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STEVEN GAMBREL
July 2009
Interview by Coleen Rider and Holli Thomas
Photographs of Gambrel and the S.R. Gambrel offices by Coleen Rider
Amidst a busy summer of entertaining house guests and tending to his highly successful design firm, Steven Gambrel took time to meet with B&B at his newly renovated West Village "factory". Once home to "Rose's Turn", a cabaret bar, the five level space has been completely refashioned and encompasses Gambrels multi-disciplined architectural and design background.
The impressive interior calls to mind a polished design lab with an industrial European flair.
With the entry wall consisting of a grid of random colored and textured panes of glass, unfinished steel staircases, plastered walls, gray washed beam ceilings, and custom gray/blue cabinetry with inset antiqued mirror and beautiful hardware, one can't help but be inspired.
Steven's philosophies on the well-lived life are that much more impressive when you realize it's a credo he not only imparts to clients, but applies to himself.
CR: Your education is in architecture, but you're an interior designer. Did you just end up loving the design end more?
SG: Well, in the 19th century, the architect - all architects - did the interior decorating of the house. You would meet a client, the client would have a project in mind, and the architect would either do it all themselves or they would build a team. From the very day that the house was conceptualized, it was conceptualized as a lifestyle.
You knew what your fantasy was and how you wanted to live; whether you were going to have a big country house with horses or whether you were in the city and you were going to entertain in some particular manner. If we were in England in the 19th century and we were building a Georgian house, we would be inspired by the works of Adams ,for example, who was a great plasterer and who had his own creative ideas about plaster work. So you, as the architect, would say, "we're building this dining room in a certain size because you like to entertain 30 people for dinner and you entertain at a lavish level. Now granted there's also an annex at the end of the room where we can have dinner for eight for the family, or for six or whatever. But let's build this room with this elaborate plaster work. We're going to be using candlelight, so let's build it in these warm colors that reflect, refract light and create a very beautiful environment. But since we're doing that, and the room next to it is used earlier in the evening, perhaps we should do that room as a contrasting color story in pale blues, icy whites, and grays". So the whole lifestyle that you're going to be living in this house was realized before you even put a pencil to paper to express your ideas.
So when you ask me about being trained as an architect, to me it's all one story. So I'm really lucky to be given big decorating jobs where we are really involved in the architecture and we do everything. Now granted, we work with big teams that are amazing architects. But the people that we work with are very focused on what I want to do, my story, my spirit.
The decorating is extremely important to me. What I'm saying is that to me, one of the things that architects, I think, lack in general today, at this point, which is not something that was true in the past, is that a house actually does have a purpose. It's supposed to be a lifestyle. And so to me you almost have to start at the end before you can start at the beginning.
When you buy an old house, that's great too. But you still have to alter that house in some manner to make it work for your lifestyle. I think it's the job of a decorator to kind of envision what that lifestyle's going to be, and then work the interiors, the decorating, the textiles, the furniture, the architecture, the landscape, and anything else that has to do with this house so that it works for you.
So that's why I did that. I love decorating, but I've definitely trained as an architect. When I go to design a sofa, (which we design all of our upholstery and all of our furniture that's not antique) I feel it's exactly like designing anything else. It's exactly like designing the details of a room. The fittings, the proportions, all of that require just as much energy and attention as anything else. So that's why when I look at some of my sofas and things, I feel like they're really well proportioned because of the fact that they were being architected, not just, you know, created.
CR: For comfort or --
SG: For comfort, for scale, to affiliate themselves with the height of a window sill, or the height of everything visually in the room.
CR: That is one thing in particular we wanted to talk to you about is your upholstery. It seems like you incorporate a lot of 50's style furniture, like in addition to the big generous sofa, there's a 50's style chair. It doesn't scream 50's, it's just when we're looking at the shapes you use in terms of the line of the legs, etc.
