Excerpt: Making Rooms Your Own: Personal Flair

Making Rooms Your Own: Personal Flair The editors of New York Social Diary Foreword by David Patrick Columbia

Photography by Jeff Hirsch

David Kleinberg “Luxury is in each detail.””

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David Kleinberg moved, in recent years, from a glass aerie near the 59th Street Bridge to a small but perfectly-formed, very grown-up apartment in the east 70s. It has a spacious, high-ceilinged living room that is as elegant as he is and it was just the kind of room for which he had been searching.

Typically such rooms are only to be found in astronomically priced ten-room apartments so he counts himself lucky to have found it in an apartment that was affordable and of just the right dimensions. It did come with a lot of faux bois, damask and curtain-smothered windows, a look he describes as “very Denning & Fourcade” but it’s a description he uses fondly because that was where he got his first summer job after studying liberal arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

He remembers the renowned decorating pair as wonderfully eccentric men who were “full on Napoleon III” in their approach to style and he credits them for teaching him the value of fanciful thought. He went on to work at ParishHadley for some 16 years and realized that the clean, classic taste so beautifully realized by Albert Hadley was also where his own heart lay.

His apartment is filled with lovely soft light and although the faux bois and the heavy curtains have been banished, the Denning & Fourcade lacquered chinoiserie panels in the dining room have remained. Along with orchids upon the original marble mantel and an alabaster Art Deco light fixture, the room creates an exotic intimacy for dinner parties, for which he does not cook. He last cooked, he claims, when he was 22, just after he finished college, moved away from Great Neck, Long Island where he grew up and rented fifth floor walk-up studio on 64th Street. Apparently that last supper consisted of a lamb chop. In addition to confessing that he doesn’t cook, he told us that he doesn’t paint and doesn’t draw, “I’m the least artistic person in this business.”

Needless to say his graceful design belies that and, furthermore, he shelved books for two years in the public library to save money for his first trip to Paris at the age of 16. “I remember walking through the Left Bank until I could get to the river and I literally wept. I’m a total Francophile. I love how impossibly difficult they are.” His design alter ego, he

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Q+A with David Si dolorem hicit laborerio?

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Alex Papachristidis “Your home should be a story of who you are and what you love.”

We think Alex Papachristidis may by now have recovered from Sian’s admission that she uses paper plates at breakfast time and, at his beseeching, she might even consider exhuming her full set of Tiffany silver that has spent decades in the depths of a closet. An aesthete to the soles of his bespoke shoes, he also gently removed from our hands the paper coffee cups we were holding and decanted the coffee into china cups. And this we love about him. Why not use pretty things every day? Porcelain plates, crystal and antique silverware: all these things are a source of delight in a utilitarian world. He has, he says, made certain accommodations with modern life and is especially fond of Instagram—his profile is called “Alex’s Viewpoint”—but this apartment in the east 60s definitely has an Old World European feel. His type of decorating, he says, is all about history. Is he a dying breed? His answer: “If I’m a dying breed, is history going to die?”

He firmly believes that not only is his own style alive and kicking but that

a younger version of it, which he called “modern vintage”, has established itself. Those younger designers might not yet, however, be able to match his shopping skills, emphasizing as he does his “twenty-seven years of buying and shopping competitively.” It is, he affirms, the right time to buy the kind of furniture and decorative objects that fill his home. There are bargains everywhere, especially at auction, because, happily, “all the rich people are into art work.”

There really is nothing ugly in any of the rooms and that is just how he and his partner, Scott Nelson need it to be. Even price tags on groceries are banned and although they eat out often, if they eat pizza at home, it is served on good china with proper linen napkins. If porcelain or china isn’t dishwasher safe, so be it. Sian was told that her wedding china, not the appalling paper plates, should be used at breakfast and hand washed. “Are you washing dishes for forty? What are you saving it for?”

His love for beautiful things, he says, has always been with him, in part thanks to his mother, an “Auntie Mame” figure in his life who was always decorating and shopping, and it was a relief when it was she who suggested that he leave Skidmore College to study interior design instead. He went to Parsons School of Design, taking on his first project, a large Manhattan apart-

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John Rosselli “A home should evolve as we do.”

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There’s one thing that seems to generally hold true for antiques dealers and that is that they’re great at telling stories, or at least being interesting.

John Rosselli, some fifty years in the business and counting, is no exception.

Known best for his much-loved Upper East Side decorative emporiums, he probably needs little introduction as the husband of Bunny Williams, owner of whippets, collector of blue-and-white porcelain and one of the first people in the business to introduce a sophisticated mix of pieces from all over the world.

He has several showrooms around the country including one in the D&D building from which he sells reproduction furniture, lighting and fabric lines from renowned names such as Robert Kime and Raoul Textiles. At the age of 86, has just renewed the lease for a further five years on his antiques store on East 61st Street. He also has no intention of kicking his shopping habit. “I buy something every day.” The “something” is quickly turned around for a profit.

It was fascinating to listen to how naturally it came to him when he spoke about buying things and then selling them on—presumably an automatic mindset for him of which he is almost unaware.

He says he didn’t much like school but immediately took to the antiques business when he started out as very young man working for a pair of brothers called Levy, but whom he refers to as “the Marx brothers of the antiques world.” He learned to make what were basically fake antiques, presumably pretty good ones, and eventually, in 1950, he set up his own tiny shop on Second Avenue and 68th Street. It was he says, a magical time to be in the antiques business. Between First and Third Avenue along those streets in the 60s, there was nothing but antiques stores and bars. “And gay bars! And at five o’clock the hookers came out.” He says he never had a moment’s doubt over what he chose to do. “I wish I could tell you I had some insecurities about being in business. I never did. Getting along with people is the easiest thing in the world for me. I’m not a snob.” He isn’t, but his clientele have always included very posh people. Babe Paley bought her Christmas gifts from him and he remembers selling her a little ivory palm tree that he had found in London that she instantly deemed Truman Capote’s present for that year. It may all sound glamorous but it remains true that he is humble and he stressed throughout our conversation how fortunate he feels himself to be.

His childhood was spent on a prosperous farm in Newton, New Jersey where his chores were to make sure the icebox didn’t overflow as well as to take out the ashes from the wood burning stove. He had six brother and seven sisters and his extended family was so large that at high school, his English teacher was also his niece.

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Q+A with John Si dolorem hicit laborerio?

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Making Rooms Your Own Personal Flair New York Social Diary Foreword by David Patrick Columbia Photography by Jeff Hirsch

Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. 300 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10010 www.rizzoliusa.com ISBN: 978-0-8478-6633-5 $45.00 HC w/jacket, 8 x 10 inches 240 pages 200 illustrations Rights: World For serial rights, images to accompany your coverage, or any other publicity information about this title please contact: Pam Sommers, Executive Director of Publicity T: (212) 387-3465 E: psommers@rizzoliusa.com