House
Anne Spalter
House• March 8, 2019.Anne Spalter is a mixed-media digital artist who creates perspective-bending, kaleidoscopic work using computer-enhanced images that she shoots herself, often from helicopters, airplane windows or moving cars and trains. Her ideas range from a series based on Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane to a piece that New Yorkers may well have seen if they...
Maureen Footer
House• February 22, 2019.A detailed and historically informative interview this week with designer and writer Maureen Footer, author of the new book, Dior and His Decorators: Victor Grandpierre, Georges Geffroy, and the New Look (Vendome). Meticulously researched and replete with glamorous illustration, it tells the story of how the fashion design legend, Christian Dior...
James Coviello
House• February 8, 2019.James Coviello is a fashion designer with what he calls a “passionate pursuit”. His Brooklyn Heights apartment as well as his country house upstate have been, over the years, meticulously filled with fascinating and beautiful old objects that he has spent a lifetime collecting. Apart from electronics and linens, he owns nothing new—and...
Katie Leede
House• January 25, 2019.Photographs by Jeff Hirsch Our interview this week involved a thoughtful discussion with designer Katie Leede about the intersection between acting and designing. The former was something she wanted to do but, as she puts it, “didn’t have the talent for my talent”. The latter, however, was something that just seemed to come naturally in...
Jenny Dina Kirschner
House• January 11, 2019.Photographs by Jeff Hirsch After being something of a serial taker of college degrees (she has four), interior designer Jenny Kirschner quickly struck out on her own some twelve years ago and has managed to sustain a solid business along with being a mother of two daughters, PTA Leader and keeping up with some art...
Brock Forsblom
House• December 14, 2018.Photographs by Jeff Hirsch One of Brock Forsblom’s friends introduces him thus: “This is Brock. He went to Yale and then he became a decorator.” Well, we can let his friend know that there are plenty of Ivy League graduates among the decorators we have interviewed—somehow their academic achievement doesn’t get in their way. Brock,...
Lucinda Loya
House• November 30, 2018.Photographs by Jeff Hirsch Designer Lucinda Loya divides her time between Houston and New York, living in an ultra-modern house back in Texas and an apartment in a renovated Victorian building that lies just off Stuyvesant Square in Gramercy. Originally an Episcopal Church, it has been occupied by the Salvation Army and Smith College. It...
Victoria & Son
House• November 16, 2018.Anthony Victoria and his son, Freddy, represent the second and third generations of a family-owned bespoke furniture business long known for the elegance, quality and craftsmanship of the pieces they make. Established in 1933 by Anthony’s father, Frederick P. Victoria, the firm originally specialized in selling high-quality, unusual English and...
Michele Varian
House• November 7, 2018.Photographs by Jeff Hirsch Designer Michele Varian opened her first store in SoHo very shortly after 9/11 when she had money burning in her pocket from the sale of her gorgeous pillows to big name stores like Barneys and Neiman Marcus. Ultimately, she says, it was because she wanted complete control of the product—“I wanted...
Brian McCarthy
House• October 12, 2018.Brian J. McCarthy is best known for the way in which every design he creates is highly personalized for each client. What they have in common is his exquisite taste, marrying quality antiques, texture, color and art so beautifully that his rooms may make you catch your breath. His own apartment, just steps from Central...
Jeanie Engelbach
House• June 8, 2018.Photographs by Jeff Hirsch Professional organizer Jeanie Engelbach calls herself “a gentle drill sergeant” … and possibly sometimes not that gentle. The trouble is that people think they’re better at organizing themselves or their lives than actually are, at least that is what she has observed since she started her business some fourteen...