SG: Yes, it's not entirely conscious, I really avoid labeling date, time, or times. There are certain shapes or proportions that I think I react to, and they may be shapes and proportions that happened during a certain period. The nice thing about the mid century mostly in France, not as much in America, was that they took classical pieces or pieces from the past and they kind of edited them, or they streamlined them down, or made them deeper and more comfortable. So there's a really kind of a cool part about looking at 20th century furniture and if you can find pieces that are sort of not of a certain ilk so much, then they seem to be happier in a mix. If there are pieces from the 1950's in there, sometimes that's done as a way to kind of spice it up, or it's done because I'm looking for something - the thinness of the arm reacts nicely in contrast to my big comfy sofas. Because I like the upholstery to be really comfortable for people, not just something you see that's stylish.
CR: The sofas you make are very deep.
SG: Really deep.
CR: The arms are really wide.
SG: Mm-hmm. Yes.
CR: Even though the rooms are very elegant, you don't get the feeling they are too precious. You feel like you could curl up right there.
SG: Yes, now we're really careful about proportioning that. I'm also careful, back to lifestyle, about creating a living room, let's call it a living room. I'm really conscientious about the comfort and depth of a sofa in the living room. Because I want to force people to use these rooms out of habit, I want them to use it because it's comfortable. I mean, you want to go in there. If that requires a television or something, whatever it is that you do, to make it work so that you use it, that's important to me.
CR: Let's talk about your use of color. How you feel about color. I think when you use bold color it still has a serene feel to it.
SG: That's something that I think I'm really good at. What I think is interesting about color is that, no matter whether it's a light color, I don't think there is an easy color. I always feel like it's funny that a builder for example, who's trying to get rid of, finish something, will paint it white. You know, of course, I guess I understand that. But to me, all these choices are really something that are hard to make in a vacuum.
It would be hard to choose a color, even white, not knowing what the story's going to be. White's obviously a universal kind of background, but what I love about color is that, this applies to white too, is that if you use colors that are like minded, they balance each other out. So if you go into a room and you paint it bright orange or burnt orange, you need to find other colors that usually have to do with secondary complements on the color wheel. If you can find other colors that are simpatico with the value of that color, then they balance each other out. Then you don't get that tension, which some people like, but I don't, of using color for it's snappiness. I like to use a color for its warmth or for the way that it's copasetic with other colors. You can do a whole room in a color story and still walk away feeling like it's easy to deal with.
CR: Like it hasn't jarred you.
SG: Yeah. It's great. And what it does is it envelops you and in a different experience.
So it's very exciting to have a furniture plan here on my desk, of a townhouse. The front room has views of the street and it's the smaller room, and the back room has views of the garden and is a larger room. And decidedly, it's rather easy to start thinking about colors and materials and textiles and storyboards, because the big room at the end wants to breathe and be open to the garden. It wants to be very expansive and all these breezy colors that you see in a landscape. Not just green, but all the colors that you see in the landscape. It could be all the barks, stones, bluestone, and all the things in the garden are going to react to this room very nicely. Whereas the front room doesn't react. Yes, it has a view through two doors and windows of a street, but not really. It's got shutters and curtains or whatever, what it wants to do for me is react on its own as this intimate and cozy room, which will be probably in sort of like a tawny kind of burnt orange suede or something. It's going to be very enveloping. Since the light will never be extraordinary in there anyway, because of the scale of the windows, it affords you the opportunity to do some really kind of sexy color story that's very dense and rich. And then as you walk down the hallway, boom, you're in this big light open space.
So color is something that is derived from what the rooms want to be. How are you going to use them? Also, what the rooms already are, meaning their light level or if it's a dark room. Don't fight it, just make it a dark room and enjoy it. Then, of course, houses on the ocean in the Hamptons, the color story and the spirit of the light is extraordinarily different than say, a country house in Virginia, where the light's much thicker. There's humidity in the air and it changes the light. So suddenly, like immediately, I think, "oh, all my cool blues and whites, beiges, biscuit, oyster and sands", all those east end colors don't apply, they don't work at all in the Virginia countryside. There you have to go into the grays and the browns and the ambers.
The clay there, you know, is not my favorite color, but there's a lot of it, and so you start looking at colors that react to that. If you look at nature it's amazing what happens. It's like, out of this clay comes the color palette that is affiliated with this clay. All these kind of red brown leaves or a deeper green leaf. Whereas on the east end of Long Island the leaves are, like , a little bit more clearer colors. It's very easy to distill a color story from the environment. Then you can break rules.
