...about upstairs, downstairs, step by step, on the heels of a Diva: Kips Bay 2015.

 

During the 2004 concert staging of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Kristin Chenoweth starts her number by telling Patti Lupone, who immediately precedes her, to get off the stage. “I stay,” she says. “You go. Mine!” she chirps at the larger-than-life Lupone.

The audience ate it up with a spoon, and Lupone milked it for every inch, strolling off stage, nearly dragging the spotlight with her. Chenoweth, of course, ultimately more than holds her own, but truth is, not even a full-fledged star likes to follow a full-blown Diva.

It’s a little like that at the 2015 Kips Bay Decorator Show House. Last year’s tour-de-force was a real design milestone in the 43 year span of this grande dame’s run, a stunning collection of gargantuan rooms and some of the most over-the-top creative work by the likes of Juan Montoya, Ingrao Inc., Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Alexa Hampton and John Douglas Eason.

It was the hautest of the haute couture, driven largely by the stunning shell in which it all unfolded, one of the storied and legendary Villard Houses. And while this year was still more bespoke and Savile Row than prêt-a-porter, it certainly was a more livable, relatable space where you didn’t have to stretch your mind muscles quite as far to find take-home tips or relatable rooms compared to last year.

How do you follow a diva? Doing what Kips Bay is known for: quintessential "Upper East" old-school decorating, and that's the script most followed.

The 22 design world stars this year played their roles well, and the house still entertains, but it’s way more Chenoweth than Lupone: lighter, breezier, not as deeply serious, intimidating or avant-garde as last year’s. It’s still highly entertaining, with plenty of brilliance, wit and design bravura. While there might not be a $1 million dollar fireplace screen like last year, it’s still every bit a show house, albeit far more Bernstein Broadway than Wagnerian opera, and still very much worth the ticket price, $35 to benefit the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club. 

The house returned to its roots in a way, ensconced in a typical East Side mansion. But “typical” in these parts still means five floors, outdoor spaces, a never-ending oval of a showstopper staircase, grand and ample rooms, and a cool $35 million price tag, even before the designer trappings that came together in a nearly-miraculous four weeks from start to finish.

The location, the Gilded Age Arthur Sachs mansion, feels like a well-preserved house that’s been spared the often brutal surgeon’s knife of never-ending reworkings, but in fact, the mansion experienced a light-handed but total gut renovation, designed by Henry Jessup of HS Jessup Architecture, and finished by Interior Management, Inc.  just moments before opening its doors to the Kips Bay decorators.

Throughout, serendipity and coincidence lend the home a surprising continuity not always found in show houses, and in that continuity, trends of note and patterns worth repeating.

 

With only the fewest of exceptions (foyer, first-floor and top-floor landings, a Keith Haring tiled powder room, and McMillen Inc.'s spare homage to Rio in an upstairs bedroom) the décor is largely all- or mostly-traditional. Even some of the less traditional rooms (by Charles Pavarini, Alan Tanskley, and Thom Filicia) feel settled in, yielding a net effect that’s vaguely vintage rather than brand-spanking new, and giving the house the illusion that one owner (with some serious designer assistance) brought these rooms to life over the years rather than cutting it all off one bolt of toile or chintz. And while not to the degree of the 2013 house, it does give visitors a lovely tour through time, although through a designer’s prism, not a slavish re-creation. 

If you track this house for trend, there were plenty that cut through: Murals are back, gray's still the neutral du jour, plaid is en pointe, African and tribal art is au currant, and the rabbits of Hunt Slonem are still running strong. Palm fronds, whether Golden Girls lush or Chrysler Building sharp, offer the ultimate design escape. Salon-style hangings are still amping up art collections. Patterns are meant to be mixed. Cheery, cherry red is making a juicy comeback, thanks to Red Queen Alessandra Branca and LA designer Mark D. Sikes. Art Deco has been refreshed with a lighter hand, and, it seems, every room should be designed for multi-function, and one of those functions should be a bar. Another somewhat surprising repeat apperance: every single bed in the house had some variation of tester or canopy, whether linear and spare or draped and enveloping.

The men of the house turned it out in buttoned-up fashion. Alan Tanksley and Kips Bay veteran Charles Pavarini both let their architectural roots show while letting their artistic flags fly, Pavarini with a metal-leafed wall of Ann Sacks travertine, a stretched-membrane ceiling in his closet-turned bar and stunning shagreen-embossed leather drapery (crafted by Anthony Lawrence Belfair), Tanksley with a fog-shrouded Deco-esque mural on the interior of the sloped mansard roof.

