My good friend Peter Leonard, who has died aged 69 of most cancers, was a designer of each visionary and conventional sensibilities. He loved large success along with his firm Peter Leonard Associates (now Peter Leonard and Firm) from 1980 onwards, working from a studio on Poland Avenue, Soho, in central London. Overseeing his staff of 30, he created vibrant inside and product designs for residential and industrial shoppers.
Peter’s ethos was catholic in its strategy, encompassing interiors and structure. He was on the forefront of a brand new wave of consultancies reshaping British design within the Nineteen Eighties and early 90s. Innovation and downside fixing have been key to his work for shoppers that included Harrods, WH Smith, Liberty, Jasper Conran, Laura Ashley, Subsequent, the Virgin megastore in Paris, EMI, Ideally suited Customary, the Science Museum and the Pure Historical past Museum. He additionally established Soho Design, a way of life retailer on Kings Highway in Chelsea, promoting furnishings and equipment.
Born in Soham, Cambridgeshire, to Peggy (nee Hobbs) and Derrick Leonard, a butcher, Peter was educated at Soham grammar college. He explored his love of the US as a highschool trade scholar in Gridley, Illinois, with the American Discipline Service Program, sustaining a lifelong connection along with his “American household”, the Campbells. Peter took a level in 3D design at Kingston College of Artwork in south-west London, then returned to Illinois as an MA scholar within the theatre design division at Northwestern College, working as a educating fellow.
It was there that our paths first crossed. Even then, his theatrical work displayed an agile and ingenious thoughts far surpassing fellow college students and college.
After finishing an MA in Chicago, Peter returned to London and labored briefly in Terence Conran’s studio. Supremely assured, he rapidly shaped his personal studio. His coaching in 3D design supplied a neat technique to translate his concepts into substance. He was a superb draughtsman and artist. For well-heeled shoppers and shut associates, alike, he was a magical useful resource. By his creativeness, grand properties have been rendered intimate and bijou areas morphed into small palaces, reflecting his childhood fascination with historic concepts mixed with a modernist aesthetic.
Peter’s inside and backyard design proficiency bore fruit in his personal properties within the UK and continental Europe. In 2012 he returned to Soham, the place he was thrilled to lastly purchase a Georgian manor home within the excessive avenue that he had admired since childhood. Envisaged as a weekend getaway, as a substitute it grew to become a house for him and his husband, Martin Mathurin.
Throwing himself into Soham neighborhood life, he joined the city council and was an enormous supporter of the native Viva Arts Group. His village legacy additionally survives in his tree-planting scheme on the excessive avenue, the place he may typically be seen in his dressing-gown watering his beloved tree undertaking simply after daybreak on a sizzling summer season morning.
Peter is survived by Martin, whom he met in 1998 and married in 2022, and by his brothers, Tim and Mark.
