Emily Malino papers

Emily Malino was a contract and residential interior designer, design consultant, and national lecturer--an unapolgetically dynamic and boundlessly creative woman working in the mid-to-late 20th century, in what at the time was more of a man's world. Upon graduatation from Vassar College in the late 1950s with a degree in Economics, she founded a window display and decorating company in New York City called Paper Display with a few of her former classmatesher own firm, and soon thereafter established her interior design firm, Emily Malino Associates. She was married to U.S. Congressman to the Bronx Jim Scheuer (who she met while studying at Fieldston), and was the mother of four; for decades she and Scheuer commuted between New York and Washington D.C. Over her prolific career she designed urban housing, hospital wards and facilities, schools, state and federal institutional buildings, residential interiors, and commercial interiors. She also consulted for Monsanto, Dupont and Sears Roebuck and Co., giving lectures and conducting workshops across the US. Her approach to design was without fail democratic--always with a passion for working on a tight budget and coming up with simple solutions to everyday problems. For over 25 years she wrote a weekly column, "Design for People", that was nationally syndicated in newspapers such as the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune; with this platform, she brought clever, modern design to every home across America.

Over her long career she published a book called "Super Living Rooms" (1976), created television pilots for series about interior design, was on Nixon's National Design Counsel (and traveled to Moscow on behalf of the federal government to help design an "American" art collection there), was Vice-President at Perkins and Will for over a decade, worked for HOK architects, and lectured to groups, schools and at conferences across North America, among many other achievements. She was a multi-talented, socially conscious voice for cost-effective innovation across the design industry, whose work is still relevant and deserves greater recognition than it receives.