Thom Filicia’s multifunction “modern library” also had a foggy palette of mixed patterns with a modern menswear vibe. Filicia’s art was some of the house’s gutsiest, if you were to separate the private rooms from the public circulation areas of Ronald J. Bricke, Paula + Martha, and Philip Mitchell, all three largely art driven.

Filica wasn’t the only one to use gray. It showed up in a light to mid-range value on  the toile-inspired stairwell wall covering (a surprisingly unifying backdrop for Mitchell’s two+ floors of floor-to-ceiling artwork, a stellar example of the staggering skills of insider secret iLevel) and to an elusive deep and warm gray (Tanner’s Brown, from Farrow & Ball) on the Christopher Peacock kitchen cabinets.

Plaid dotted the house, starting with the room-commanding, custom-colored AKDO tile backdrop (one of several places this boutique tile house's intricate offerings glistened) applied on the bias in the Christopher Peacock-designed, House Beautiful-sponsored and Silestone-clad kitchen, which Peacock himself said was more “a living room you cook in.” Even his oversized lanterns threw shadows of plaid onto the room's ceiling.

Upstairs, Alessandra Branca deftly mixed tartan into a sea of refreshed and exotic botanicals and ticking stripe, and on another floor, David Phoenix cocooned the man’s master bedroom with a pale gray-and-tan tartan that struck the perfect masculine/feminine, winter/summer balance, grounding the flighty, trippy and metallic Damien Hirst butterflies. 

 

 

  

 

 

 

With those tartans leading the charge, it was a good year for geometrics in a house often known for chintz and cabbage roses, with an exuberant use of overscaled but picnic-ready gingham in Mark D. Sikes’s vote-splitting formal dining room (showing off his own wicker line for Soane Britain, Sikes being the first American to design for the UK company).  

 

 

Geometry took a more organic, global turn, with Sikes' paisley, and Tilton Fenwick’s own hand-block-inspired Zulla fabric for Duralee, covering the walls in their tricky-but-tamed back stair landing, featuring a silk purse of a solution to the room’s sow’s ear of wiring: raised conduits used as chair rail, softened with Houlés fringe trim.

 

 

Global influences weren’t limited to the Best Marigold Hotel-evocative Tilton Fenwick space. Ceramic giraffe-head vessels commanded Tanksley’s layered room, which also referenced Greece, a nod to the room’s inspiration, Alexa Hampton’s Greek-born husband. The expedition continued with Branca's beaded and feathered African headdresses.

 

The elegant Hers bedroom by Cathy Kincaid featured a grand tour’s worth of souvenirs, Asian and otherwise.

The globetrotting continued to Brasil in McMillen Inc.’s roof-deck-adjacent bedroom, and Michael Herold’s deep, dark and dramatic but TINY space, taken to the tropics with the Cole & Son Palm Leaves wallpaper, all very Midnight in the Jungle of Good an Evil.

While last year’s house had a Whitney-worthy collection of public-scaled art with a capital A, this year’s house made art, with a welcome trend toward sculpture, a far more personal endeavor. And while Filicia upped the ante with a man-sized (and -shaped) piece, smaller-scaled works of wood, plaster, stone and metal showed up in Tanksley’s aerie, Branca’s lush tablescapes, Bricke’s yin-yang of a stair landing, and Paula + Martha's mobius ribbon  floating above the stairwell. But nowhere was the sculpture more personal than in Pavarini’s hands: the multiple skyscraper pieces were an ode to his grandfather, the start of his own architectural leanings.

Perhaps some of the most notable lessons of the house were the importance of the “throwaway space,” and the value of imbuing even modest rooms with multifunction. Almost every landing and elevator vestibule was designed to stop traffic, not just move it. Tilton Fenwick created their perfect roost for cocktails and gossip (evocative of Dineen Architecture’s drinks lounge from 2013) from an awkward back stair that might have otherwise been dissed and dismissed. And perhaps the best space in the house? That walk-in closet-turned-geometric gem of Herold’s, proving yet again that some of the biggest moments in show houses take place in the smallest of footprints.

As for multifunction, Branca got a whole apartment’s worth of use (lounging, dining, gaming, socializing, napping and more) by activating all four corners of her room, while Filica and Tanksley turned office into a sitting room and vice versa.

