Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2018 i Architectural Digest

Visitors to Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle’s freshly redecorated house in London’s Hackney borough might want to pack a machete—it’s a jungle in there! Flowered papers climb walls and cross ceilings. Blossoming fabrics dress chairs and drape windows. Leafy carpets turn floors into meadows and the stairway into Amazonia. Vines dangle from newly opened skylights as thickly as fringe drips from sofas and lampshades. “We’ve been referred to as maximalists though this place is really just high on print and color,” explains the Dublin-born Gormley, cofounder of House of Hackney, the granny-mod lifestyle brand that she and her husband, a native of Somerset, have nurtured into a cultural phenomenon since its 2011 launch. So much so that two years ago the couple—he resembles a dashing goth rocker, while she…

FOOT LOOSE Boldly reinterpreted or faithful to tradition, claw-foot tubs hit their stride VANITY FLAIR These two stylish vanities offer the total package, with sinks, counters, and cabinetry combined ROCK ’N’ ROLL Unexpected hues, allover pattern—when it comes to stone surfaces, the experts don’t hold back NICE CURVES ANTONIOLUPI Ago185 freestanding sink in Nero Marquinia marble by Mario Ferrarini; $9,763. antoniolupi.it This Arabescato Corchia marble has such a strong presence, so I softened the room with the curvature of the sink, which was sculpted from one block.—JULIE HILLMAN We used three marbles, all different colors and grain sizes. The veining on one is so rococo, it's almost figurative.—RAFAEL DE CÁRDENAS STYLE ON TAP Chic new faucets run wild with fine finishes and sculptural forms For my master bath, I had…

In 2011, when I first visited Oakwood, Wendell Castle’s home in Scottsville, New York, the 79-year-old artist and designer—the subject of a book I was researching—pulled up at the Rochester airport in a vintage BMW. His silver hair was brushed back from a high forehead, and he was wearing his signature blue-rimmed, gogglelike glasses. We drove to his studio, where Wendell picked up a 14-inch hydraulic chain saw and, wielding it like a wand, started to cut away at a hunk of walnut. Next, a custom spokeshave in hand, he began to chisel. “You have a conversation,” he said of his intuitive process. “Unexpected things might happen as I’m digging into the wood.” After the impressive display of craftsmanship, he walked me through the hivelike workspace, stopping now and again…

In the early 1930s, Dutch department store Metz & Co. asked Gerrit Rietveld to do something unprecedented: design a chair for mass production. The architect agreed, proposing a Z-shaped perch made from four slices of sturdy elm supported by dovetail joints and metal screws. It was no standard seat, but to everyone’s surprise the armless, legless, cantilevered form—a mere sliver in profile—was simultaneously comfortable and sturdy. “It is not a chair but a designer’s joke,” Rietveld famously said of his Zig-Zag. Creatives of all stripes were taken with its smart craftsmanship: Several decades later, artist Donald Judd placed five around a dining table at his New York place, 101 Spring Street, and two more at his Architecture Office in Marfa, Texas. In an arty advertising campaign, Karl Lagerfeld deemed it…

Tomas Maier craves authenticity. “Everything is so globalized, with so many stores that look alike in cities that have tons of personality,” says Bottega Veneta’s creative director. That realization has led him to develop retail spaces under the Maison rubric, flagships in which the materials, palettes, and details subtly honor their locations. The latest Maison Bottega Veneta recently launched in Manhattan, following those in Milan and Beverly Hills, and it is the biggest: 15,000 seductive square feet of menswear, womenswear, accessories, and furniture spread over three 19th-century townhouses at 740 Madison Avenue. The exteriors have been restored to Age of Innocence perfection—Maier, a passionate architecture buff, is on World Monuments Fund’s advisory committee—grounding the store in the city’s streetscape narrative. Which, neatly enough, includes the brand itself. “Bottega Veneta opened…

Todd Merrill is one of New York’s top tastemakers, a connoisseur of blue-chip 20th-century furniture and curator of stellar contemporary works that straddle the lines between art, craft, and design. But Merrill, who was born and raised in Vermont, prefers the relative quiet of Southampton to Manhattan’s high-flying scene. The rambling five-bedroom home he shares with wife Lauren (the couple also maintains a city pied-à-terre) doubles as Merrill’s lab, where an everchanging array of furniture and objects from the talents he represents comes together under one roof. As Merrill explains, the 9,000-squarefoot house offers a staging ground for future exhibitions and a space to assemble new acquisitions while he gets to know his subjects’ work intimately. “This is where I bring things to look at and photograph and create collections,”…

