For a piano room in an 1865 farmhouse in Healdsburg, California, interior designer Ken Fulk chose a Steinway & Sons Model O grand. Manufactured in the early 1900s, it belongs to the category of “living room pianos,” meant for home use and teaching purposes.
The designer chose an older instrument as the room’s centerpiece to honor the house’s past. Originally built for wheat ranchers, it is one of three homes on the property. “My clients are a multigenerational, Sonoma-based family who have transformed the property into a working vegetable and flower farm. The clients’ main vision and desire for the distinct dwellings on the compound was to harness the simplicity of a bygone lifestyle.”
To that end, Fulk designed the home in a Gothic Revival style, incorporating both traditional and modern elements in this room. “The 18th-century-style easy chairs upholstered with pale blue velvet complement the blue sky and reflective water in the landscape painting by Ann Shogren they sit beneath, titled Songs of Autumn.” An end table from Epoca produces vintage vibes as well. A dome floor lamp, sourced from 1stDibs, and modern lights mounted above the artwork add what Fulk calls a “contemporary statement.” A neutral rug grounds the scene.
Tapped to design a model penthouse apartment that overlooks the Hollywood Hills, Adair Curtis and Jason Bolden, of JSN STUDIO, wanted to create a home that was “both an entertainer’s paradise and a comforting haven away from the world below.” For this expansive lounge area, they selected a Yamaha C7 piano.
While listening to music, guests might relax on the textured-linen Daniels seating system from Minotti, the French club chair upholstered in alpaca and the arch-shaped stool from ASH NYC. The space also includes a Minotti coffee table and rug from Nordic Knots.
In designing a model apartment for 60 Curzon, a luxury building in London’s Mayfair district, designer Charu Gandhi, of Elicyon, created a space that “wasn’t a formal music room but rather a reception room where people would gather to relax, read, listen to music and entertain.”
To complement the Art Deco style of the building, the interior architecture of which was designed by the late French architect Thierry Despont, she outfitted the room with a 1936 Chappell baby grand crafted from maple wood. “The curves of the piano mirror the rounded silhouettes found throughout the Art Deco interiors, creating a sense of harmony and visual flow,” Gandhi notes. The instrument has been put to good use. “At a recent event hosted by Manolo Blahnik and the 60 Curzon development,” the designer says, “the piano served as the main source of entertainment for the many guests who attended the evening.”
Gandhi incorporated other nods to Art Deco style, like custom sofas upholstered in a neutral jacquard fabric. A vintage Swedish mahogany armchair by Carl Malmsten covered in a deep green velvet offers more seating, along with a pair of low-slung oak-and-leather safari chairs. Finishing touches include a contemporary abstract work by Joe Henry Baker.
“A Southern Greek Revival–style home situated on an eight-acre former equestrian site dotted with mature oak trees and expansive lawns for the family’s three peacocks to roam and a pond for them to enjoy.” That is how interior designer Sean Anderson describes the bucolic Germantown, Tennessee, property, located in an suburb of Memphis, where his clients, a family of six, maintain their primary residence.
The house’s original gentleman’s library, complete with wet bar and humidor, was reimagined in a way that “catered to the clients’ style of family fellowship: playing instruments, reading together, playing games or working on crafts,” explains Anderson, who placed a Steinway, an heirloom used by the family’s children, “in a corner opposite the large double entry of the room.”
Wanting to take the room “in a more transitional direction,” the designer says, he deployed a subtle mix of eras and styles. To match a set of 1920s English chairs, for example, he designed a table, fabricated by Daniel O’Grady, with tramp-art-like detailing on the legs (the clients are collectors of tramp art). For lighting, Anderson chose a Forchette 24 chandelier by Materia, as well as a geometric Belgian mid-century table lamp.
Designer Christian Bense was determined that the formal dining room of a family home he designed in Somerset, England, would not sit idle, as many such rooms do. Transforming what had been the home’s entry hall, he installed the family piano along with a Bastion stool by Galvin Brothers, hoping to make the new dining area seem less off-limits. “If the kids were having a piano recital or they had lessons,” he explains, “the room was being used, and it didn’t feel like this grand, empty, well-furnished room that wasn’t being used for anything else.”
Brought from the family’s original London home, the high-gloss black upright played perfectly off a bar cabinet attributed to Otto Schulz for Boet — a 1stDibs find. Another 1stDibs acquisition, a set of Niels Otto Møller rosewood chairs, surrounds the Alfred Newall Canon dining table. The arrangement showcases Bense’s’s flair for juxtaposition. “The way we like to design in the studio is to pair opposites,” he says. “Like taking these mid-century-style chairs and pairing them with this English refectory-style table.”
In conceiving a “living room/music room/playroom/ entertaining area/television lounge” for a high-rise apartment she designed in the Carnegie Hill section of Manhattan, Heide Hendricks, of Hendricks Churchill, had one objective: “We had to meet all of the requirements of the space without over-filling it.”
Having resided in — and grown tired of — stark white interiors in their pre-pandemic existence, the clients, a young family with two kids and one on the way, had another request. “They wanted it to feel cozy and like somebody was actually living there,” Hendricks says. The inclusion in the multipurpose space of the family’s Yamaha baby grand, on which Mom teaches the kids how to play, helped do just that.
A large sectional from B & B Italia anchors the seating area. “It’s a substantial sofa that could support all of the hard living that would be going on in this space during play dates and adult gatherings and television watching,” Hendricks explains. A Christopher Farr rug and the neutral backdrop of Rogers & Goffigon drapes serve to “frame the impressive view and not compete with it,” she adds.
Hendricks supplemented these with “pieces of character,” including two 1stDibs finds: an onyx floor lamp from Obsolete and a set of Italian lounge chairs she had reupholstered in a floral fabric from Dedar. Also from 1stDibs are a Steven Bukowski bubble credenza and a French modern light fixture. A bespoke Christopher Williams coffee table and a mid-century modern Stilnovo chandelier provide more soft angles.
The piano in a West Village apartment designed by Studio Shamshiri is particularly special. “It’s a 1962 Johan Rippen grand piano, composed of painted cast aluminum and lacquered pecan,” says Pamela Shamshiri. “One of approximately 50 examples produced, the piano was selected for this room to support elegant, dramatic entertaining. Think concert pianists playing for an intimate audience nestled into a room designed for spectacle and sound.”
Created for a client who is a “theater enthusiast and wonderfully collaborative spirit,” Shamshiri’s design was heavily influenced by the location. “This home draws upon the West Village’s legacy as the cradle of the early New York City avant-garde and birthplace of American bohemia,” she explains. “Our vision was shaped by that cultural moment, wherein every room creates a different atmosphere for expression, intimate conversation and collaboration.”
Theatricality is conveyed immediately with the stunning hand-painted mural by Colombian-born, London-based artist Dairo Vargas. Envisioned, Shamshiri says, as “an abstraction of classical Renaissance and baroque paintings” the work, which covers all four walls of the space, expresses “fantasy, femininity and a touch of the unexpected.”
Great concert halls need great lighting, provided here by a Murano-glass floral ceiling lamp by Barovier&Toso that perfectly matches the majesty of the 19th-century giltwood mirror above the mantel. Seating includes a charming Pascal Boyer adjustable wooden stool by the piano and a sexy Mattia Bonetti Taormina armchair. A George Smith custom four-sided borne settee, which holds pride of place before the fireplace, and a Piero Portaluppi sofa, set against the wall, provide a perfect setting for chatting guests — or boisterous singing.