 

 

As in many show houses, the biggest risks displayed were not from all-out design, but from quieter moments, none more spare than the top and bottom (mostly) black-and-white brackets by Bricke below and Paula + Martha above, both white-walled, and a true illustration of the oft-overused “curated.” When other rooms jockey to outdo, isn’t minimalism, in a show house, a risk? Bricke put it back in perspective, with a question: “Isn’t everything in design a risk?”

The other lesson of the house: the most noted, complimented and remembered element was not what was brought in, but rather what was built-in: that compressed and elegant nautilus shell and star turn of a staircase, which not even salon wall or opening night crush of well-heeled guests seemed to upstage. It seems to prove that if you truly get the bones right, even bones as seemingly low-key as the polished wood ribbon trailing up towards the skylight-capped top floor, anything works around it, but nothing outshines it. Perhaps the diva does always get the last laugh, and the curtain call. Patti would approve.

The Kips Bay Decorator Show House is open to the public through June 11, 2015. 

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All photos: Patrick J. Hamilton

...about small, dark and handsome: the adventurer’s lair, Design on a Dime 2015

Living, working and designing in Manhattan, I’m no stranger to small spaces. And while, sure, I’d love to work with more square footage and elbow room than New York living typically affords, there’s one small space I’ll gladly tackle: a vignette at Design on a Dime, the annual fundraiser for HousingWorks.  

Even though each of the 55+ designers is given a diminutive 10 x 12’ space (some with three walls, some with only two), and the booths exist for mere moments, the event thrills for the design opportunity it affords, like a fleeting flash mob of art , accessory, lighting, rugs, furnishings, paint and paper. The goal is to wow, entertain, and entice shoppers, big time, in a super small space. 

For the past two years (2013 and 2014), I had a GREAT time flexing my color muscles, so my first instinct was to once again use color to catch the eye of blogger, bigwig and (most of all) bargain hunter (all the solicited merchandise is sold off at up to 70% off to benefit Housing Works). The event’s April date also lends itself to a colorful burst, like spring blooms returning to Central Park after a black-overcoated, overcast and drawn-out winter.

But I wanted to remain, well, neutral, (to keep it interesting for me, and to keep people guessing about my design range), and for a few other reasons: One of my all-time most popular blog posts was all about that beige. Even D&D showrooms known for color report their biggest sales coming from creams, grays, taupes, tans, and yes, even beiges. And at the time planning for Design on a Dime, I was in the midst of a gentleman's all-charcoal master bedroom.

Neutrals get a bad rap for being default, safety net, or cop-out, but I wanted to see if an intentional use of a palette devoid (mostly) of jewel tones, primaries or pastels could still (even in a competitive environment like Design on a Dime) wow. But how? And, as practice for my own practice, could the intentional use of neutrals make a small space live larger? Here’s how I tried to bring sexy back, this year, to new neutrals.  

Texture, and a Game of Opposites

Never is textural play more important than in a monochromatic room, be it emerald green or navy blue, but perhaps even moreso in a room of gunmetal gray. Starting with walls of the oh-so-swank Ralph Lauren Home’s Pearl Ray Shagreen wallcovering in Gun Metal (Ralph Lauren was this year’s official wall sponsor, donating all of the paint and most of the wallpapers), texture was pressed heavily into service. Even solid upholstery colors (like on Bernhardt’s Marcourt banquette and the sexy, SEXY Major Leather Chairs from Mitchell Gold +Bob Williams) were selected because they had an interesting surface texture.  

But texture stories really come to life when they are used as foils against their opposites: shiny against matte, earthy against machined, and that and more happened over and over as items were secured for the room. My textural favorites were the Painted Feathers pillows by pillow-masters Dransfield & Ross, an urban jungle mix, one part Rio, one part rain forest.

The earthy and urbane push-pull of the space was also expressed through metals and metallics polished (the Jelly vase, used as an ice bucket, from Kartell through SwitchModern) or rough (AERIN's gold Bleecker lamps, on the “hallway” side of the space). And that “Hemingway meets Halston” juxtaposition became a great filter through which to run all subsequent decisions.

Dark and Light
Making a dark room sing is also about light: bringing it in, bouncing it around, and even knowing when to stop it. While many still think dark is the wrong way to go in a small space, I’ve yet to have that experience. Dark colors make a room’s edges fall away into the shadows. But nowhere is lighting more important than in a dark room, and even this space with its little-bitty 10 x 12 footprint had ten light sources, not counting the overhead spots. 

