Before Martha Stewart, there was Chuck Williams (original) (raw)
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Before Martha Stewart, there was Chuck Williams
By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — At first glance, the tidy antique-filled apartment with sweeping bay views does not appear to house relics from a cultural revolution.
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| Williams-Sonoma |
A simple white couch and chair face a coffee table obscured by stacks of books on gardening, picnics and chefs. A gleaming brass samovar recalls a sojourn in Russia. A hulking 16th-century wooden dresser announces the resident's Anglophile passions.
But step into Chuck Williams' kitchen and the wares do far more than jog memories of travels past.
His old KitchenAid mixer? Williams — who founded Williams-Sonoma in 1956 — was first to persuade the Hobart company to make its mammoth machine in a counter-friendly size.
The Cuisinart chopper? The Dualit toaster? The Waring blender? Check, check, check. Williams, 88, believed that each of these items needed a home in American kitchens, all during an emancipated era when American women were hitting the workplace and TV dinners were all the rage.
"You could say I'm a compulsive looker. And when I found things I liked, I convinced whoever was making it or selling it that my store should have it, too," Williams says.
"And I only bought what I liked."
If you're looking for a secret to success, that's his in seven words.
In the beginning, Williams was a 41-year-old building contractor in the nearby country town of Sonoma. A passionate chef, he opened a hardware store that quickly became a showcase for his obsession with European cooking utensils, which were all but impossible to find in a pre-Martha Stewart domestic-crazed nation.
The Williams-Sonoma phenomenon in a paragraph: In 1958, the store moved to downtown San Francisco, where Williams wowed the ladies who lunched. In 1978, he attracted a buyer named W. Howard Lester, who took the chain national while Williams focused on product. The $2.3 billion empire now includes Pottery Barn and other such brands.
"He's a national treasure," says Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet. "(The late cooking guru) James Beard once told me, 'There was a time when if you wanted a real French tart pan, you had to go to Chuck to get it.' He just had an eye for quality at a time when Americans really didn't consider themselves interested in food."
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ATTENTION, CHEF SHOPPERS | |
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| For nearly a half-century, Williams- Sonoma founder Chuck Williams, 88, has worked to make kitchens the domain of the cultured chef. His must-have tools: A sharp, sturdy, comfortable- in-the-hand paring knife : "Indispensable for quickly preparing vegetables or fruit." Cotton kitchen towels: "Instant drying with no bits of cotton left on dishes, pans or glass." Sturdy tongs: "To turn strips of meat or vegetables as they cook. Find what works for you. How many times have you found tongs uncomfortable in the hand and impossible to use?" Wooden spoons : "There is no better tool for stirring smoothly." Quality pepper grinder: "Look for a mill with super-hardened steel and finely shaped grinding surfaces." A silicone spatula: "Withstands heat; best for scraping food from bowls." Stainless-steel whisk: "Essential for creating emulsions or beating air into egg yolks or cream." Highly absorbent sponge: "Keeping preparation surfaces clean makes cooking easier and more enjoyable." |
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Williams insists he did not open his store with visions of a big business. "It was just my passion," he says, nibbling on scones and sipping Earl Grey tea off white china.
"Now look around. It's really only the older folks who know that things were different before. We didn't have lemon zesters and butter pots."
Williams surveys his modest kitchen, packed as it is with implements both simple and sophisticated. "I guess looking at all this stuff," he says, "you can tell what I've been doing for 50 years."
And continue to do. Though slightly hard of hearing, Williams otherwise is a spry octogenarian who remains the company vice chairman. Just a few months ago he helped open New York's flagship Williams-Sonoma store by autographing the signature cookbooks that he continues to edit.
But most days find him here, surrounded by antiques and artifacts that actually seem to comfort him. Williams never married, and his deep affection for dogs — a German shepherd named Bill was the first store's mascot — is evidenced by a collection of oil paintings with a canine theme.
Though the eclectic nature of the apartment might make a decorator shudder, Williams is adamant that true style comes from the heart.
"For me, a comfortable home is a place that houses a collection of things that have attracted you and that can remind you of the life you've lived," he says. "Have confidence in your own taste."
Williams' food-prep fetish is echoed everywhere. Think Upstairs Downstairs. The thigh-high cylinder holding up the samovar? An 18th-century plate warmer. A square wooden cabinet on the wall? A similarly old knife box. The round hewn walnut bowl with mallet? An antique French nut cracker.
Like any well-assembled museum, this one is packed with stories that Williams is eager to tell.
Take the porcelain cow-shaped creamer sitting next to his scone. Williams recalls the 1960s trip to France when he spied the whimsical piece — only it was covered with colored pieces and featured the city's crest on the cow's flank.
"I said to someone that if I could only just get it in white, I could probably sell it in the United States," he says. "Well, they said that was impossible; they were only made as local souvenirs.
"Well, I got them in white. We sold thousands right away."
Picking up a white soufflé dish, he points to the ruffled texture of its sides. "That's the only way a soufflé dish should come," he says, explaining that design's origins date back centuries, when servants would wrap hot clay soufflé pots in pleated white cloth.
There are more stories in the bookcase, where you'll find Freud on Food along with myriad cookbooks such as a disintegrating copy of the White House Cookbook from 1887 and Modern Cooking for Private Families, published in London in 1861.
"You know, it's only recently that cookbooks actually gave you measurements for ingredients or ideas on how you would actually chop or prepare something," Williams says with a chuckle, settling back into an easy chair with his Earl Grey. "Back then, you had to figure it all out on your own."
Until along came Chuck.