Renowned for her discerning eye and playful interiors, designer and gallerist Amy Lau recently passed away following a battle with cancer at the age of 56. “A true visionary and inspiration, Amy dedicated her life to creating warm and inviting spaces, touching countless lives with her passion and unique style,” her namesake firm shared in an Instagram post announcing her passing. “We will forever cherish her legacy and the impact she made in the design world.”
Always aiming to create spaces that reflect artful living, Lau’s gallery in the New York Design Center in Manhattan serves as an extension of her aesthetic style, featuring a collection of curated ceramics, glass, metal, textiles, and furniture by both rarified and widely known designers.
As for her design projects, Lau often turned to nature to create visual intrigue and harmonious balance, heavily influenced by the colors and textures of the desert scapes in her native Arizona. Red clay canyons and childhood adventures collecting rocks with her mineralogist grandmother led to a lasting love of color and natural materials, Lau shared in an earlier interview with Interior Design. “I flirted with the idea of being an archaeologist,” she said then. “My grandmother was a painter, mineralogist, and an ornithologist, with amazing rock and plant gardens. As I child, we would walk the landscape, on the hunt for the perfect stone for her collages. I often channel her when creating collections for clients.”
Growing up in an artful home also left a lasting impression. Her parents enjoyed acquiring paintings from the Taos Society of Artists and she often visited local museums and galleries with her father. In this way, art as much as design has guided Lau’s career, propelling it forward. She earned a master’s degree in fine and decorative art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, gaining a deep understanding of art history, design movements, and the nuances of curation, which she then put to use.
Amy Lau. Photography courtesy of Amy Lau Design.
From directing Thomas O’Brien’s Aero Gallery to serving as design director at the Lin-Weinberg Gallery in New York City and founding her own firm—not to mention co-founding the buzzy fair Design Miami, then called Design.05—Lau has shaped the design industry with her flawless taste and love for collectible design. In 2011, her firm published a monograph, detailing her rich array of interiors. Adding to the numerous awards under her belt, Lau also earned an honorary doctorate from the New York School of Interior design and became the first designer invited to produce an exhibition for New York’s Salon Art + Design fair. There, she created an installation titled “The New Nouveau,” which showcased a living room with natural forms, curved structures and rich materiality drawing that reflected the nuances of the art nouveau movement.
Beloved by friends and colleagues, many tributes to Lau’s creativity and creative prowess were posted to social media following news of her passing. “Amy Lau’s enormous talent was only outshined by her beautiful spirit and her wide open heart… She will be dearly missed by an entire industry,” shares Editor in Chief Cindy Allen.
Explore Interiors and Designs By Amy Lau
A living room in One York in TriBeCa, New York designed by Amy Lau. Photography by Thomas Loof.
Amy Lau created a tropical living room for the Kips Bay Show Decorator House in 2007. Photography by Kris Tamburello.
2009 Kips Bay Show Decorator House staircase landing designed by Amy Lau. Photography by Kris Tamburello.
Advertisement for S. Harris featuring Amy Lau.