Lighting plans work best when there are more lamps than you think you need, and different kinds of them. Among those ten light sources were four with white shades (on AERIN’s Bleecker and Frankfort lamps, and Barry Dixon’s Snail Shell lamp for Arteriors Home) diffusing the light, two with metal shades (the statuesque Soria floor lamps from Room & Board) throwing dramatic shadows, two can uplights and two halogen spots (both from Lamps Plus) adding pinpointed drama. 

Tone-on-Tone 

It’s my number one trick for making a small space live larger: limit the color and/or value difference (how dark or light a color is) on just about everything in the room. When wallcovering morphs into wood blinds (The Shade Store’s uber-sharp Matte Edged wood blinds, in Grey Ash) and the main upholstery pieces relate to the wall color without stopping the eye, the room presents a seamless appearance, and even larger-scaled pieces (that banquette is NOT small) blur their own edges and settle back into the room. And tone-on-tone rooms always look like more money than you’ve spent.

You Can Never be Too Rich... or Too Taupe

But it’s not just the tones of colors you use to stretch inches and budget: it’s which ones. There are some neutrals that just ooze sex appeal: smoke, zinc, slate or charcoal. These rich neutrals (plus taupes and warm grays) ALWAYS look like more money than you’ve invested. I also think they live richer when pushed to their value extremes: pale and pearl gray, or deep, dark and stormy. It’s the middle ground of neutrals that have given them their bad rap. 

Aside from its budget-stretching alchemy, the beauty of a neutral envelope is that you can add just about any other color as an accent. (Here, smoky blues, gray-ed down greens and that shimmering aquamarine on the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Bette ottomans.)

Pattern 
Unless working with a pattern-happy client (which I love to do!), left to my own devices, I’d rather revel in texture than pattern. But love, as they say, conquers all, and when I first saw the Dransfield and Ross Tibet pillows, made from an amazing earthy, elegant and exceedingly tactile cut velvet (Tibet Small Scale, in Graphite, from Clarence House), it was love at first sight. I knew that pattern would be joining the room. (We ended up making our own versions of the pillows, from yardage graciously donated by Clarence House, and crafted locally by Anthony Lawrence-Belfair, to “spread the wealth” on donations, and not overtax any one vendor too much.) 

I also loved the “conversation” those pillows had with the stenciled cowhides and Foo Dogs (both from Lamps Plus) and the other globally-sourced pieces from Pagoda Red.

That pattern also turned the corner from the more pure neutrals in the room, bringing in a camel color (that paved the way for golds) and the blue-heavy graphite, which bridged blues and grays in the room.

It’s proof that if you’re stuck for inspiration, one amazing textile (or rug) can completely jumpstart your process. 

Tip the Scale

Go big when you go home. The biggest mistake I see when people are tackling small spaces is that they underscale everything they bring in. It looks meek, weak and underwhelming. Here, I opted for pieces that were anything but shy. But you have to know some of the tricks to make big pieces work (I’ve shared my tone-on-tone one already). That coffee table is an incredibly gutsy scale, but the mirrored finish tames it. The ample Major Leather chairs don’t have arms to block sight lines and seating access, and their reflective legs all but disappear. The other trick is...

Pairs and Shapes 

Shape, and mass, were big tools this year, to keep the look impactful, visual interruption to a minimum, and cohesion to a maximum. Selected pieces were big on shape, low on detail (except mirror finish or wood grain).

Blocky shapes were repeated (the coffee table, the Room & Board walnut Keane side tables and the sexy Virgo mirrored console from Currey & Company). Circles showed up in the custom painted Timothy Wilson tondo, custom framed by Gerald Kurian, through Steven Amedee, and the stone “bis” from Pagoda Red. 

  

Repetition is a major player in creating cohesive spaces... and so is symmetry: think in pairs when you can. Symmetry gives weight (the good kind) to a space, and creates elegant focal points. You can always break the monotony that sometimes happens with symmetry with a playful placement of one of the pairs, or just one rakish accessory (like the great Gazelle figurine from DwellStudio) or asymmetrical piece of artwork (like Dan Romer's “Essnce” print).

 

Gloss and Gold Digging

The dramatic potential of a bit of bling is truly celebrated in a dark space, and gold was the precious metal of choice, partially for its warm nature against cooler grays, but also for its Seventies swagger: the gold in this room is the equivalent of Bradley Cooper’s chest-nest of chains in American Hustle.

And don’t underestimate the shine factor of artwork (the glass on framed work, the high gloss of the main plexi-mount art piece), accessories (that not-at-all Fool’s gold pyrite candle holder by Kathryn McCoy Design), and even the sparkle brought in from barware, stemware and acrylic tray... not to mention the mirrored furniture, and Large Black Square Mirrored tray, adding a black band like chic eyeliner to the already mirrored coffee table.)

