Jackie Schwartz
coordinates art
with every decor.

SUZANNE CHESSLER

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

PHOTOS BY DANIEL LIPPITT

Right Alla Novikova, floral designer,
creates an arrangement of silk flowers.

Below: Jackie Schwartz:
Adding drama to every decor.

Designing
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. hen Jackie Schwartz
sees a house with
plenty of furniture and
few or no accessories,
she feels like a painter
looking at an unfinished
canvas. She immediate-
ly gets lots of ideas for
adding drama, color, tex-
ture, interest and original-
ity.
Schwartz loves to think about
ways to use paintings, sculpture,
silk flowers, pottery, lamps,
screens, rag rugs and other em-
bellishments that can coordinate
with whatever is in place.
A great benefit of what she
likes to do is that she profits
from it. As owner of Dundee En-
terprises Inc. and Designs by
Jackie, she employs about 10
artists who create custom-made
accessories to enhance homes.
"I'm the person who goes out

to the homes, comes up with
the ideas and calls upon differ-
ent kinds of artists to carry
out a basic plan," explained
Schwartz.
"We have a lot of ways of tak-
ing designs from fabric swatch-
es and repeating patterning and
colors. We can do that through
wall art, table pottery, sofa pil-
lows and much more. Our clients
can get exact sizes and colors
that they might never find on
their own by going from one
store to another."
Working out of a studio in
Walled Lake, a contingent of
artists suspends some person-
al design instincts to create what
clients are seeking.
"My early training came from
a florist who employed me
part time while I was still in
high school," Schwartz recalled.
"When silk flowers started

becoming popular, I made silk
wedding bouquets, corsages and
boutonnieres and put them in a
friend's bridal salon.
"People started asking .me to
do arrangements for their
kitchens and other areas of their
homes, and my work grew. My
husband, a rep in the furniture
business, opened some doors for
me with furniture retailers, and
I set up operations in my base-
ment in 1985."
Before very long, there were
too many orders for her to han-
dle alone, and she was assisted
by her mother, Margaret Ungar;
her aunt, Yetta Meisel; and her
mother-in-law, Bea Schwartz.
Soon after that, she needed more
employees and was introduced

to Russian immigrant Klava
Tsalenko, who became manag-
er of the operation.
In 1992, Schwartz opened her
Walled Lake studio. By that
time, she was thinking beyond
flowers.
"We came up with the idea to
color pottery. I went into a fur-
niture store, noted the different
upholstery and made pottery
samples that would match," said
Schwartz.
Custom artwork came next
with figurative and abstract
paintings, sculpture in all ma-
terials and what she calls "jig-
saw art," three-dimensional
renderings that combine sec-
tions to complement furniture
and open spaces to sliow wall
segments.
"By gaining employees with
different kinds of artistic exper-
tise, we can make a variety of ac-
cessories," said Schwartz, who
has hired four additional Russ-
ian immigrants.
"The toughest part of my busi-
ness is staffing," said Schwartz.
"They have to be artists — but
not the kind who only can do
what they want to do. They have
to be willing to work within very
specific parameters."
"I would like to be an inspira-
tion for other women who
start businesses in their homes,"
she said. "I never gave up,
and now I have a thriving oper-
ation." E