work.

Design
The Wiseman Group style has been noted for its use of a home's history while modernizing it. Their work consider's a property's outdoor environment when designing a home's interiors. Much of their interior design work collaborates with architects.

“I am always looking for those things that will anchor the story,” Wiseman told Interiors magazine.

Interior designers
The Wiseman Group founder Paul Wiseman grew up in the agricultural community of the Sacramento Delta. While his rural hometown only had 800 residents, Wiseman was intrigued by the two houses there that were built by the Bay Area modernist William Wurster. At University of California, both the Davis and Berkeley campuses, Wiseman studied political science. While a student, he traveled to Athens, Greece, and spent a semester in Tasmania, and decided to continue his travels around Europe as an academic alternative.

In 1980, after working for San Francisco antiques dealers and at fabric showrooms where he “learned the business from the ground up,” he started The Wiseman Group, his own interior design firm.

"I am a history buff and I was fascinated how history is often manifested through objects. For example, the neoclassicism of the late 18th century was directly connected with the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. There are many other examples such as the Napoleonic campaign furniture. Once I became an interior designer, I loved using antiques to give people a more in-depth reflection of time and space.

The other design directors at The Wiseman Group are James Hunter, Brenda Mickel, and Mauricio Munoz.

Books

 * Paul Vincent Wiseman The Wiseman Group Inner Spaces
 * Legorreta Arquitectura/Architecture 2003-2010
 * Legorreta + Legorreta New Buildings & Projects 1997-2003
 * West Coast Modern: Architecture, Interiors & Design
 * San Francisco Interiors
 * Tropical Experience: Architecture + Design
 * The New Shingled House: Ike Kligerman Barkley
 * New Tropical Classics Hawaiian Homes
 * California Country Style
 * Fortuny Interiors
 * The Country Houses of John F. Staub (Sara and John Lindsey Series in the Arts and Humanities)
 * Interior Visions Great American Designers and the Showcase House
 * Peter Pennoyer Architects: Apartments, Townhouses, Country Houses
 * San Francisco Style: Design, Decor, and Architecture
 * Fireplaces by Cookie Kinkead (1992-09-01)