Westchester House

The clients, empty nesters with a house in Westchester, New York are passionate and discerning art collectors. Modest in size, superlative in quality, their collection includes works by Cy Twombly, Joan Miro, Jim Dine, Edvard Munch, Jean Dubuffet, Richard Serra, Robert Motherwell, Henri Matisse, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg and Frank Stella. We sought to create a setting for these pieces that would display them prominently yet without ostentation. It was the clients’ desire truly to live with art, meshing seamlessly the works on the walls with fine pieces of twentieth century furniture, to live in the comfort of understated style, design originality and quality. As many of the art works are from the mid- to late twentieth century, we countered this emphasis with furniture of the earlier to mid- part of the century, designed by Mies van der Rohe, Pierre Chareau, Carlo Scarpa, and in the manner of Jean-Michel Frank, with accents by Hans Wegner and Eero Saarinen. As always, we did not limit the furniture repertoire to Modernist icons, but introduced earlier finds–even of the Colonial era– of comparable simplicity, along with his signature emphasis on wonderfully comfortable custom upholstery and rugs. Altogether, this residence–calm, considered, above all comfortable–flashes with excitement from the seminal works of art which punctuate its rooms.