HT: Normally that's what you do, cull from the environment? SG: Yes, that's how I do it for all of my beach houses and country houses. Now what's interesting about that, on the flip side, a particular client of mine lives on the ocean in East Hampton, lives in Virginia on a big estate, and then I'm doing a place on 5th Avenue. You know, 5th Avenue is an entirely synthetic environment. It's one that man built. There's plenty to go by and they have great views of the park, but that's not what I'm working with here. That would be false I think to say that I'm using the landscape as inspiration. No, what I'm using as inspiration, is this kind of world that we've all created or we've all been brought to, that already exists. And that's when you can lacquer the dining room in bright pink and build a story completely around just a great, creative story. Just an art world; just like, I want to build great rooms. Her comment to me was, "don't hold back, it's 5th Avenue!".But when you're in Virginia, I think it's sort of inappropriate to not hold back, when you have such beautiful things around you to inspire you. CR: So what about the colors in your house in Sag Harbor? Let's talk about that purple room. SG: So if this front door inside my house, you're on a street, a city view (city meaning it's a small 19th century village). There are the houses right outside the front door. So to have this room it's a pure story that is not affiliated with the landscape, because it's a city view basically. When you look out the windows you see 19th century houses. 
But this room is affiliated with looking at the water, because of how it sits on the harbor. The harbor views are all these soft, somber colors. Very beautiful. If it's a gorgeous gray, beautiful fall day, or winter day, or really any time of the day, you see all these beautiful colors. The green grasses and the sawgrasses. Obviously there's the harbor, which is blue. So the rooms that are affiliated with the water tend to be more in this color story, of these icy blues, and all of these colors you'll see in the landscape. And so right outside these windows is this killer view of the upper side of Harbor Cove which is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. I get to see it every morning when I look out my window. So all of these are all harbor view colors.
This room here, this pink and brown room, is on the front of the house. Again, a city view. This room is solely inspired by a Zuber folding screen that I found in France. I cut it up and kept the pieces that I liked.
CR: Oh, that is beautiful.
SG: So, you know, the minute that you hit anything that's affiliated with the harbor....
CR: It makes it relate.
SG: This is the most obvious example of all. This is a house on the ocean on Meadow Lane, which has no trees. Meadow Lane is a sandbar, basically. This is in South Hampton. This house is all about what you see, which is just ocean into sand. There's no other color. So, it's just a totally quiet color story. Because that's all there is. Whereas, this is the billiards room. So this is his version of the dark and rich, it's all made of lacquered bark. So it's truly, like, "the forest room" of the house.
CR: You mean actual lacquered bark?
SG: Yes.
I'm dying to show you the room that I don't have, which is not yet built yet. It's a house on 12th Street. These colors come out of the city. I mean, they're less about the environment. It's just for fun. There are the light open rooms that have the most light in the in the apartment. There is a room in the back that had terrible light, his bedroom, and so we lacquered it in a dark green and plum. Then another room had terrible light, and was done in tortoise shell lacquer. A total fantasy, it has nothing to do with nature. It has nothing to do with the views. It had to do with just a story. I think there's a thread of color that you should see running through a house. So if there's a certain color that charges the library, like in one case red, you see the red leather chairs in the dining room. So there's a certain thread that runs through it. Again, a part about color which is tricky, in a good way, is that you really can't pull a paint chip out and expect it to be the story. The paint chip is affiliated with the textiles, it's affiliated with the views, affiliated with the architecture, and the depth of the finish of the floor. So you need to build a whole story. Then say, okay, I'm cool with it. 
