Luxe: Scene, September/October 2019

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SHELF LIFE

DWELL GATHER BE: DESIGN FOR MOMENTS

WRITTEN BY NINA KORMAN

Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, owners of the ultra-successful furniture company that bears their name, are in a car, speeding through rural North Carolina on a weekday morning. Moving forward quickly is an apt metaphor for their business, which is now celebrating its 30 th anniversary.

Gold and Williams initially founded a factory in Taylorsville to ensure superior, American-made products, then proceeded to take care of their now 900-plus employees by establishing on-site day care, a gym, a health center and a café. Their progressive policies rocked the furniture industry, and their products—vintage-style leather club chairs and seating slipcovered in casual fabrics—did too. The duo spoke with Luxe about their time in the industry. mgbwhome.com How does 30 feel? MG: Weird and interesting and great. We just hired a CEO, Allison O’Connor, to spearhead things, nurture our team and position us for even bigger and better growth in the future.

Greatest lesson learned while in business? BW: Follow your gut.

If you don’t have that really deep feeling about something, it may not be quite perfect. So many people let others get in their minds or talk them out of stuff, then things go kind of haywire.

Proudest accomplishment as a company? BW: Day care. We started it 22 years ago. Since then we’ve had about 70 kids there all the time. You get to see them grow up.

What’s next? MG: A whole new take on leather club chairs in exciting colors, like leaf green, deep red and peacock blue (shown).

Some of the silhouettes are classic modern while others have a very new traditional look.

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MEETLVTD the MAKER DESIGN LVTD Design founder Evan Jones started his design-build studio in 2012, in the midst of Denver’s independent-restaurant boom. First, the owner of Humble Pie restaurant visited Jones’ 1890 Victorian home—which Jones had tricked out with handmade details—and asked him to build the furniture for her eatery. One of her friends asked Jones to do the same for his gastropub, then Old Major restaurant commissioned light fixtures, and suddenly, Jones had a new day job. Each LVTD (pronounced “elevated”) piece has a style Jones describes as modern-rustic. “I love midcentury modern, but we try to give it a little more texture and character,” he says. That individuality comes from reclaimed wood paired with materials including steel, quartz, glass and brass. In addition to custom furniture, lighting and installation elements, LVTD (now a team of five) recently began selling original designs at Fetch Shop in the Dairy Block and offers several popular designs online. lvtddesign.com WRITTEN BY CHRISTINE DEORIO

joint adventure photos: courtesy mitchell gold + bob williams. shelf life photo: courtesy blue star press. meet the maker photo: chad lovejoy.

JOINT ADVENTURE MITCHELL GOLD + BOB WILLIAMS

Hygge. It’s a feeling that comes naturally to the Danes, who created the word to mean coziness and contentment. In America, however, we could use a little help, which Alexandra Gove offers in Dwell Gather Be: Design for Moments, published this September by Blue Star Press. Using personal stories, practical tips and photos of feel-good homes, Gove—who runs the über-cozy Vail Valley lifestyle boutique and online store Hygge Life with her husband, Koen van Renswoude—shares how to bring a sense of hygge to every aspect of home life. “Dwell is about designing a space where you can rest, rejuvenate and seek comfort,” she explains. “Gather is about creating an environment that facilitates good, deep connections with guests. And Be is about taking care of yourself in a way that allows you to fully enjoy those moments.” What it’s not about: “Creating perfect interiors,” Gove says. “The idea is that you should design your home to facilitate the moments you treasure.” bluestarpress.com

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THE INSIDER CHARLES CUNNIFFE

Since launching his firm in 1981, architect Charles Cunniffe and his team have completed a variety of projects around the world, from custom homes to a LEED Goldand WELL-certified police station to affordable housing projects in Telluride, Snowmass and Aspen, where Charles Cunniffe Architects is based. What’s the common thread?

“Clients who are interested in sustainability and legacy in terms of building something properly the first time,” Cunniffe says. “A lot of projects look great in photographs, but the difference is in the details—the way the light comes through, the connection to the outdoors, and the spirit of place a building evokes when you’re actually in it. Any project that brings those things into play is what we gravitate to.” Here, the architect shares three Colorado buildings that meet those high standards. cunniffe.com

ASPEN CHAPEL “As you come into Aspen, you’ll notice this chapel’s beautiful stone steeple. The building, which was designed by architect George Edward Heneghan, Jr., is so well placed; it sets a tone of peace and spirituality for the community. It’s not overstated—the materials are stone and wood—but it is very well proportioned and unique in its spiritual expression in the context of Aspen, where the essence of spirituality is in the environment. It’s just something that strikes you and makes you reflect on where you are and why.” aspenchapel.org

TALKING SHOP MILLER LANE MERCANTILE

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ASPEN MEADOWS RESORT “No matter how long I live here and explore the environs around Aspen, going to the Meadows campus (home to the Aspen Institute) will always be a unique experience. In the 1950s the founder, Walter Paepcke, brought in Herbert Bayer, a Bauhaus architect, to design a series of buildings here. It led to the blossoming of midcentury modern work in Aspen—and is exemplary of really well-executed and honest architecture. The grounds are quite sculptural and create a sense of place that is uniquely captivating. If you look at the resort’s Anderson Park from the sky, it’s another Herbert Bayer work of art.” aspenmeadows.com