When the United Kingdom’s future prime minister Benjamin Disraelivisited Valletta, Malta’s capital (and one of this year’s European Capitals of Culture), in 1830, he described it as “a city of palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen.” And it is one of these palaces that FrancisSultana bought 12 years ago to create his own Maltese sanctuary. “From the moment my partner, David [Gill], and I saw the house, I knew exactly what had to be done, restored, replaced, and added,” says the Londonbased AD100 decorator. “The house hadn’t been lived in since World War II, when the city had been heavily bombed and most people left for the countryside. It had retained some of its original Baroque details, and I was struck by the presence of a courtyard, a rare thing…

nine years ago, AD100 interior architect Pierre Yovanovitch and his partner, Matthieu Cussac, fell hard for a rundown 17th-century château in the middle of nowhere, on the northern edge of the Var region in Provence, not far from the famous Gorges du Verdon. “We bought a ruin with no path, no garden, nothing,” recalls Yovanovitch. “It was very romantic, full of pine trees and shadow—a fairy tale, but very dark, I must say.” Fixing up the house and the outlying buildings proved relatively easy. “It’s what we know how to do,” says Cussac. But shaping the vast grounds presented thornier problems. For all his confidence with brick and mortar, Yovanovitch is the first to admit he didn’t know a Platanus orientalis from a Platanus hispanica. Moreover, the region and the…

Stepping into John Derian’s shops can feel like falling into the pages of a vintage coloring book, his signature decoupage covering everything from plates to lamps. Now he has partnered with Designers Guild to translate some beloved motifs into a new line of fabrics. “It’s exciting to see favorite images used in fresh, bold ways,” Derian says of his Picture Book collection, which also includes wallpapers and accessories. designersguild.com.…

There should be a Hall of Fame for retailers and shops that defined their generations. Design Research, the hugely influential Cambridge, Massachusetts, emporium of modernist furnishings founded in 1953, immediately springs to mind. As does Fiorucci, the Milaneseborn specialty store that became an international bastion of progressive taste during the 1970s and ’80s. And then there’s Moss. Founded in Manhattan in 1994 by the estimable Murray Moss and his life/business partner, Franklin Getchell, Moss revolutionized the concept of selling design. For nearly two decades, the gallery was routinely heralded in the press as the best design shop in America, or even the world. Beyond setting trends and championing talent, Moss made a compelling case for the value of great design—that it has the power to ennoble quotidian objects, that it…

“HOW CAN YOU STAND TO BE SURROUNDED by so many little men in red coats?” So sniffed a visitor to Peggy and David Rockefeller’s Manhattan townhouse back in the 1940s, unimpressed by the young couple’s 18th-century portraits and Currier & Ives prints. The criticism stung, especially since it was delivered by art historian Marga Barr, wife of MoMA director Alfred H. Barr Jr. It also challenged. By the time the philanthropic Rockefellers died—she in 1996, he last year at age 101—they had amassed A-list works by Picasso, Matisse, O’Keeffe, Klee, and dozens more art-historical icons. On May 7–11, all hit the block at Christie’s New York for a 1,600-lot sale that is expected to bring $700 million, an estate-sale record. (Proceeds will be donated to charities ranging from the Council…

“The great decorators we admire didn’t stop with the house,” says Grenney. “They paid attention to food, hospitality, and the garden.”…

“Ever since I first saw La Belle et la Bête, Cocteau has been an inspiration,” says Sultana. “Now we have well over 100 of his ceramic works.” “I didn’t want to live in the past. The contemporary art brings energy and life, which is hugely important to me.”…

(T) means the item is available only to the trade. ON OUR COVERS NEWSSTANDS (“WILD LIFE”): Landscape design by Agence Louis Benech; louisbenech.com. Wood-and-concrete bench by Pierre Yovanovitch Architecture d’Intérieur; pierre yovanovitch.com. Inside ornamental pool, ceramic artwork by Armelle Benoit; armellebenoit.fr. SUBSCRIBERS (“LIVING HISTORY”): Interiors by Francis Sultana; francissultana.com. Console and floor lamps by Mattia Bonetti from David Gill Gallery; davidgillgallery.com. Rug by Mattia Bonetti fabricated by Galerie Diurne; diurne.com. SUBSCRIBERS (“EARTHLY DELIGHTS”): Interiors by Veere Grenney Assoc.; veeregrenney.com. On antique bobbin chair, Indhira cotton, in amber, by Le Manach (T); lemanach.fr. On chair at left, Aryan Chota, in tangerine, by Namay Samay from Tissus d’Hélène (T); tissusdhelene.co.uk. OBJECT LESSON: PRACTICAL JOKE PAGE 34: Vintage 1981 Donald Judd Fourth Floor Table 19 (at center) and vintage 1981 Donald Judd Fourth Floor…

Decoratively speaking, “we’re hungering for complex carbohydrates again,” says design historian Emily Evans Eerdmans. Thus, the banquet that is Henri Samuel: Master of the French Interior (Rizzoli), her new book about the éminence grise (1904–1996) whose clients were so private that many projects were never seen. Others were, including (clockwise from top left) Jacques Abreu’s salon, a bedroom at Château de Bois-Feuillette, and Samuel’s own entrance hall and salon. All are acmes of old-guard opulence, with no detail left undone. “Now anybody who graduates from high school thinks he can be a decorator,” Eerdmans adds, “but this book shows that Samuel came out of a tradition that’s almost inconceivable in today’s world of disposable furnishings and fast fashion.” So go ahead, dig in. rizzoliusa.com…