March 27, 2013The career of Rodman Primack includes stints at Christie’s, Peter Marino, Gagosian and Phillips. Now he’s focused on interiors, like the whimsically chic sitting room (top) of his Manhattan home. Photo courtesy of Manufoto
Rodman Primack has been studying design’s many facets since he was a young boy —assiduously drawing floor plans, poring over Architectural Digest (he asked his grandparents for a subscription when he was in the third grade) and transforming Imari ashtrays into bathtubs to help his sister’s Barbies live more stylishly.
In addition to being an interior designer, Primack is a skilled draughtsman, fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, who also happens to be an expert in contemporary Latin American art. After graduating from Tufts University, where he studied international relations, art history and studio art, Primack was hired at Christie’s, and by the age of 24 he was the head specialist in the auction house’s Latin American art department. Soon, he was snapped up by interior designer Peter Marino, but he returned to Christie’s not long after and then migrated to Los Angeles to run Larry Gagosian’s Beverly Hills space. In 2004, while in L.A., he founded RP Miller, his own design firm, and two years later he moved to London to work at Phillips, where he eventually served as chairman, all while still completing design commissions on the side. In 2010, he returned to Manhattan to devote himself fully to RP Miller, and he now finds himself based in an elegant brownstone in Greenwich Village, where he and several assistants spend their days juggling residential projects from London to Louisville, Kona to Miami.
Hometown
Laguna Beach, California; raised in Sun Valley, Idaho
Home Base
New York and Miami, where my partner, television producer Rudy Weissenberg, and our Labradoodle, Theo, reside.
This rather traditional dining room, in a home from the 1920s, gets a unique twist from David Wiseman’s porcelain cherry-blossom ceiling installation. Photo by Grey Crawford
Becoming a Designer
After moving to Los Angeles in 2000, I renovated our 1929 West Hollywood home to make it feel more like the old houses of Orange and Riverside counties, where I grew up. I added porches and pergolas, gardens with olives and a guesthouse with a tin roof. Friends started asking me to do their places. Since then, I’ve always been decorating a home for someone on the side, no matter what I’ve been doing full time. When I left Philips three years ago, I finally decided to devote myself to interior design. I never pursue perfection when it comes to interiors — I want the rooms to reflect the interests and lives of the people who inhabit them.
Primary Inspiration
My grandparents’s modernist Japanese house designed by architect Carl Maston, in Laguna Beach, where I spent a lot of time while growing up. Its expansive redwood timbers and steel rooted my aesthetic, and the way my grandparents combined disparate inherited collections within a contemporary setting still inspires me.
Design Mentor
Peter Marino. That’s where I really saw how to incorporate collecting with decorating. Having an eye for, and knowledge of, 20th-century design from working with him helps me pick out a fabulous Pierre Jeanneret table for a client today.
A teenager’s room goes psychedelic with a botanical wall mural by Assume Vivid Astro Focus, a Verner Panton pendant lamp and a David Hicks floral pattern behind the bed. Photo by Miguel Flores-Vianna
Favorite Recent Project
In Hawaii, last year: It took four years to complete! I worked with Seattle architect Tom Kundig to build a post-and-beam home that feels deeply connected to those great mid-century houses in California. The architecture and structure are visible and clear, the angles and geometry simple and uncluttered. I then helped the owners fill it with everything from a grand Charlotte Perriand dining table and a Rick Owens daybed to specially made sets of ceramic dishes from an artist in Idaho and hand-printed, customized napkins.
Best City to Find Undercover Artists
Mexico City
On Your Nightstand
In New York: A pile of books, including The Baroness by Hannah Rothschild, Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford, Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, John Currin’s The Dogwood Thieves and a couple of books on Carlo Mollino and Thomas Heatherwick; tiny animal figures made of yarn, stone and plastic; an antique glass-and-silver vial of my grandfather’s ashes; a lamp tied with a bunch of wish ribbons from a Rivanne Neuenschwander project at the New Museum; some family photos; and Burt’s Bees lip balm.
In Miami: A different pile of books; a flat Chinese basket filled with Buddha’s paw citrus that perfumes the whole room; a glass with plumeria flowers from a tree outside that has just bloomed.
In Primack’s London flat, the master bedroon’s reading nook featured a custom-designed day bed and walls covered in a Peter Dunham textile. Photo by Emanuele Mascioni
If You Could Own Any Piece of Artwork, What Would You Pick?
An impossible question but one I ask myself all the time. It constantly changes, from Henri Matisse’s Piano Lesson, to a deep dark Mark Rothko or an amazing landscape by Brazilian modernist Tarsila do Amaral. But honestly the thing I think I want most is an iconic David Hockney, like his Man in the Shower in Beverly Hills, from 1964 and now in the collection of the Tate. Beginning when I was 13, Hockney changed my entire understanding of art and its possibilities, and this picture in particular has always stayed with me.
What You Miss Most About Living in Los Angeles
Tacos; Franklin Canyon walks; my sister
A Recent Birthday Gift That Hit The Mark
The Line Vautrin box Rudy gave me
On Current Playlist
Santigold, Shostakovich, Róisín Marie Murphy, New Order, Joy Division, Mulatu Astatqé, Arcade Fire
Everyday Goal
All I have ever wanted is to be surrounded by beautiful things as well as interesting people and ideas. No matter where I am or work, it is all the same language, as long as there is integrity there.