So when a client walks through a construction site, which we try to avoid, they may say, " I don't get that orange ceiling". I would say, "of course you don't get it. It's sitting there in a vacuum. But once all the textiles and things that are coming next week get installed, it's gonna make sense. It's going to come way down in importance. You know, right now it's jumping out at you like a headlight, but once it's affiliated with all the other things in the room, it becomes very simpatico". It just goes way down to one level. So that's really important. I'm not looking for that charge, which some people are looking for. I like when a color - the strongest color in the world is fine, but you can get the whole room to even itself out. Even in the hottest pink. I think that color wants to feel like it's part of a story. I think it wants to be knocked down. I mean, I love the fact that I can make hot pink feel easy to live with. I think that it provides longevity and it creates rooms that aren't overly of the moment, which I don't like. I like rooms that are really, like, perfect for your lifestyle, but that have longevity. CR: The way you use art, I see that even in the cut up Zuber panels, you like to use groupings it seems. And different, you don't put the typical oil painting above the sofa. SG: No, I love salon style. The greatest examples of that is when you go to European museums that have collected too much for too long by too many good donors. Obviously, the Louvre is a great example of that. You walk into certain rooms, particularly the Dutch masters in the Louvre, and the paintings have hung there for so long that our tastes, what we value in history, in art, changes all the time. There are certain paintings that are much more valuable or much more interesting to the viewer that happen to be way the hell up in the upper left hand corner. The reason for that is because when they were installed in the 1920's, that particular painter wasn't as in vogue as he might be now. Maybe they were looking for more of the romantic school,so those are in the middle, which we don't really go for right now, somebody does, but not everybody. I love the fact that when you look at that grouping, you can either look at one painting if you're interested in it, and you can say "that's the one that I came to see in this particular room in the Louvre", or you could do what a decorator does, which is what I do, and you can look at the whole thing, including the frames. It's great in Russia, you can walk into the room and say, "oh, this room is so beautiful". The way this is installed is so beautiful. It's like intoxicating! You walk in and you can't believe the relationship of all these paintings to the black frames. And then more importantly to the negative space which is the two inches or so between the frames. And you say to yourself, this is beautiful! As a kid, I felt guilty going to museums with my family because I was always looking at the frames. It wasn't until later in my life, in my education, when I realized that really great painters and great architects like Stanford White, would design the frames for their own paintings. Stanford White would design the frames for the rooms that the paintings would be hung in. Framing, you know, the frame as art or as an artistic element or component to the work, was really important. Of course the 19th century galleries were hung on colored walls. Which, back to our color story, is deeply important. Because what happens is when you look at all of these Dutch masters on a blue or red or brown velvet wall, the velvet absorbs the light and doesn't refract the light, so it's not coming back to you from the wall. It's coming back to you from the painting, which is an oil. Because the oil reflects light. And so your eye is able to look at the painting because most of these Dutch masters were all done in these deep rich colors. That's how these paintings became easy to look at for the viewer. What we do now is we put them on a white wall, and the white is really contrasting, which is the kind of room I said I don't like to create. It's very contrasting to the colors on the canvas, and they're punching back and forth. And they're creating a lot of vibrancy, too much movement. It's hard to look at the painting. I like hanging art so that it is more about the composition of the room and less about the painting itself. I don't mean to say that it diminishes the work. I have a really great art hanger and he and I have fun together. Literally we'll measure the distance between the corner and the corner where the giant painting's going to go. But we already know the story. The furniture is already in place, which is very important that the furniture be in place when I install the art. It's imperative. What will happen is, he'll hold it up in the center where it belongs, but the interesting thing is that my furniture plan isn't necessarily symmetrical on that elevation or the curtains and the window in the corner have created a symmetry. I'll say, "it looks great Frank, just shift it over to your left a little bit". By the time we end up shifting it a little bit to the left, a little bit the right, whatever it is, there's a point where it's so right that you're just, like, done. There's a reason for that. I don't necessarily study the reason every time I do it. But the reason is because it's composition. Hanging art is part of composition building. Also, the way that three pieces of art might react to each other. And this could be a good thing or a bad thing. It could be, the artist would probably see it as maybe a bad thing. I would disagree with that artist because I see it as is letting your painting become part of a broader story. So that you can enjoy the painting as a composition element that is part of the room. And then you can enjoy the paining on a more intimate level, which is to go up to it and just focus on it. So that's how I see art hanging. I will say on a lighter note that, given the scale of my projects and the fact that my clients tend to be relatively young, if we don't have art -- which we do sometimes have amazing art, but if we don't have art, I love finding young artists or objects, things that we find that are cool. Using those to infill. Then in time if you want to collect art, infill can be moved. These are from the flea market, they're pencil drawings on paper that a guy was doing.  He used to be a fashion designer in the 40's and 50's in New York, and these were all textile designs for dresses. The reason I wanted them was because the bookcase, which runs this entire wall, has a lot of punchy book bindings. And so I liked the idea that these kind of related and to me kind of finished off the story.
