Peter Todd Mitchell, painter and writer, lived in Europe and the United States. Mitchell exhibited at such famous galleries as the Hanover Gallery in London and the Carstairs in New York City. For many years he supplemented his income as a painter by creating textile and wallpaper designs. Mitchell's early years were spent in the company of the fashionable and famous surrounding his beautiful playwright mother, who was twice married to the great impressario Leon Leonidoff, Senior Producer of the Radio City Music Hall. His travels with them and his associations at an early age with a theatrical and literary crowd gave him a taste for the exotic. After pursuing art studies at Yale University, and the Accademia de las Bellas Artes in Mexico city, he spent the war years in Naval Intelligence (he spoke five foreign languages, including Russian). He then went to Paris in 1947 to pursue a painting career and had his first exhibition at Jean Cocteau's Galerie Morihien. In 1948, the noted fashion designer Omar Kiam came to see Mitchell's paintings, noticed a watercolor done in a loose, fluid style, and thought that the technique could be used in fabric design. Mitchell did ten designs for him. With Kiam's advice and the technical help of Bianchini-Férier craftsmen, Mitchell produced a small collection. He later went on to work with Norman Norell, Adele Simpson and Claude Staron. Mitchell considered himself the artistic heir of the late Christian Bérard, an artist whose influence on French fashion (Chanel, Schiaparelli) lasted well over a decade. He remarked that he used to get his ideas from Greek vases, Byzantine mosaics, Renaissance boiserie, Etruscan frescoes and Gothic stained glass windows. He also created patterns looking at nature: the sun hitting sidewalks, bridge struts, tree branches and flowers. He eventually attracted the attention of the American wallpaper companies, and by the early nineteen fifties, designed wallpapers and coordinated fabrics for the prestigious New York firm of Katzenbach and Warren. Commissions followed for a succession of distinguished firms, including Scalamandré, Louis Bowen, Van Luit, Walls Today, Piazza Prints and Coles (England). His designs are both abstract and representational, ranging form historical scenes (Goya, Chinese watercolors, Indian miniatures) to everyday scenes (Parisian streets, Venetian canals). He had an extensive career in the wallpaper business. After moving to Spain in the mid-fifties, he continued a lifelong habit of travels to exotic places, including India, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Sardinia, and North Africa. These trips furnished him with decorative and architectural motifs which he used in both painting and commercial projects. By the sixties, he was collaborating with his mother on various travel and food projects and succeeded her as a full-time GOURMET writer in 1978. He also wrote and illustrated two historical novels and many short stories. He continued to exhibit bi-annually in either London or New York. His wallpaper and textile designs, as well as his watercolors and paintings, are in thirty museums in America and Europe. Peter Todd Mitchell died suddenly in Sitges, a small town south of Barcelona. The Peter and Fanny Todd Mitchell archive is held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center Boston University