What's In a Name?

By: Colleen Daugherty, Owner Devon Downs Design

Devon Downs Design started taking shape in my mind more than 15 years ago, long before it became a company. I once had another designer ask me, “Where did you get that name? It’s dumb. Why do you call your company that and not your own name?” I knew exactly why, but the question still stung a little. In the design world, so many designers name their companies after themselves. My own mother did. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it never felt right for me. I wanted the name of my company to mean something beyond me. I wanted it to feel sentimental, classic and nostalgic. I wanted it to represent the way I believe a home should feel; deeply connected to the people who live there.

“Devon” comes from Devon, Pennsylvania, along Philadelphia’s Main Line, where so much of my story began. Before my husband and I moved our family to Ohio, the last home we renovated was in a neighborhood called Devon Downs. We poured so much love and sweat equity into that house. It was where we raised our babies and where so many of our family memories were made.

Just down the road was the Devon Horse Show, a place that has always felt magical to me. I went there as a child, later brought my own children, and every year it somehow felt like stepping back in time. The horses, the riders, the old traditions and the county fair atmosphere felt wholesome, classic and almost untouched by time. And then there is “Downs.”

The word refers to open meadowland, the kind of place where horses can be turned out after they have been ridden. It is where they can refresh, revive and rest. I have always loved that image because it feels so connected to the way we live. Life can be hard. We move through work, family, responsibility, stress and the constant pressure of keeping up. We are all, at times, a little “ridden hard and put up wet.” Home should be our own version of the Downs, the meadow. Somewhere beautiful and comfortable enough to restore us, refresh us and prepare us to go back out into the world the next day.

That philosophy has become a huge part of the way I design. I don't simply want a room to look beautiful. I want the people living in it to feel something. I want home to feel like a refuge, a haven, a little bit of luxury and, most importantly, a place of peace. But there is another part of the Devon Downs story that means even more to me. Before becoming an interior designer, I spent many years as a physician assistant in gynecologic oncology. It was incredibly meaningful work, but it also carried an enormous amount of grief. I cared for women going through some of the hardest moments of their lives, and over the years I lost many patients I deeply cared about.

One of those women was Dana Antonio. Dana and I were peers in many ways. We were close in age and in similar stages of life, and she was one of the kindest human beings I have ever met. And somehow, of all places, our stories also connected through the Devon Horse Show. Dana worked with the Horse Show and helped oversee safety alongside the crews and local police officers who kept everyone there safe. During the years I cared for her through her ovarian cancer and BRCA diagnosis, she would give us tickets to the Horse Show. When I lost Dana, she was still so young. Her death affected me in a way I don 't think I fully understood at the time. It changed the way I looked at my own life. After years of working around serious illness and loss, I had absorbed an incredible amount of grief. I began to realize that I was carrying that sadness with me outside of work and that, without really knowing it, it was affecting me and the people I loved. Dana's loss made me think very seriously about how I wanted to spend the rest of my own life.

Design had always been something I loved. Eventually, I took the leap of faith and changed careers. So when it came time to name the company, Devon Downs Design wasn't simply a nice-sounding name. It carried my childhood, the Main Line, the Devon Horse Show, the house where my husband and I raised our babies, the horses that have brought me peace throughout my life, and a woman whose loss profoundly changed the direction of mine.

That is why the name means so much to me. And maybe that is also why I never wanted my own name on the door. If Devon Downs Design grows and other people become part of it, I want them to feel that the name belongs to something bigger than one person. I never wanted the company to exist simply to give me credit. Because I think if you're fortunate enough to create something that brings beauty, comfort and peace into other people's lives, that should be what is left behind. Not necessarily your name. The beauty. The feeling. The refuge. That's Devon Downs Design.