This room, there's another example that one could use. These are vintage Italian book papers for the book's inside cover. I found them in New Orleans and to me they look like art. So obviously the color story is extremely simpatico with what's happening in the room. It's a very simple grid, nothing to it.
CR: It's interesting, when you're looking at these rooms or when you walk in, there are all these different elements, nothing stands out, nothing screams. So you think it's simple. Then you start realizing what went into everything and it all makes sense. And that's why it appears to be simple.
SG: And that's the goal. Absolutely. Yes. There are so many layers involved. I mean when I look at this room I think about designing the cornices, which were complex. I think about the windows that came on a ship from London, and how hard it was to get them. I think about this desk which is an extremely important piece of furniture, but when it's in the room, it just becomes part of the story. And then the story becomes your lifestyle which is just using the room and enjoying it. So I love the fact that you can have so many multi layers to a story, to a room.
CR: And then it sort of unfolds through time as well.
SG: Yes. Well these people are young, and they'll get older, and their children are getting older, and I presume that the house will build history. That this will be the background that some kid is gonna grow up in, or at least summer in, and be like, "God my parents built this crazy house, with 18 foot ceilings on the ocean, back when they could do that kind of thing". I'm intrigued by that.
I find it really stimulating, that a house can like evolve in a really kind of subtle way. Most of these people that build these great houses with me are doing it really for the long term, and I don't really believe in kind of redecorating.
In general, I feel like these are kind of stories that should, you know, gently evolve.
CR: With this desk in mind, how do you feel about pedigree in furniture?
SG: Well there are two thoughts. I don't care about pedigree furniture, but sometimes I'll see a great piece and I'll assume it's by somebody great. So the reason pedigree exists is because it's often true. So usually, great style is made by a great creator. That's sort of a bummer. So sometimes I'll say "oh my God, tell me about the cabinet!", and he'll say, "oh, you know, it was made by so and so", and I'll think, I wish it was unattributed. Because if it was unattributed, you know, we could buy it and use it in our project.
So, all I'm after is style. But like I said, unfortunately style is often attributed to some great maker.
CR: Now it's 40 grand instead of $4500.
SG: Exactly! The answer is I buy it because I like it, but often that means that it's great stuff.
This desk was just simply something that I liked and tried it on the project, and they agreed that it was flawless. If I found out instead this desk is deeply expensive and that's why we're buying it, that wouldn't appeal to them. Although, it does probably appeal to somebody, just not somebody I know.
CR: When you first meet with clients, considering the way you work, it would seem you really have to get to know them.
SG: Well that's easy. I always say, you're not gonna find your house in this book. And if you do that's a bad thing. Because I try to create something that's totally new.
CR: Let's talk about the horizontal striped drapery.
SG: To say that I use horizontal stripes because, you know, in a vacuum there's something about horizontal stripes that I like, that's not true. The reason I use horizontal stripes is because I love the way that you are trying to tie in the four walls of a room. I love the way that it reacts to horizon lines, which is what you see typically out of a window, often you see horizon lines. I love that. I love the fact that there are common horizontal elements to rooms in general. Like the fact that this baseboard right here... I like how that baseboard reacts to this sofa.
From a vertical perspective, there's also a lot of things that one could do to create a vertical story, where you kind of enhance the height or you're trying to create a more slender feeling to a space. Maybe in a hallway that is too long, so you're trying to bring it up.
But, I do like the horizontal stripes. I also find on a more basic level, that it keeps it a little bit fresher. I love the way that it reacts to views and to floors and baseboards. And I love the way it reacts to planks basically, plankish.
CR: You seem to do really well with large spaces. Large spaces are difficult to make comfortable and make interesting without it looking like a showroom full of furniture.
