Frances Adler Elkins

Frances Adler Elkins (7 November 1888 – 26 August 1953), was one of the twentieth century's most prominent interior designers. According to one magazine editor, she was "the first great California decorator". According to The New York Times, Elkins "pioneered vibrant interiors, in which solid historical references met effervescent modernist fantasy." She was the sister of the architect David Adler.

Early life Frances Adler Elkins was born in Milwaukee on November 7, 1888. Elkins was a younger sister of the renowned architect David Adler.

On July 21, 1918, at San Mateo, California, Elkins married Felton Broomall Elkins (1889–1944), a playwright, painter, and polo player, who in 1911 had inherited (according to The New York Times) $2 million (the equivalent of $47 million in 2013) from his Philadelphia family. In 1918, they bought a 19th-century adobe house in Monterey, California, which they restored with the help of David Adler, and named Casa Amesti. They had one child: Katherine Felton Elkins (1920–2009; married 1947 to William Sprott Boyd Jr). Frances Elkins filed for divorce in February 1923 on grounds of desertion, after which she continued to live in the Monterey house.

Career After she divorced, Elkins supported herself by decorating houses for friends and then hotels, clubs and stores. She also worked for wealthy clients Edward G. Robinson, the Marshall Fields, and others. She always added some unexpected elements to her brother's formal interior architecture. Examples include steel inlaid into an ebonized oak floor or Steuben glass moldings around a mantle piece.

One Adler/Elkins collaboration was the Kersey Coates Reed House in Lake Forest, IL. Homeowner Helen Shedd Reed's one instruction was "Don't let us make this a stuffy house." Elkins was the decorator on the project. Interior designer Mark Hampton described the library as "the most boldly stylish room I have ever seen in this country." Elkins made only eight Loop chairs. Reproductions are available today.

Elkins also designed the Spider chair. The Spider chair combined Queen Anne-style legs with a Spanish-style shield back.

Style Elkins combined traditional and contemporary styles.

Casa Amesti

Prior to their divorce, Elkins and her husband purchased Casa Amesti (also known as Jose Amesti Casa), a historic adobe house in Monterey. Over the next 20 years the house grew wider and taller as Jose Amesti's fortunes improved. The house cost $5,000 in 1918. Many of the rooms remain exactly as Elkins left them.

In 2010, Thomas Jayne included Casa Amesti in his book The Finest Rooms In America: 50 Influential Interiors from the 18th Century to the Present.

Later life Elkins's last commission was a house for Irma and Albert Schlesinger, parents of Nan Kemper. The house was constructed in 1951 with architect Gardner Dailey.

Elkins died at age 64 in San Francisco on August 26, 1953.