COLORADO STATE CAPITOL BUILDING “To me, this is not only a significant building at the state level, but one of the more remarkable capitol buildings in the country. It was amazing architecture in its day and quite evolved in terms of the technology that was available at the time, from the size of the dome plated in real gold (shown), to the spire, to all the backof-house functions. It was also the first state capitol building to be LEED certified, and I think it’s really interesting to have a capitol building that represents sustainable values.” colorado.gov/capitol

talking shop photos: mimi mccormick. the insider photos (from top): seth hawk; courtesy aspen meadows resort; eric muhr.

Calli Nicoletti has always had a fascination with product curation—one so strong that, years ago, she created a spreadsheet to track her favorite new items.

So, by the time she opened Miller Lane Mercantile, a lifestyle boutique in Northwest Denver’s Tennyson Street shopping district, she had hundreds of brands to curate from.

“Since the beginning, my buying philosophy has been that if it isn’t something I either already own or want in my own home, I don’t bring it in,” she explains. From tableware that encourages gathering with friends to bath products made for a night of self-care, Nicoletti’s selections are made with “slow living” in mind. “To me, slow living is quite literally about slowing down,” she explains. “I feel strongly that the days are endlessly more enjoyable when you make thoughtful choices about the items you surround yourself with.”

Nicoletti took the same approach to designing her shop—a bright, breezy space that nods to her East Coast beach-bum roots. A local craftsman built the 16-foot-long walnut shelving piece that displays a collection of pottery and kitchenware, and Nicoletti found an antique workman’s table to accommodate more handmade and small-batch finds—most from womanowned businesses—ranging from jewelry and leather goods to foodstuffs and home accessories. “Beautiful products speak for themselves, yes,” she says, “but it’s the sum of pulling everything together and telling a visual story that’s most exciting to me.” millerlanemercantile.com

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GALLERY CHAT Visitors to the Aspen Art Museum are inevitably struck by two things: the Shigeru Ban–designed building’s woven-wood façade and the timely exhibitions. Here’s what to look for this autumn.

ERIKA VERZUTTI, “VENUS YOGINI,” ⊲

▲ RASHID JOHNSON, “THE HIKERS,” through November 3 Some artists mine inspiration from a single source. Artist Rashid Johnson finds it everywhere, from music and literature to history and culture. What he does with that inspiration is equally varied. The Chicago-born artist uses sculpture, painting, drawing, collage, filmmaking, choreography and performance to explore themes from art history to individual and shared cultural identities. This solo exhibition—a joint effort with Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo—encapsulates this diversity by presenting existing and recent works, including a commissioned installation that incorporates live video and performance, featuring Johnson’s first choreographic work involving ballet and modern movement—a collaboration with New Yorkbased choreographer Claudia Schreier.

⊳ ETEL ADNAN,

“EACH DAY IS A WHOLE WORLD,” through October 6

Coloradans who love their mountains will find a kindred spirit in Beirut-born Etel Adnan: In the 1970s, the artist, essayist and poet moved to San Francisco, where she was captivated

by Mount Tamalpais. Since then, it has been a means of exploring how landscapes shape humans’ perceptions of their place in the world. This exhibition brings together small-format oil paintings and woven tapestries that distill landscapes into their simplest, defining forms: strong lines and abstract shapes rendered in vibrant colors.

⊳ JOHN ARMLEDER, through October 27 The Swiss artist’s work encompasses performance, design, sculpture and painting, but this exhibition celebrates John Armleder’s “Pour Paintings” and “Puddle Paintings” series. To create the former, the artist applies a rainbow of paints and lacquers to the tops of large canvases, allowing the colors to drip down and mingle. The result: striking vertical bands of color that appear at once orderly and disorderly, intentional and experimental. For the latter, Armleder places canvases on his studio floor before applying saturated colors in more chaotic pools.

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aspen art museum photo: michael moran/otto. verzutti photo: courtesy erika verzutti, andrew kreps gallery, new york, fortes d’aloia & gabriel, são paulo and rio de janeiro, and alison jacques gallery, london. adnan photo: courtesy etel adnan and galerie lelong & co. armleder photo: alessandro zambianchi. johnson photo: martin parsekian.

through October 6

Give one of Erika Verzutti’s texture-rich sculptures a cursory glance, and your eye will likely pick up on some familiar forms: a pumpkin, a raspberry. But look more closely and you’ll see some similarities to the human form—even a bit of personality, perhaps.

That’s intentional, of course, and what makes these works so much fun. For the museum’s Crown Commons, the São Paulo–based artist has created a large-scale bronze Venus, an extension of her smaller sculptures in which renditions of ripe fruits— some finished in otherworldly hues—are stacked just so to depict the goddess of love and fertility.