The Art's the Thing

I’m ending this story with where it all actually began: that show-stopper photo from  photographer Drew Doggett. When a bit stumped for inspiration this year, I found Drew’s work, and the minute I saw this image, I could see that elevation of the vignette already finished in my head, even before Drew had returned my first email begging for the donation. 

His globally sourced imagery is heavily informed with a fashion photographer’s eye, and this enigmatic image from his "OMO: Expressions of a People" series became the surprisingly urban tone-setter for what soon became dubbed “the Adventurer’s Lair.”  

It also shared what much of the rest of room was already doing... a dark tone-on-tone look, an earthy-urbane balance, and the rough textures of the actual image sealed beneath its mirror-like plexi facing. 

There’s NO better way to inject any space, neutral or not, with drama, than with the impact of contemporary art, especially of a larger scale. Don’t wait to pick the art; Start with it. And that’s my parting and artful shot on how to bring drama to any space, neutral or not.

Visit my Adventurer's Lair Pinterest board to see all the items in and sources for this year's vignette.

All main vignette shots: Jody Kivort.

...about theme decorating, and a horse of a different color: Holiday House 2014, Derby Deconstructed

Theme decorating is a slippery slope. Done well, and you’re transported to an exotic Moorish room or major league executive front office. Not so well, with heavy hand and one-liner design, and you’re stuck in a Moroccan restaurant or loud-mouthed sports bar surrounded by, to paraphrase Beverly Leslie on Will & Grace, “kitsch and regret.” 

Theme decorating done well is one of the reasons I love Holiday House. The annual Manhattan show house to benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation was built on a basis of holidays, events, and calendar moments, all meant to celebrate the days that happen when cancer doesn’t win. Over the years, design luminaries like Charles Pavarini, Suzanne Eason, Ally Coulter, James Rixner, Donald Schermerhorn and InsonWood have tackled then tamed holidays sometimes but not always associated with the polish and panache of one of Manhattan’s premier show houses. These, and the many other designers gracing the halls of the Academy Mansion each year have crafted subtle and witty spins on the likes of Halloween, Chinese New Year, Valentine’s, Mother’s and President’s days while steering fully clear of the rocky cliffs of cliché (and I joined them, for the first time, in 2013, with my Modern St. Patrick’s Day room). 

This past year, I took on a day that is perhaps a little more synonymous with style: Kentucky Derby Day. Tradition, pageantry, sunny southern skies, cocktails served up in silver cups: it all seems a natural for inspiration.

Some very noted design icons have built careers (and empires) by channeling the thoroughbred style (I’m looking at you, Mr. Lauren). But I wanted to bring a horse of a different color to Holiday House. Following in the footsteps of that illustrious list of designers who’ve understood the difference between “inspired by” and “slave to” (and inspired me long before my first invite from organizer and wonder woman Iris Dankner to create my own room), I wanted a space that even a non-horseperson would love, but that definitely served as an homage to the venerable jewel in the Triple Crown.  

That day in May has an abundance of inspiring elements, and I realized that by taking these elements apart, and recombining the pieces, I could make a room that succeeded on its own but still referenced the day. “Derby Deconstructed” was born. We were, if you’ll pardon one of the many horse puns possibly to come, off and running.

How can you be inspired by this room, even if your likes swing more to hockey, Hawaii or Hockney? Here are a few ideas.

Channel the Place (and Start with the Envelope) 
The Derby is quintessentially southern, so I knew I had to create a room that felt like it was part of an old Kentucky home. The room itself helped set the stage, with its handsome proportions and traditional molding. This room, it seemed, almost wanted to be southern. To nudge the illusion along, wide wooden Hunter Douglas (courtesy David Michael Interiors) shutters and strategically-placed brass chests turned recessed bookcases into faux walk-out porch windows. A great white paint from Farrow and Ball on the woodwork gave this room with good bones a classic look, fresh feel, and new lease on life.
 

In any room, I’d start by addressing the walls and windows, and in a room meant to conjure Japan, for example, I’d start with Indigo grasscloth paired with woven-wood or nubby silk window coverings.

