Interior Design

James Northcutt, interior designer whose work included major hotels and resorts worldwide. Founder of Los Angeles-based James Northcutt Associates, he was known for classic design and introducing tasteful residential looks to luxury hotels. He decorated such local showplaces as the renovated Hotel Bel-Air and Checkers Hotel in Los Angeles, the new Peninsula Beverly Hills and the Surf & Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach.

Concepts 4, an interior design firm formerly located in Inglewood, has purchased a 5,000-square-foot building at 1247 6th St., Santa Monica. The firm specializes in interior hotel design and is currently involved in the planning of the Sheraton Inn San Francisco Airport and the Brookview Country Club and the addition to the Sheraton Scottsdale Resort, both in Arizona. Redken Laboratories Redken Research Laboratories Inc.

Charles Seymour Nisbet, an interior designer who dedicated much of his life to helping recovering alcoholics, died Monday after a long battle with cancer. He was 70. Nisbet, who prided himself on 31 years as a sober alcoholic, moved to Camarillo four years ago from the Mar Vista area to be closer to his seven grandchildren, said his son, Jeffrey Owen Nisbet of Camarillo. While running his commercial design business, Charles S.

Question: My husband and I recently moved into a lovely, 1,800-square-foot home on a hill. We are not millionaires, but we are in need of an interior designer. How do we find one? L. HENDERSON, Mission Viejo Answer: Working with an interior designer can be a wonderful experience. However, selecting a designer requires research and planning. First, assess your needs. Think carefully about what you want to accomplish and establish a reasonable budget.

Orange Coast College has teamed up with five other schools to try out a regional interior-design program. Students at the campus, along with those at Saddleback, Fullerton, Mt. San Antonio, Long Beach City and Santa Monica colleges will be able to sign up this fall for interior-design classes at any of the six campuses. Interior-design programs are typically small and offer only a few classes each semester.

Timothy Clement has been appointed principal in charge of interior design at WWCOT, a Santa Monica-based architecture and interior design firm. Clement had been a principal at his own firm. * North Hollywood-based IPC Inc., a so-called hospitalist firm that works with physicians to manage patients' hospital care, has created a consulting division and has named Jay Arnold as the executive director in charge of the unit.

Gov. George Deukmejian last week signed a bill sponsored by the California Legislative Conference on Interior Design. The measure passed the Assembly by a 58-7 margin. The bill, SB 354, requires the Contractors' State License Board to fund a study on the necessity and feasibility of licensing interior designers. The results of the study are to be reported by Feb. 15.

Vincent Fourcade, 58, whose sumptuous Rothschildean style decorated the homes of celebrities and inspired a set in the film "Bonfire of the Vanities." Interior design by the firm he founded with his longtime partner, Robert Denning, became a symbol of wealth and status in Europe and the United States. They made wide use of damasks, cottons and chintz for fabrics, velvet wallpaper, tasseled curtains, fringed lampshades and French furniture.

Dorothy A. Peterson, 81, an interior designer for more than half a century who served as president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers and was a founding member of the Foundation of Interior Designers Education Research. Miss Peterson was also a past president of the local chapter of the Philanthropic Education Organization and helped design its retirement homes in Alhambra and San Jose. She had her own firm in Westwood dating from 1970.

What type of interior designer writes a book about television? Someone who once believed those weren't characters on the tube but real people. Someone like Diana Friedman. "When I was watching television as a kid, my older sister used to tell me that if I could see them, then they could see me too," says Friedman, 33, a freelance writer who, as a child in Manhattan, fixated on "The Brady Bunch" kids as well as their four-bedroom, three-bath California split-level house.