This post originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of ELLE DECOR. For much more tales from our archive, subscribe to ELLE DECOR All Access.
Suzanne Rheinstein’s new reserve, At Dwelling: A Style for Now with Points from the Earlier, showcases the way several households live in two different abodes with mainly distinct designs. But she nearly did not make it into her individual e book. Rheinstein, the acclaimed Los Angeles–based designer and proprietor of Hollyhock, life in a Georgian property in the Hancock Park community, and had for decades pined for a good Manhattan apartment. When her daughter, Kate, who life in New York, obtained married and grandchildren seemed most likely (now there are two), Suzanne’s partner, Fred, ultimately relented. He also located the best spot.
The living room’s walnut desk from Hollyhock and bleached-oak desk are equally 18th century the wing chairs are classic, and the curtains are of a cotton-silk by Rheinstein.
The condominium, a light-weight-crammed corner space on the Higher East Aspect, is 50 % of a former duplex—the grand, public 50 percent. That implies it has a residing place of ample dimension exceptional in a just one-bed room, as nicely as a library, bed room, and main bath. She has imbued it with a markedly diverse glance from her West Coast home. “We adore our household in L.A.,” she states. “It’s really forgiving and complete of excellent loved ones treasures. But for New York, I wished a little something a small a lot more city, a very little a lot more stylized. And I wished the palette to be a minor additional tranquil.”
To that finish, she used relaxing grays and lotions and taupes and smooth, greeny blues, together with the lots of materials she chose from her individual line for Lee Jofa. Some, like the damask on a pair of vintage wingback chairs, are applied on the completely wrong side “to retain them from getting as well out-there,” she clarifies. There is color, she adds, but “it’s just very offbeat, like the pale ochre pillow on the chaise, or the velvet on the pair of stools—I really don’t even know what you’d get in touch with that.”
Tour Suzanne Rheinstein’s Gentle-Crammed New York Metropolis Apartment
The perception of serene is further enhanced by the walls. In the library they’re coated in her own French Paisley, which is also applied on the Syrie Maugham sofa. “I’ve generally cherished those French rooms wherever all the things is accomplished in the identical material,” she suggests. “It helps make the space enveloping without the need of being ‘cozy,’ if you know what I mean.” When she understood that the dwelling room’s windows, beams, and alcoves would make it difficult to hang art, she hired Bob Christian, an artist and ornamental painter who is a regular collaborator, to generate a subtly beautiful mural that surrounds the space.
The over-all outcome is 1 of shimmering, really stylish, but in the long run lower-crucial huge-town glamour. Feel The Slim Gentleman if Nick and Nora experienced owned a amazing assortment of 18th- and 19th-century French and Italian antiques. And there are indeed a couple homages to the terrific decorators of the movie’s era. The Maugham couch, for illustration, shares house with a chair from the Tony Duquette estate covered in Rheinstein’s Elsie fabric—her valentine to Elsie de Wolfe—near an ottoman made by the terrific Rose Cumming
Louis XV cane armchairs with silk cushions flank a marble-best desk with an antique wood base the lamp is by Hollyhock, and the mirror is Georgian.
Rheinstein has developed these an oasis that daughter Kate jokes her mom is “the only individual I know who arrives to New York to relax.” But the space is also extremely a lot about living. “A ton of individuals just want a pied-à-terre as a area to snooze,” Rheinstein suggests. “But Fred truly needed us to be capable to see our friends—and feed them.” So there’s a generous round desk in a single corner of the dwelling space, as nicely as an expandable 18th-century French desk guiding the sofa—“I can seat people there, and established up buffets, and it is terrific for initiatives as well.”
The key bedroom’s iron beds by Hollyhock are dressed in Yves Delorme sheets and have canopies and curtains of a cotton-silk by Rheinstein the antique facet tables are Italian (remaining) and French, and the chair is Louis XVI. F
She bleached that table so it would be lighter than the other desk in the area and jokes that she’ll “probably go to decorating hell” for it. But she has hardly ever minded the unexpected. Earlier mentioned the period French mantels, alternatively than the common mirror or painting, she has put the wood parts she adores—a chimera in the residing area (“A whole lot of the paint has occur off—it’s perfection”) and carved fronds in the library (“I enjoy fragments”).
For his element, Fred loves multitasking on the dwelling room’s spherical table, in which he sets up his notebook with a single eye on the significant flat-monitor Tv set visible as a result of the library doors. The couple plays dominoes (“We are significant games folks,” Suzanne suggests) and dines there, which is generally a a bit official affair, even when it’s just the two of them. The shallow closet in the hallway is comprehensive of treasures that Suzanne claims she “cherry-picked” from the L.A. home. “It’s not like at house, where by you eat in all the time so you by no means use all your unique items.”
Antique slipper chairs upholstered in a Brunschwig & Fils linen, a Louis XVI mirror discovered at auction, and 18th-century French Provincial columns.
Even with the apartment’s refined appear, there are loads of places to sprawl, and both sofas are lavish ample for a developed male to choose a nap on. “It’s pretty snug,” Rheinstein states. “That’s the range one particular thing I wanted to do for my husband—and for myself.”
This story at first appeared in the November 2010 problem of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE
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