David Kleinberg Design Associates

David Kleinberg is quite simply a master’s master. Since establishing his eponymous design firm in 1997,  he’s produced an impressive portfolio of style-spanning projects, all bearing his distinctive stamp of artfully nuanced modern polish. Take this dining room in a historic Gatsby-era house north of New York City. Through Kleinberg’s subtle design choices, what might have been a grandiose room is instead a space as refined as it is unexpected. He surrounded a custom eglomise-glass-topped table (on which sits Eva Zethraeus’s porcelain cluster centerpiece, found at Hostler Burrows) with caned birch chairs by Axel-Einar Hjorth for Nordiska Kompaniet. These are set off nicely by the chimneypiece, originally dark marble, which he had painted with a light limestone faux finish to freshen its appearance and blend with the walls, elegantly covered in silver tea paper. He decorated the mantel with a stunning trio of crumpled glass vases by Jeff Zimmerman he spotted on 1stDibs. “It’s not the traditional garniture set you might expect, but a very modern and artistic version,” Kleinberg says. The vases “work exceptionally well in terms of color and playfulness with the still-life painting. They make this formal space feel inviting and youthful.”