(From left) Brandeis Short and Adrianne Bugg of Pillar & Peacock in their new Westhampton office (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Adrianne Bugg was at a crossroads. Before becoming one half of the interior design and architecture firm Pillar & Peacock, Bugg worked in the finance world. Craving a change of direction, she called one of her friends, interiors veteran Brandeis Short, to weigh her options about going back to school to study interior design. Two weeks later, they created an LLC together.
Since establishing the partnership in 2011, Pillar & Peacock has designed both residential and commercial spaces in Virginia, Alabama, New York, Tennessee, Florida, Illinois and the Bahamas. In 2015, their work on Mount Airy, a 250-year-old planation in Warsaw, was featured on HGTV’s “American Rehab: Virginia.”
Recently, the pair opened their third office in the heart of Richmond’s Westhampton neighborhood, in addition to their other locations in Irvington and Florence, Alabama.
Having both lived in Richmond on and off over the course of 10 years, it felt like a natural market to enter.
“It’s really neat to see the incorporation of modern and classic,” Bugg says. “[Richmond] feels like an older, classic city, but with the freedom to flex your creative skills. It doesn’t pin you into one style.”
With “pillar” being a symbol for architectural form and “peacock” being a symbol of ornate beauty, Bugg and Short strive to strike a balance of form and function in each of their designs to create products that mirror the interests of their clients while also remaining clean and classic.
This doesn’t stop the pair from experimenting with layering textures, patterns and fabrics to create bolder pieces as well. With an emphasis on process, Bugg and Short spend hours poring over imagery as they get to know their clients to ensure that the final design is something unique to them.
While fashion and architecture are big influences in Pillar & Peacock’s style, travel also plays a major role. “We want to do work all over,” Short says. The women say they hope to see their designs in cities such as San Francisco and Paris, but for now they look forward to re-discovering Richmond.
“We’re really excited to be here,” Bugg says.
