May 19, 2024The 49th Kips Bay Decorator Show House in New York City, open now through May 28, is rich with stories — some personal, some historical and others purely, delightfully invented.
For starters, there’s the location, a stately early-20th-century townhouse at 125 East 65th Street, the same address where the showhouse — which raises money for the nonprofit Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club — was staged in 2017. Designed by Charles A. Platt, an architect whose clients included Roosevelts and Astors, the 35-foot-wide Georgian-style brick residence was acquired by magazine titan Henry Luce in 1944 and gifted to the China Institute, which used it for offices and exhibitions before relocating downtown a decade ago.
Throughout the mansion’s five floors, two dozen leading designers have transformed nearly every corner of its interior. And this year, no designer dug deeper into the past for inspiration than Jeremiah Brent, who created a sanctuary-like space conceived as a dressing room and study for Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of beauty. For her vanity, he chose a sculptural gold-tone bronze table by Aline Hazarian from Maison Gerard, pairing it with a 19th-century bronze mirror embellished with leaf and shell forms from Eric Appel. Lined in Phillip Jeffries suede (black on the ceiling, white on the walls), the room is outfitted with a sophisticated mix of vintage and contemporary furnishings, featuring a mid-century Jacques Adnet oak cabinet and an English Art Deco daybed, both from Newel. Marc Phillips crafted the custom rug with a motif representing Hathor that was copied from an Egyptian makeup palette. “We imagined Hathor getting ready in the morning at her vanity, relaxing, looking at all of her things, contemplating design and art and what beauty is,” says Holly Hayden Taylor, Brent’s executive design director. “The selection of pieces was chosen to illustrate beauty through the ages.”
The design firm McMillen, marking its 100th year, also did some looking back, in this case into its own venerable history. The starting point for its parlor makeover was the reproduction, courtesy of Gracie, of a dazzling 18th-century chinoiserie wallpaper the firm had installed in a drawing room at Blair House, in Washington, D.C., during a 1964 renovation. In this version, though, the distinctive turquoise background is “pumped up a bit,” says McMillen president Ann Pyne. While the firm is well versed in traditional interiors, the goal was to highlight its range. “We’ve had quite a few old-guard clients, but we’ve always had our hand in the avant-garde,” says Pyne, pointing to a suite of Gilbert Poillerat chairs that was included in a McMillen presentation of young French designers in 1952 and that here is arrayed around a vintage table with a sculptural metal base by American studio furniture pioneer Paul Evans and a slate and wood top by his early collaborator Phillip Lloyd Powell. An undulating Anthony Lawrence-Belfair sofa in a painterly stripe is a playful—and cozy — riff on a Chippendale sofa, while Peter Lane’s ceramic mantelpiece, with its profusion of hand-molded swirls and gilded cubic forms, is a bravura contemporary expression of traditional craft.
Phillip Thomas’s family history fueled the narrative behind his evocative lounge-like space, dubbed the Andes Club. That’s the nickname his Chilean mother and American father gave to the regular gatherings of friends they hosted after moving to New York. “It was often people who were new to the city and maybe lost,” says the designer, who wanted to re-create the vibe he remembers as a child. “After dinner,” he recalls, “everyone would retire to the library, where they would listen to records and make more cocktails.”
He found the perfect wall covering in a Brochier jacquard fabric featuring an abstracted Andean mountain scene in silver, ocher and yellow tones. Chic Swedish 1960s sconces from Bernd Goeckler join a Max Ingrand for Fontana Arte mirror (“the jewelry,” says Thomas) from Donzella over the François & Co. pewter mantelpiece, which is flanked by backless L-shape sofas upholstered in a textured yellow velvet and strewn with mix-and-match pillows. Vintage armchairs and shapely Franck Evennou ottomans offer additional seating, while tables by Christophe Côme, Hubert Le Gall and Reinaldo Sanguino provide perches for, one imagines, imbibing copious drinks.
Designer and TV personality Mikel Welch conjured a Cotswolds retreat in one of the bedrooms, inspired by his own recent stay in the English countryside. “I wanted to bring that charm and comfort back to the States,” says the designer, who installed rustic timber ceiling beams, finished the walls in a sage-color faux limewash using Benjamin Moore paints and paired antiques such as a tapestry and a hand-carved sofa upholstered in shearling with a Currey & Company rattan-wrapped chandelier and a traditional-pattern Stark carpet in faded earthy hues.
