No interior decorator's impersonal touch for Hilary Knight's home-sweet-home.

Every available space in the artist's cluttered East Side apartment is packed with art, photographs, books, records - the trappings of a life that began in Roslyn and has been concentrated in Manhattan, site of the Plaza Hotel and its most famous resident, Eloise, the precocious, 6-year-old, bow-topped terror Knight created to illustrate Kay Thompson's whimsical books.

It's been a life augmented by plenty of travel - with his parents, Clayton Knight and Katharine Sturges, themselves commercial artists, and later with Eloise, who was whisked off to Paris and Moscow in subsequent books, thoroughly researched, of course, by the author and her artist. "Getting bored is not allowed," Eloise maintained; words to live by. Knight also is no stranger to points a bit closer east: He's had a memorabilia- stuffed weekend retreat in East Hampton for decades.

Currently, selections from the collections in both of the artist's residences have been transferred to the Giraffics Gallery in East Hampton, where an exhibition, "A Family of Artists," opens July 17 runs through August The 73- year-old has had a prolific career beyond Eloise (he now works for Vanity Fair magazine), and examples from it, as well as from his parents' oeuvre, will be included in the show.

Two drawings in particular - a 1926 New Yorker magazine cover of a flapper- esque figure done by both his parents (she did the sketch, he the woodcut), and his mother's fashion illustration of a coy little girl - provided germs of inspiration for Eloise, Knight said recently as he packed up items for the exhibition. Much of his mother's work shows a heavy Japanese influence. His father, a World War I pilot, concentrated on aviation subjects. A few sketches by his late brother, Clayton Knight Jr., also will be on display.

For those who prefer to stray no further than Knight's famous pink, black and white Eloise illustrations, there will be copies for sale of new editions of the first two books, reissued last spring by Simon & Schuster. Knight will have pen in hand for autographs July 17 and July 31.

At the height of Eloise's popularity, there were four books chronicling her madcap adventures with her pug, Weenie, and her turtle, Skipperdee, a television show, a record, a line of children's clothing and a namesake room at the Plaza.

But Thompson - an actress as well as a writer, and increasingly eccentric - began to jealously guard the image of her literary offspring, whom many, including Knight, believe was really her alter ego. She alone controlled the rights to Eloise, and when she died last year at 88 only the original 1955 book remained in print. The Eloise Room at the Plaza had long ago disappeared, although Knight's famous portrait of sassiness personified remains in the hotel's lobby.

The first book, appended with a "scrapbook" about its creators, is now titled "The Absolutely Essential Eloise." "Eloise in Paris," published in 1957, is also back. "Eloise at Christmastime" will be reissued in October with six pages of new drawings by Knight - "a very strange experience to go back in time some 40 years and try to draw the same way," he says. And next year, "Eloise in Moscow" returns.

Knight says the final manuscript, tentatively titled "Eloise Takes a Bath" but never published, may join the others. And he sees more: an ABC Eloise book, a film (under negotiation) and Eloise "merchandise" available by Christmas at FAO Schwarz.

Knight suspects Thompson is "probably more than twirling" in her grave at such prospects. He feigns a shudder. "I hate to think of Kay Thompson in a furious rage." Because he'd been among those who'd campaigned "to do things to keep Eloise in motion," he laments, his relationship with Thompson "had totally deteriorated" by the end of her life. "This was her idea, not mine," he says, still believing that "she was an extraordinary woman. We don't meet many people like that. She was also horrendously difficult." Nevertheless, he insists that "Kay must have known what she was doing" by not prohibiting her heirs from re-introducing Eloise into the cultural mainstream.

In a strange way, by having limited access for so long, Thompson may have piqued the public's interest.

Not, of course, that Eloise had ever disappeared. The original book has always sold well. "Kay and I made lots of money," says Knight. The "amazing success" of Eloise occurred early in his career: He was 28 and eking out a living as an illustrator when a mutual friend introduced him to Thompson, who'd begun relaying scenarios to her friends in what became known as her "Eloise voice." "She's never taken over my life, but she's always been there," Knight says of the familiar little rich girl whose appearance remains a bit of an anomaly. "I really don't know how we arrived at it. I was very influenced by British comic illustrators; Kay gave me notes about her on scraps of paper." Knight is more precise about Eloise's sidekick, Weenie. "I was intrigued by pugs long before Eloise. Kay gave me a piece of paper that read, 'I have a dog that looks like a cat,' and my original drawing was neither dog nor cat. It obviously wasn't right. Just about then the Duchess of Windsor began collecting pugs - at that point the Windsors were taken seriously as arbiters of fashion." When he suggested the breed, he says, "Kay thought it would be funny." And Knight's certain about one thing: Regardless of what's evolved, Thompson never intended "Eloise," first subtitled "A Book for Precocious Grownups," to be children's literature. "She was vehement about that," Knight says. "Kay didn't care a whit about children." That's another of the ironies. "The crossover is probably the best thing that ever happened to Eloise. If it hadn't, she probably wouldn't have survived."

[Webmaster note: The article had the incorrect date of the opening of the event. Newsday published a correction on July 16. The article reflects the correct dates.]

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