SG: Scale, yes. I think it has to do with the the custom upholstery. It is the foundation. So you really kind of take into account the scale of the space. The biggest mistake, I see it all the time, is using the same length sofa that you would use in a small room as you use in a large room. So you really have to scale it up.
We're doing sort of a challenging place now, which is big penthouse in a modernist building, and the ceiling height is not appropriate to the scale of the rooms. So it's like being squished in between two floors. As I have said about the room with very little light, that dark room, the tortoise shell room, I'm basically accepting it. I'm certainly not putting vertical stripes in there hoping that I can raise the ceiling, because I can't. Instead I'm like, "let's just lower everything".
CR: Low slung --
SG: Low slung. You've got really low long upholstery and really long tables and really long consoles. And it's gonna be really chic because that's what it is. Then there are these moments when you walk in that are three stories high, like a silly little three story high entrance hall. And that's when you really push the verticality so much as a way of expressing that in a moment you're gonna be compressed between two floors of concrete.
CR: Enjoy it now.
SG: Yes, enjoy it now. What I'm doing to make it work is essentially all neutrals, but just as complex as color, it's like a million tones of whites into gray. What I'm doing is , I m using texture as part of my feat. So it's going to have waxy plaster walls that kind of have a shine to them. The minute that you have this shiny plaster wall, you're going to have a very matte material next to it. So it's like shiny matte, not shiny, medium shine, high shine, you know, it's a very texture story - the smooth, silky, velvety. And so it's going be a texture story which is going to help derive the lengths and it's going to help me with my challenge.
CR: Do you entertain much?
SG: All the time.
CR: Is it like a --
SG: Like, tonight.
CR: How do you like to entertain?
SG: It depends on where it is, sometimes it's not a choice. Last night I had a cocktail party at my townhouse on 10th Street, which is the one that was on the other cover of Elle Decor. It's a cool house.
It's my city fantasy, again, view of the street, it has nothing to do with nature. It's beautiful, oily, shiny surfaces, very reflective, very low wattage at all times. There's no recessed lighting.
I like to build very complex cheese boards. Again, it's sort of like that texture story.
Murray's Cheese Shop is a great shop on Bleecker Street. Not only are the shapes attractive to me, but also the color of the cheese. There are all these beautiful different cheeses , some are wrapped in grape leaves and all that stuff. Of course, I like to take a goat milk cheese and contrast it with something a little sharper and create a really good cheese board - which has figs and jam. I use all these great little elements that I collect.
So I build a board and then I have a very, you know, involved bar. It has every drink that you can possibly, at least within reason, imagine that someone's going to ask for. I think that in order to be a good host you really have to say, "would you like a gin and tonic, or a vodka tonic, or would you like a tequila and lime, or something else?". Then when they say, "I actually would really like a whiskey". You say, "great!", and then you have to have the right glass for that.
The food has to be out before they arrive. I'm way over some of the things like, as much as it kills me, I don't really send out formal invites anymore. I just email people, because my lifestyle is such that I've also learned that the sit down dinner, which has been fun in the past, but is not as much fun as what I do now.
The sit down dinner is tricky because, particularly in the Hamptons, where someone will say, "I'd love to come to dinner but I have two house guests this weekend." And I immediately respond, "You must bring your house guests and your dog". Then if you literally have, which I've done a thousand times, literally have to empty the entire table, you move it all. Make it all buffet. Push the table back. Get some help, do all that. Then you realize that actually it's raining like hell, so you have to be in front of the fire in the drawing room, you know, this huge room. That's cool, and then your story changes and those are the moments that always are wonderful, and it's the fancy perfect dinner party that's completely forgettable.
So if someone cancels and I'm down to four or six, I think to myself, ooh, that purple room which I rarely use inside, would be the perfect place tonight. Because this is such a rare opportunity to only have four or six people for dinner. It never happens. Since these people got snowed in on some trip, they're not coming in and now we're down to four or six. This is perfect. So that's what I think entertaining is.
CR: It's sort of an artistic expression for you.
SG: Yes, and it's totally fun. I mean it's a lifestyle thing for sure.
