Thomas Dennis Williams

THE HARTFORD COURANT Nov. 27, 1993
Constance R. Williams, a noted fine arts dealer and a Broadway fashion and costume designer during the 1930s, died Friday at home in Litchfield. She was 89.

The cause of death was cancer, a family member said.

For about 40 years, Mrs. Williams and her husband, Thomas D. Williams, managed their own business, T.D. & C.R. Williams Antiques, in Litchfield, one of New England's best-known fine arts dealerships.

She and her husband specialized in rare and early American furnishings, paintings, pewter and fabric. Pieces they sold are part of museum collections on the East Coast, and they were frequent exhibitors at shows in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, White Plains, N.Y., and Kent.

Earlier in her life, Mrs. Williams was apprenticed for seven years under Broadway designer Norman Bel Geddes. She was regarded during the 1930s as one of America's leading young designers.

Then in her 20s, she fashioned costumes for such luminaries as Jimmy Durante, Lauren Bacall, Ethel Merman and Katharine Hepburn. Inspired by her worldwide travels, she made costumes for Broadway hits, including "The Band Wagon," "The Cat and the Fiddle," and "Red, Hot and Blue!" Mrs. Williams also created commercial designs, including cellophane dresses for models displaying the latest in lingerie at a New York department store.

She met her husband, then a runner for a Wall Street firm, while designing the masks for "Three's a Crowd," which featured Libby Holman, during the Depression. They were married in 1937 and moved to Branford. Mrs. Williams left theater a couple of years later to raise a family.

The Williamses moved to Litchfield in 1940. They got started in the antiques business in 1946, when they purchased a late-1770s salt box house and moved it to the town's tree-lined North Street, attracting the attention of neighbors. They restored and refinished the house in early American decor and sold it.

Mrs. Williams became well-known for her expertise in early American and Engish furnishings and fabrics, while her husband became one of the country's experts on American pewter ware.

She was the daughter of Constance Baillie Ripley and Louis A. Ripley. Her husband, a Litchfield selectman in the 1950s, died in 1980.

She leaves a daughter, Constance Rose Budelis of Litchfield; a son, Thomas Dennis Williams, a staff writer for The Courant, of Litchfield; a brother, S. Dillon Ripley, retired secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, of Litchfield; and two grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Litchfield on Dec. 4 at 2 p.m.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Constance B. Ripley Land Trust, a public wildlife foundation, c/o Perley H. Grimes Jr., Cramer & Anderson, West Street, Litchfield, CT 06759