Reggie Marshall, one half of an antiques and interior decorator team whose business spanned 35 years, died Wednesday.
He was 58, suffered from emphysema, and had been in poor health for some time, business partner Jim Clements said Friday.
"He never smoked a cigarette in his life," Clements said. "It just blindsided him."
Their business, Marshall Clements, will continue at Pleasant Ridge Town Center in Little Rock, Clements said.
Clements laughed at the business's origin, which he described as a yard sale in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1981.
"We just had a big yard sale, took that money and opened an antique business in Sheridan."
Marshall's parents owned a furniture store in Sheridan, South Park Furniture, where Marshall was the designer, the person who staged the furniture.
"We took a corner of that and opened up a little store on the highway," Clements said. "We did design work out of that. Weddings, caterings and anything else to get to know people. Our goal was to get to Little Rock, which we did about two years later."
The partners forged into the antiques market, Clements said.
"Vintage furniture and art was what we enjoyed as collectors and sellers and merchants," Clements said. "When we got to Little Rock we started to import from France, eastern Europe and Spain. We ended up getting a lot of things from Spain and Portugal.
"We also set up a Marshall Clements line of furniture we designed from antique pieces we had and out of our head, creative design."
Greg and Lee Hatcher of Little Rock and their extended family had numerous occasions to work with Marshall, Greg Hatcher said. Marshall decorated his house, his mother's house, and the houses of two of his children, Hatcher said.
"Reg was a very creative decorator," Hatcher said. "He could take one look at a room, and the next thing you knew, he had it painted right and the furniture was right. You just walked in and it was ready."
"We almost never wanted to change anything," Hatcher said. "Reg had great vision."
"He was fun, energetic, and a really tall guy, a big dude, 6-4 or 6-5. He had a presence when he came in." Actually, 6 feet 6 inches, Clements said.
Lee Hatcher said Marshall "worked from the heart. He listened to us and really tried to pull together the feeling and environment we wanted."
The Hatchers have five kids and a busy lifestyle, she said.
"Reggie and Jim helped us create the family environment we want, and that was really important."
The Marshall Clements partnership was an equal one, Clements said.
"We filled each other's voids, and would plan the house together."
Clements said Marshall was "a genius interior designer. He really had a knack for it."
"He was very intuitive. He could see the room finished in his mind before there was any furniture in there. He could do this from years of setting up the store.
"He was the most talented person I ever met. He could tell you where an ashtray was in a store of 16,000 square feet. He had an innate ability to pick the pieces and then place the pieces in the room. And I helped."
Marshall was "always stretching to find new outlets," Clements said, "new things to do, and new ways to use old things. And to try to match it with the person we were working for and still achieve a great composition aesthetically."
Metro on 12/03/2016