In his top-floor space, Benjamin Vandiver evoked a stylishly bohemian Parisian garret. He achieved this, in part, by deploying reclaimed beams and tiles, distressed paneling and a plaster finish on the ceiling and walls that, says Vandiver, has “seven different textures” and is intended to mimic the finishes of “old rooms that have had plaster for centuries.” The rich assemblage of furnishings, objects and art draws heavily from the designer’s own home, including the stone table where he eats breakfast every morning, a favorite Sean Scully painting, a treasured Jacques Blin tile-top table and a ceramic bird that doesn’t “go anywhere without me,” he says. It’s all woven compellingly together with the eye of a collector who admits to spending too many weekend hours shopping for treasures online. That’s how Vandiver acquired quite a few of the pieces on display, including a 1940s parchment-clad bar cabinet and a hand-molded plaster pendant light by Marc Bankowsky. Relishing the opportunity to design a space for himself, Vandiver says simply, “I filled it with the things I love.”
A confidently eclectic spirit also pervades the living room devised by Alan Tanksley. Setting a luxurious tone, he wrapped the space in Fromental’s Japanese-inspired Kiku Garden wallpaper, featuring a shimmering gold ground handpainted with graphic chrysanthemums whose blown-up scale gives the design a more contemporary feel. “It’s a gorgeous, luminescent paper that took me places,” the designer says. “It’s the Aesthetic Movement. It’s Gustav Klimt. It’s this radiant feeling that I just kept building upon.” Aiming for a tradition-meets-today vibe throughout, Tanksley anchored the room with a Vincenzo de Cotiis dining table on one side and a pair of vintage Swedish chairs from Hostler Burrows, flanking an elegant Jean Royére table, on the other. Adding “depth and layers,” as the designer puts it, is an assortment of art and decorative objects, from an exquisite Yolande Milan Batteau folding screen to an exuberant painting with Abstract Expressionist–style gestural brushwork by Darius Yektai above the fireplace to a whimsical ceramic figure by Sakari Kannosto perched on a bookshelf. “This is my maximalism,” explains the designer, adding, “a curated maximalism.”
In their living room design, partners Jim Aman and John Meeks opted for a quieter — which is not to say minimal — feeling. “We wanted to do something very comfortable and peaceful, something that’s easily livable but still makes a statement,” says Meeks. “It’s essentially the same look we always go for, with a mix of art and some funkier pieces.” Creamy pearlized Venetian plaster walls and pale carpeting provide a neutral backdrop for lively accents like Phillip Jeffries gold paper on the ceiling, shimmering curtains made with Dedar metallic sheers, large panels of smoky antiqued mirror by Kiko López and a Karl Springer coffee table with a reverse-painted mirror top by the designers’ friend, artist Anne Peabody. “It’s like looking down into a koi pond,” Meeks says of the table.
The duo called on another friend, ceramic artist Beth Katleman, to create a playful relief sculpture featuring a cherub figure, which they mounted on the monumental mantelpiece. They painted it and the entire fireplace an arresting matte black, echoing a black niche at the room’s opposite end that hosts a larger ceramic wall installation by Katleman. The mostly custom seating is invitingly upholstered in off-white hues. “We’ve always gone for soft color palettes,” says Aman. “New York is a crazy city. When you walk into your home, you want to cancel all that.”
Taking a very different tack, Kit Kemp masterminded a dining room that is a riot of color and pattern, intended, she says, to transport visitors to the English countryside. Artist Tess Newall painted a luminous mural, inspired by the work of Bloomsbury Group painter Duncan Grant, around the François & Co. fireplace, while Kemp’s Front Row fabric for G P & J Baker, an intricate patchwork of antique tapestry motifs, lines the rest of the space above richly grained wainscot paneling in green and gold hues. “It adds a more contemporary edge to this very jewellike wall covering, makes it look a bit cleaner,” says Kemp, one of whose daughters, Minnie Kemp, designed the paneling for Schotten & Hansen. As part of that collaboration, Minnie also created the dining table, its top inlaid with customizable magnetic veneers, set here with her mother’s new Tall Trees dinner service for Spode. Julian Chichester woven-rattan pendant lights hover like organic domes over the table, while such eye-catching contemporary pieces as a Kiko López concave mirror, an Ayala Serfaty lamp and a Wendell Castle sculptural bench balance the selection of Kemp’s own furnishings and antiques from Gerald Bland. The result, Kemp says, “is joyful.”
