The David Sutherland Showroom is celebrating it’s 35th anniversary in business tomorrow. Having a thriving showroom business for thirty five years gives you some serious bragging rights, especially one that not only keeps ups with the design curve, but has been known to cause some as well. But serious accolades have to be made to someone who has changed the complete landscape of design. Back then outdoor furniture was iron, plastic or some pretty clunky teakwood. Outdoor fabrics ran the gamut from stripe to stripe to solid in primary colors and had the feel of a paint encrusted drop cloth. Enter the Sutherlands—David, with his great friendship with John Hutton started enlisting the top designers in the world to do magic things with teak furniture creating curves and delicate turns, his stable of designers is the Who’s Who of the design world. Ann Sutherland, with her fabric line Perennials, began experimenting with acrylic color and created the all weather fabric that we know now, designing in beautiful subtle designs and colors and in every weave from velvet to canvas. Everyone else’s “outdoor fabric” is an afterthought. Bravo, to both of you, can’t wait to see what the next 35 years does.
