Christopher S. Hyland, whose life encompasses design from textiles to town planning, civic and foreign affairs, commerce, politics, culture, charity, faith, friendships, and sport, was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He founded Christopher Hyland Incorporated, a fine textile, rug, furniture, trimmings, window hardware, and upholstery firm for residential, hospitality, and contract design clients located in the D & D Building, NYC, and several other design centers. He is CEO, Partner, and Design Director of Weld County Land Investors, which in part comprises Hylandtown, a new urbanist, omni-urbanist community in planning on an 836-acre site 30 minutes north of Denver, Colorado.

National publications have featured Hyland textiles and his furniture designs. Hyland fabrics, works of art as he sees them, are, or have been, chosen by discerning decorators, designers, interior designers, and architects for worldwide projects, including the White House, Moulton Rouge, the Metropolitan Opera, Carlyle Hotel, Tiffany’s, Tom Ford, Harrods, Harry Winston, the Z Club Hudson Yards, Carbondale Restaurant Miami, San Anton Palace, Windsor Castle, Saint Patrick’s, Mount Athos, and in the residences of astute clients including Mohamed Ali, Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky, Sharon Stone, Madonna, Tom Clancy, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Donna Summer, Carl Icahn, Stephen Cohen, Bob Diamond and numerous others. He is fond of designing furniture, particularly moving parts: ships, waves, clocks, and music boxes. He founded one of the earliest digital shelter magazines, Hyland Life, which has produced over 9,000 digital pages partnering with ICFF, among others. The Hyland Award, crafted by P. E. Guerin, is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to all aspects of design; the most recent recipient is Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, in recognition of Her Majesty’s delft fusion of civic leadership and life in design.

Hyland was Deputy National Political Director of a winning American Presidential Campaign and served as Deputy Assistant Political Director of a Presidential Transition during which he Chaired and or originated eleven Presidential Transition Conferences on, among other subjects, Design and Manufacturing Towards an Inclusive America, the first such conference in Transition history. In the winning presidential candidate’s autobiography, he credits Hyland for contributing significantly to his winning the general election.

Hyland first proposed and lobbied to create the first-ever, open-to-all USA National Design Awards, which the Smithsonian now presents. Suggestions emanating from the Housing and Homelessness, Indian Country, Eastern Europe, and Irish Conferences he chaired altered history. In tandem with Ambassadors Siddhartha Ray and Kanwal Sibal, Hyland contributed, from the American side of the globe, to set the groundwork for a major change in USA and India relations. Indian television interviewed him during celebrations of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Indian Independence. A Saint Patrick for Peace in Ireland awardee, the Irish Voice describes Hyland as the “Unsung Hero of the Irish Peace Process,” and Senator Mitchell describes him as “the introducer in chief.” In recognition of his efforts leading up to Kosovo Independence, Hyland was awarded honorary doctorates from Prizren University and the University of Business and Technology, Pristina. UBT established the Hyland Center for Global Studies, resulting in Hyland giving talks ‘In Defense of the Kosovo Constitution’ at LUMSA, Rome, the Sorbonne, Paris, Hamilton Hall Salem, and presently at Free University Brussels and Harvard. The Kosovo Government presented him The Order of Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, and the Government of Albania, awarded him a Knight of Skanderbeg. The cities of Pristina and Prizren have presented him with declarations of appreciation. In recognition of his Ukraine credit union support, Hyland holds an Honorary Doctorate from Kiev Economic University. Notre Dame University, Lebanon, presented Hyland with an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his attempts to assist Lebanon. Hyland is a Knight of Malta and a Knight of Columbus. He has honorary doctorates from Savannah College of Art and Design and the New York School of Interior Design. Serving for several years as Chairperson of Holiday House, New York City, Hyland helped raise funds for the Evelyn H. Lauder Center at Sloan Kettering to amialorite women’s breast cancer, and he has assisted in numerous other charitable efforts. He was Honorary Consul for the Republic of Malta in Rhode Island for several years. The Chief of USA Mission Malta awarded Hyland the Outstanding Achievement Medal. The Government of Malta appointed Hyland a Special Commissioner to begin the process of reinvigorating interaction with the Order of Malta, affording Hyland the realization of his childhood dream to animate the return of the Knights of Malta to Fort San Angelo, which was achieved.

He has commissioned works of art now in or on loan to the Vatican Museums, The American Museum in Britain, the collection of King Charles III, The Peabody Essex Museum, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, and the New Britain Museum of American Art, the latter two his our photography. Hyland and his partner Constantino are sponsors of the ‘On This Ground: Being and Belonging in America’ exhibition at PEM, which is dedicated to exploring the interaction between Native Americans and European Colonists. He has given talks to the National Association of Civil Engineers, The National Association of Non-Profit Organizations, the National Association of Indian American Organizations, and the National Association of Korean American Organizations, among numerous others, and he has written numerous commentaries and articles.

Hyland attended parochial, public, and both New England and Swiss boarding schools, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and he spent 18 months in graduate schools attending 24 courses in, among other subjects, law, theology, the history of early church architecture, and neurology. He proudly states that his education began at Salem University, once the site of the Normal School where he attended kindergarten.

At sixteen, he traveled with a fifteen-year-old friend, Robert Garfunkel, behind the Iron Curtain; later, he hiked to Everest base camp with Tanzing Norgay without a person in sight, and he sailed to fifty Greek islands, submitting many of them. Early in life, extensive travel informed much of his insights. Early mentors or informative personalities whom he knew or met include, among numerous others, his loving civic-minded parents: his Father, Samuel Francis, a New England lawyer, and his Mother, Patricia Ellen, a sculptor, Julia Brambilla, Samuel V. Chamberlain, Ruth Ellen Patton Totten, Peter J. Gomes, L. Francis Herreshoff, Henry Benson, Suzy of Kibbutz Ein Dor, Dean, later Bishop Kristen Stendahl, President Ibrahim Rugova, President Kennedy, Carroll Quigley, Father Richard McSorley, Christine Barras, Indira Gandhi, Lt. Gen. Bill and Bette Quinn, Barry Goldwater, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Senator Kevin Harrington, Mary Crist Fleming, Ambassadors Henry Cabot Lodge, Harold Tittman, John Moors Cabot, George F. Reinhardt, Vincent deRoulet and William J. Stoessel, Interim President Alexander Kerensky, Lt. Gen. Sir John Glubb Pasha, Lev E. Dobriansky, and Martin Luther King, who, when Hyland asked him how he could help, replied, “ look evil in the eye and give it no succor.” Having promised Maestro Arthur Fiedler that, when he grew up, he would commission a Mass in concert just like Mozart’s, Hyland commissioned Maltese Maestro Joseph Vella to compose what Vella insisted on naming the Hyland Peace Mass, which has been performed several times, including at Saint Patrick’s New York City, and most recently celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Kosovo Independence and at the Pantheon in Rome. He is a Proprietor of both the Salem and Boston Athenaeums. A collector of photography, mostly nineteenth-century Hudson School paintings, and African art, his photography collection has been exhibited in three museums, most recently at the American Museum Bath, UK, in honor of the London Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee. A skier, sailor, and traveler, Constantino and Christopher reside in New York City.