Designing & Decorating The Gilded Age: A Talk with Bob Shaw & Jenny Alex Nickason

Join Emmy Award–winning production designer Bob Shaw and set decorator Jenny Alex Nickason for a conversation about their work together on HBO’s The Gilded Age, which features the HRM’s historic home, Glenview, as the home of Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy). Shaw and Nickason will discuss their creative process, including how they prioritize historical accuracy while keeping their contemporary audience in mind. Followed by audience Q&A.

Season 4 of The Gilded Age premieres on HBO on Sunday, November 1. Learn more about the series here.

Bob Shaw is an Academy Award nominee and three-time Emmy Award–winning production designer of film and television. His work includes Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and The Wolf of Wall Street, Curtis Hanson’s Too Big To Fail, and Alan Taylor’s The Many Saints of Newark. Shaw was nominated for three Emmy Awards for HBO’s The Sopranos, and he received the Emmy for the pilot episode of AMC’s Mad Men, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, directed by Martin Scorsese, and the first Season HBO’s The Gilded Age. Shaw studied art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and started his career as a theatrical set designer. His extensive work with New York’s Public Theater resulted in his designing the Broadway revival of The Pirates of Penzance starring Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline, the original Broadway production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and numerous productions for Shakespeare in the Park.

Jenny Alex Nickason is a film and television set decorator and has been working in the industry in New York City since 1991. Nickason received an Emmy Award nomination as decorator for Season 3 of HBO’s The Gilded Age and returned for Season 4. She has worked on many notable film and television projects, including The Ice Storm, Birth, The Bourne Ultimatum, Julie and Julia, Men in Black 3, The Amazing Spiderman 2, Inside Llewyn Davis, Noah, The Walking Dead, and six seasons of the television show Bull.

Left: Bob Shaw. Right: Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy) in Glenview, courtesy of HBO.