Courreges Silk Scarf

When British-born furniture designer Andrianna Shamaris embarked on a year-long hunt for a New York City apartment, she had two nonnegotiable requirements: The apartment had to be in estate condition and it had to have views of nature. She also made clear that she wanted a restoration, rather than a renovation, project. When she finally found the perfect place on Central Park South, she enlisted architect Thomas Leeser to help her achieve her vision of an organic-modern retreat.

The first order of business was reproducing the original moldings, which were in such bad shape they couldn’t be reclaimed. “I didn’t want the new moldings to be perfect,” Shamaris says. “Try explaining this to a contractor!”

The next step in preserving the character of the prewar home was to reinstall all the original crystal knobs on custom white resin doors, which hang on pivots rather than hinges. In another unique touch, the designer custom produced a wall covered in shell-encrusted teak to divide the kitchen and living room.

“I don’t like the bourgeois look or anything too minimal, as that style lacks warmth,” she says. “So, even though I might say less is best, having a few objects with a story behind them is far more interesting to me than a room full of objects.”

When Shamaris moved into the apartment, in 2008, the fireplace was sealed shut. She and architect Leeser decided to open it up, keeping the original black marble in front and painting the surrounding frame a strong white. “We left it very clean and wabi-sabi so that it blended into the wall,” Shamaris says.

As her apartment attests, Shamaris is a believer in the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection. In fact, she has curated an entire collection based on this simple aesthetic and sells it on her 1stDibs storefront and in her New York showroom.

The entire apartment is accented with pieces from Shamaris’s studio in Sumatra, where she lived for nearly a year after a stint in sales at Ralph Lauren's Bond Street flagship. During her travels around the world, she collected antiques along with design inspiration.

Tour Andrianna Shamaris's apartment at The Study, and shop her tables, seating and other furnishings on 1stDibs today.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

An empty wall in your home is a blank canvas, and that’s good news. Whether you’ve chosen to arrange a collage of paintings in a hallway or carefully position a handful of wall-mounted sculptures in your dining room, there are a lot of options for beautifying your space with the antique and vintage wall decor and decorations available on 1stDibs.

If you’re seeking inspiration for your wall decor, we’ve got some ideas (and we can show you how to arrange wall art, too).

“I recommend leaving enough space above the piece of furniture to allow for usable workspace and to protect the art from other items damaging it,” says Susana Simonpietri, of Brooklyn home design studio Chango & Co.

Hanging a single attention-grabbing large-scale print or poster over your bar or bar cart can prove intoxicating, but the maximalist approach of a salon-style hang, a practice rooted in 17th-century France, can help showcase works of various shapes, styles and sizes on a single wall or part of a wall.

If you’re planning on creating an accent wall — or just aiming to bring a variety of colors and textures into a bedroom — there is more than one way to decorate with wallpaper. Otherwise, don’t overlook what textiles can introduce to a space. A vintage tapestry can work wonders and will be easy to move when you’ve found that dream apartment in another borough.

Express your taste and personality with the right ornamental touch for the walls of your home or office — find a range of contemporary art, vintage photography, paintings and other wall decor and decorations on 1stDibs now.