In Michelle Gerson’s adjacent bar, a black-and-white palette with stone, metal and glass imparts a glamorous urban vibe. Collaborating with Artistic Tile, the designer used richly veined marble for the countertop, cabinet fronts and floor, where wavy bands of Calacatta Viola and Nero Marquina alternate in an illusionistic “slide” pattern. Adopting a Garden of Eden theme, the walls are covered in a custom black-painted paper with plaster appliqués of plants, butterflies and twisting serpents created by Maria Apelo Cruz, of MJ Atelier. “Snakes represent new life, strength, protection, so I tried to find a pretty way to use them,” says Gerson. “I wanted the room to feel sexy.” David Duncan white lacquer ceiling lights, with sunburst and zodiac details, add to the effect, as do the Amuneal metal and glass shelves stocked with Baccarat drink ware and a pair of Thomas Hayes counter stools sumptuously upholstered in burgundy shearling.
Perhaps a reflection on our unsettling times, this year’s showhouse features a notable number of bar and lounge spaces. These include the room Workshop/APD calls Le Fumoir Féminin, envisioned as a refuge for the lady of the house, a place to stylishly unwind with close friends, cocktails and, perhaps, a smoke. Overhead, Fromental’s Ambia wallpaper, a whirl of Surrealist shapes with shimmering foil outlines, is punctuated by a smattering of A-N-D pebble lights, while undulating walls of hand-plastered foam and expanses of smoked mirror are theatrically illuminated with a Lutron lighting system. “As an architecture and design firm, we wanted to reimagine the boxy space and bring some architectural impact,” says principal Andrew Kotchen, who notes that the furnishings are a synergistic mix of “old and new shapely pieces.” Workshop’s Quay sectional sofa — a cozy, velvet-clad spot for lounging or napping — wraps around the firm’s biomorphic Sumina coffee table, joined by vintage Paolo Buffa armchairs from Gaspare Asaro, Gary Magakis‘s Ledges side table VI from Todd Merrill and 1950s Stilnovo sconces from Donzella, amping up the modern allure.
Powerful women are another thread running through the showhouse. Model Betty Catroux, a muse for Yves Saint Laurent and the wife of designer François Catroux, was a primary inspiration for the bedroom composed by Shawn Henderson. “I was thinking about a very strong woman,” he says. “Just take no prisoners, very serious about her career, but chic and soft and not afraid of a pink-colored space.” Walls sheathed in blush-tone Phillip Jeffries grass cloth are topped by a matching linen valance edged with delicate fringe. Henderson designed the steel bed, its rounded headboard softened slightly with walnut portholes, as well as the complementary nightstands, featuring leather-wrapped legs and leather fringe dangling across the front. On one side of the room, a plush garnet-hued pouf sidles up to a steel openwork cabinet by the Campana Brothers. Opposite, a Dashiell Manley painting with rosy whipped-cream brushstrokes and a pink-upholstered vintage wing chair by Gio Ponti are grouped with a steel marquetry side table by Alexandr Zhikulin from Maison Gerard. It’s all about duality, Henderson explains, “the interplay between the masculine and the feminine.”
On your way out of the showhouse, in case you breezed past Bennett Leifer’s collaboration with the Edward Fields Carpet Makers in the entry vestibule, it is worth a closer look. Fond of using carpets as a focal point in his interiors, Leifer has taken that impulse to an extreme, covering everything — the stairs, floor, walls, furniture, even the door casings — in carpeting. The pattern that begins on the stairs extends up the walls, gently arcing toward the ceiling before separating into swagged fringe that intersects with strands of lighting. “I wanted to come up with something that was never done before,” says Leifer, adding that he was looking for a way to stand out “when there are so many successful rooms that are just the chicest things I’ve ever seen.” Well said.
