Elvis bought Graceland in 1957. Over the years, he put a lot of time, money and effort into decorating it with the best. He added a pool table to a basement room in 1960, and in 1974 decided to decorate the room around it. He enjoyed researching his own decorating, and got the idea for the fabric-covered walls from a picture of a 18th-century billiards room. He shared the concept with the interior designer he was working with, Bill Eubanks.
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Bill purchased the 100-percent cotton material at a local store which specialized in custom furniture. It took three men 10 days to cut, pleat and hang the nearly 350 yards of fabric.
It is hung by tension rods along the walls and stapled in various places to the ceiling. There was enough left to upholster the room’s two sofas.
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Eclectic may be a mild term for the room’s overall affect! The billiard lamps above the table were custom-made by Laukhuff Stained Glass in Memphis. There are three Louis XV style chairs in one corner, an Asian-style brass-over-wood campaign trunk on a rattan stand, a Toulouse-Lautrec poster of a can-can girl, Indian accent pillows, and two chairs in 1970’s gold wide-wale corduroy. Whew! But clearly, the most distinctive effect is the fabric treatment.
Elvis was an able pool player, but he was known to move a ball to his favor from time to time, probably as a joke or to see who in his entourage might challenge him about it. His favorite games were 8-ball and rotation. To this day, a corner tear remains in the pool table’s felt top, reportedly from a friend’s attempt at a trick shot.