I like a meal where it's really healthy and it's all local. And now I've come to the point where I don't even keep things in the house that I don't endorse. I could do a whole meal without butter - I don't use butter. We have like six different kinds of sea salt, and all this kind of stuff that I care a lot about. There's lots of drinking. Sometimes somebody will take the boat out or the kayaks out, and it's part of the experience.
And I do love a good disaster, and the tighter the spot the better. You know, I had a party earlier in the season where it broke up into two parts because it started to get chilly out. So some people hung outside. This is what I designed it to be. But most of the people, two thirds, ended up in that big room by the fire. What I should have done at the beginning, was abandon the whole idea of "outside", and not suggested it as an option. It would have forced everyone inside. Then it would've been a great evening. But instead it wasn't a great evening. It was fine, but it wasn't memorable. And it's because I broke it into the two parties. .
I feel all the time at catered events, it's just like, no. Shouldn't have done that. I mean I get it, usually it's to be pompous. Where like, you know, big long tables. The most beautiful thing on the planet for a photo shoot. But then you end up talking to two people. TWO. Might as well have dinner for two. Such an annoyance. And I mean, again, I love the way it looks. I fantasize about it down the orchard. I've done it and you've probably seen it in photo shoots. Of course you don't necessarily like the person you're sitting next to.
CR: And you're stuck.
SG: And you're stuck, yeah.
CR: Um, and you just moved in here in January?
SG: Uh huh. Yes.
CR: So did you gut it?
SG: Yeah, this was gutted, the four walls, or three walls. We designed it to work like a factory kind of space, and it works really well. There's another floor upstairs that's not finished, and there's another floor on the lower level which will be my kind of design development level. That's where I'm going to lay out product and textiles, and things for meetings. I'm also going to lay out antiques and things that I find, vintage stuff that inspires me, and use it to draw off of for furniture or to show a client something I want them to see.
CR: Do you have plans for a furniture or fabric line?
SG: I have everything already done because we do so much custom furniture for every project. Every project that I do, every day of my life, is another piece. So it's just like buckets of it. That means that, you know, there's a furniture line there. The answer is yes, I'd like to. But, no, I don't have any plans to.
The funny thing about it, because I was thinking of it, was why I don't I do textiles? I'm really happy with all the textiles that are out there. In some ways I'm always thinking that the reason to do custom is because there's a niche that hasn't been filled for me or for my work. There's a lot of things that haven't been filled. There's a whole lack of outdoor furniture that's deep. I just build it myself.
I'm always interested in the things that I can't find. I would be happy to do anything someone came to me and asked me to do.
This is something that I've been developing. This is the ceiling of a library, so I thought it would be very chic to have the floor pattern be the same as the ceiling pattern. In my country house you saw the planked carpet. These are all grates, actually iron fencing from a very special garden in Belgium. These are cobblestone streets. I'm intrigued by the notion of materials under your feet that are very much like the materials under your feet. So when you look at this room here, the flooring of this room is really beautiful. It's all extremely wide plank floors. Super wide, 18th century planks. But the scale of this big room was such that I wanted to warm it up and have a carpet. So all I did was I measured the planks and then had carpet made to match the planks. So that's the carpet and these are the planks and those are the nails. It's a totally comfortable room because it has this carpet, but when you look at the room, it essentially feels like it's the room without a carpet.
I like the idea of the front entrance hall potentially having a silk and wool cobblestone carpet, which would almost bring you from the street to the interior.
Actually, I'm very interested. That's one of the reasons why I bought this building was because I might have the room to develop all these ideas outside of projects. But the problem with it, frankly, is that my projects are really involved and they're really these great projects. I feel like if I wasn't given great projects, then I would do a product line. When clients are coming to you and saying the floor on 5th Avenue and make it really custom? It's a great opportunity to do it, enjoy it, make money. And also, create something really extraordinary. But also basically build really good prototypes for a furniture line, or a book, which I'd love to do.
CR: Do you wake up and just start running, like all the ideas are there?
SG: Yeah.
CR: How do you go to sleep?
SG: Oh that's easy, I love it.
CR: Really?
SG: Yeah.
CR: Crawl in and you're out?
SG: Done. My mother is so jealous of that. I mean literally just like, ZZZZZZZ.
