Home for the Holidays

When veteran designer Jim Marvin hangs his creative touches on the Cheekwood mansion this holiday season, the project will be a dazzling topper on a brightly decorated career that has crisscrossed back and forth around the globe like so much gleaming tinsel zigzagging up a Christmas tree. And if that simile sounds unusually ornamental, remember that we’re referring to a creative entrepreneur who decorated the White House for two decades, used President James Monroe’s vermeil vessels to prepare a table for Queen Elizabeth II, and currently markets his signature 9-foot-tall Christmas tree kit through Neiman Marcus for $22,000, plus shipping.

“I’ve had a wonderful life,” Jim says, with just the type of George Bailey-flavored gratitude you’d hope for when reflecting on a career that spans eight decades, leads from Tennessee to both coasts of the U.S. and countries across the world, and includes dreamy details, like marrying his high school sweetheart and building a global brand to hand to a second generation of family entrepreneurs.

To think, young Jim only hoped to get as far as New York or Los Angeles, like the buses that traveled Highway 100 in front of his childhood home in Linden, Tenn. 

In helping with the 10th anniversary of Cheekwood’s Holiday LIGHTS, Jim is pulling together experiences from his storied career, including reuniting with Laura Dowling, former chief floral designer for the White House. Dowling’s decoration of the mansion, with the theme “Gifts of the Garden,” will include a custom limited-edition ornament by the Jim Marvin Collection. (Jim once partnered with The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston to create a line of ornaments celebrating Jacqueline Kennedy’s “The White House Years.”) 

The World Through Rose-Colored Glass

Jim says he “got into the business by buying a business” when he purchased a gift shop in Linden in 1957, selling flowers and china. He worked hard, took classes and traveled to train his design eye. Looking back, he thinks maybe the time he spent alone as a child, playing outside with his dog and observing nature, taught him to see the world in a way that now guides his inimitable use of vibrant color and floral motifs.

Jim sold the Linden shop in 1960 and was soon drafted to design projects in New York City. He and Faye, his wife and business partner for 49 years, moved to New Jersey and began traveling the world in search of fresh design elements. Jim sourced products from Europe, India and Asia, where he identified millinery accessories from elegant hat design that could be reworked and manufactured for home decor.

“To go into Beijing in 1978 was a big deal,” remembers Jim, who sometimes paid for his travels by bringing back oil paintings on canvases rolled in his luggage to sell to decorators in the U.S. In 1977, he became a member of the American Institute of Floral Designers, with the AIFD designation after his name.

In 1980, Jim launched the Jim Marvin Collection brand, creating products and design concepts to prepare holiday displays for icons such as The Greenbrier, The Hay-Adams, the Biltmore and The Breakers. Among his far-flung expeditions, Jim traveled to the Czech Republic to source handmade glass ornaments, Japan to decorate department stores and demonstrate American style, and Hong Kong to decorate The Landmark complex.

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Jim’s unique products, style and colorways caught the eye of legendary White House designer Nancy Clarke, who recruited him to participate in the seasonal dressing of the White House. Between 1997 and 2017, Jim was an annual visitor to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., designing for holidays, the millennium and the 2001 inaugural transition. 

“I got to do wonderful things because of the White House,” says Jim, who received the Tennessee Legend Award from the Tennessee State Florists Association in 2016. 

A few of those wonderful things included using James Monroe’s gilded bronze containers to prepare centerpieces for Queen Elizabeth II’s state visit, lighting a four-story Marshall Field’s department store Christmas tree with presidential daughter Caroline Kennedy, and decorating the White House in silver and gold for the millennium. 

“The Clintons left the White House at 11:30 p.m., and we all gathered on the roof in time for the fireworks and saw the new millennium come in from the top of the White House,” he remembers. “It was a nice bonus for working so hard. That was a very special thing for me.” 

At home in Tennessee, Jim decorated the Executive Residence for the holidays during Gov. Bill Haslam’s two terms, and he designed the Tennessee Waltz fundraiser for the Tennessee State Museum for a decade.

A Generational Shift

After selling his Jim Marvin Enterprises inventory and distribution facilities in Dickson, Tenn., in 2016, Jim now lives on his farm in Linden, back home on Highway 100. His son, designer Phil Marvin, and daughter, designer Allison Furr, oversee the licensing relationship with California-based Winward International, which markets the Jim Marvin Collection’s richly colored translucent glass ornaments nationally and around the world through retailers like Neiman Marcus and Frontgate. 

Most likely, no one is more surprised by the global extent and staying power of the Jim Marvin Collection’s success than Jim Marvin himself. “I thought those buses would take me to Los Angeles and New York,” he says, remembering the marquees that rolled past his childhood home in Linden. “I’ve done that, plus 30 countries. I don’t know how I can be so lucky.”