CR: You're lucky because usually people with your kind of mind, they have a hard time turning it off.
CR: What is your cocktail of choice?
SG: In the summer, just fresh lime juice and tequila. But in the winter it's gin. I don't drink tonic anymore. So sad. I haven't been drinking very much. I've been running a lot, so I've sort of dropped the drinking. It just slows you down. Actually I feel really aware and very present when I don't have any. Like it's a nice thing to lose for a while. But, it's just a summer thing.
CR: Do you like to shop?
SG: I like to shop vintage, yeah. I love to shop vintage. In fact, I think it's deeply important. I love to get on an airplane and go.
Because it's the essence of everything, but the furniture, that is important. I mean it's like, the lunch you had or the street or the weather or the people you meet or the spirit of the town. I'm telling you, you take that back with you when you go work on that project. Once this client said, "I can't believe you're going away this week." I was like, trust me, you should be paying me to go away. Because your projects will be 10 times more fabulous because I'm going away. So don't even question that for a minute because I need that.
CR: We do a category on the website with proprietors. I think store owners have a lot to do with design too. Do you agree with that?
SG: Oh yeah. Especially in Europe. I mean, my whole entertainment thing is all essentially affiliated with traveling, mostly to Belgium or to France. There's such a uniquely casual lifestyle that's sort of, how do I explain it? It's a kind of a lifestyle that's formal. It's the lifestyle that you should use what you have.
Like this morning I served breakfast to my guests. I woke up early and I made them egg white omelets. We built this kind of drink I like, which is made with all sorts of wheat grass and things. The silver is superbly important Scandinavian silver which came from a very important house, and it was something I lucked out on in Amsterdam. The whole thing was all rigged with the right music, all the linen napkins and all that stuff. It's a pain in the neck for somebody to come in after that and iron it all and clean it all - but that's just, that moment.
I mean, how many moments do we have? I don't know how many times you will be my guests, you know. It's a really important moment. It wasn't a riveting meal. It was just an important moment to get them off to do their day in New York before we drive out to the Hamptons and do it again tonight.
CR: All those elements, I mean they make people feel special, that you took the time to treat them that way. It takes time and effort to live like that. It makes me think about the flea markets in Paris. At that one and half or two hours, they won't even talk to you because they're sitting there dining in their booth.
SG: I think it's amazing.
CR: It is. I love that.
SG: That's when I really am like, take a breather, you're an American, I know you don't get this, you have to slow down.
CR: I love it because I have to remind myself to not always be on to that next thing. To just take some time and sit for a moment.
SG: I know it's really a problem. Because I mean, literally, you wouldn't believe what I do to get things to be done properly. Actually ,I'm going to pull it off right now! I'm obsessed with the fact that I haven't been to the flower market for the house is Sag Harbor, and I'm having guests all weekend. And there's no flowers from 28th Street! It's the only street I shop on for flowers because they're the best ones. That does not fit into my schedule, but I have to make it fit into my schedule. So it's sort of just an obsession and at the end of the day, no one's supposed to know. It's supposed to just look very effortless.
Entertaining. To me, entertaining is --
HT: It's worth the effort.
SG: It's worth the effort
So I'm not a big fan of the big long table or the big wedding that took a year to plan, that only was an hour and a half long.
CR: And the bride is crying 'cause the flowers aren't right.
SG: Not good. I would say, take that budget and plan a full year. That'd be so cool if someone said, "I have an idea for a wedding". Take all that money and entertain friends, his friends and her friends, for the next 12 months, one dinner a month. Simple dinner. You know, and meet them all! By the time that you guys are married, you will have met each others' friends and family. Some good, some bad. And you have basically developed your future. And that's so much more valuable than a stupid, four hour wedding. That's a perfect example. And during that time you would have realized that the big long table is a mistake. The round table is great. That the table outside was really fun. That you don't really like entertaining a lot of people, you prefer entertaining less people. And I just feel like that's a really interesting lesson.
CR: You could go into your future together with all of that figured out, instead of taking the next five years. I think you're on to something. You're not going to go into wedding planning, are you?
SG: Thank God I never thought of that.
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