Color, Wonderful
Two of the most iconic parts of race day, mint juleps and the “Run for the Roses” moniker immediately conjured color. And if your artistic license is current, you can have a little fun bending the rules. After all, Mint juleps aren’t, at all, mint in color, but that’s what my walls became, again also to bring southern spring and charm to the Upper East side of Manhattan (AND to see if we couldn't give mint green a slightly better reputation). It also seemed to instantly evoke some old-school gentility by echoing a tucked-away color.

And as the poetry goes, those race-day roses are red... but mint and red seemed, well, dangerous. Instead, inspired by the ribbon pink of the event’s charitable purpose, the rose became an amped-up fuchsia. Turning up the volume from a typical faded or dusty rose also kept this room young and fresh... and let me use that eye-boggling JAB Anstoetz silk satin on those Bernhardt chairs, a color repeated in the custom NDI floral arrangements. Underneath it all, a minty green silk rug courtesy color meister Joe Carini at Carini Lang, with just enough bending to blue to suggest a dew-covered field of Kentucky bluegrass reflecting a cloudless spring morning.

Materials, Girl! 
Derby Day brings to mind all sorts of textures, from humble to haute. Straw from the stables, the brilliant flashes of racing silks atop white pants and black boots, leather, and brass. Take all those elements, mix well like sugar, mint and Woodford Reserve in a julep cup, and reapply! The white and leather mixed to become the padded fireplace surround. Straw went up on the ceiling (that Thibaut grasscloth), and those racing silks became the accent palette when actual silk wasn’t pressed into service. So let your Yankees room have (glove) leather and aluminum (bat) furniture, even if a logo or pinstripes are nowhere to be seen.

Pattern Play and Geometry, 101 
Repeating geometry is one method I often employ to give an eclectic room some stable-izing (I warned you there’d be puns) underpinnings, and this room was no exception.

Harlequin diamonds were one of the patterns that became a leitmotif in the room, often seen in jockey shirts and stable flags. It popped up on the custom fireplace surround (New York’s The Workroom), diamond tufting (the custom Avery Boardman settee) and the quilted velvet on the gold-framed chairs (JAB Anstoetz on Currey & Company chairs).

Photo: Rikki Snyder, Houzz

Along with the diamonds, the room had its fair share of racetrack ovals, both precise and relaxed, from the exquisitely crafted pelmets courtesy Marks &Tavano, to the Currey & Company chairs and the organic oval of the vintage-look Wisteria “Egg” coffee table. And the spilt-upholstery on the white-framed Currey & Company chairs also were directly lifted from a jockey’s locker.
 

The lesson? Steal some geometry from the theme you’re trying to mimic: waves, star(fish) and scallop (shells) for something beachy, and not only do you evoke the thing you’re honoring, but you’re giving yourself welcome parameters to stave off any design paralysis when a world of options might otherwise overwhelm.

Context Matters 
Once the stage is set, you can bring in other shapes and items that become something new just by the merit of their context. The pattern on the AERIN lamps from Circa Lighting became horseshoes just because they were in this room, just one example, the custom embroidery on the Villa Savoia embroidered pillows another.

 

The Ulf Moritz-designed SAHCO drapery tie-backs from Donghia suddenly seemed very equestrian-tack inspired, in their jockey-silk colors and brass detailing...  easily joining the bridle party. The herculean vintage canvas, on loan from 20^th Century by HKFA, and the color-blocked paintings by Miami Beach artist Babette Herschberger became racing-silk suggestive with their bright and jaunty geometry.

And when visitors, tipped off to the Derby Day theme, invariably asked, “Where’s the hat?” I pointed them directly overhead, where the witty and millinery-inspired feathered creation by Steven Wine of ABYULighting became the perfect stand-in.

Even that gent over the fireplace seemed ready to play his part. While probably European or British in upbringing, the subject of the Technicolor oil by LA painter Aaron Smith became an instant southern patriarch, Bourbon magnate, Tennessee Williams protagonist or horse breeder. Big Daddy, indeed.

Let a Little Literal In... But Gently! 

To let visitors in on the inside track of the room, some clues were more blatant than others... the Giacometti-ish Bungalow 5 Arabian horse statue ( a LOT of look for the money), the Jill Greenberg horse photo courtesy ClampArt, the commanding Assouline book, an antique horse brass from Nancy Price Interior Design, two horseshoes (gilded by The AlphaWorkshops), the bourbon bar and the Ralph Lauren stirrup-inspired Westbury lamps (also, Circa Lighting).

So, in a baseball-themed room, sure, hang up that (professionally shadow-boxed) jersey. Just (humor me one more time), rein in the impulse to cover every surface with literal references or mementos. Using a little restraint will let you create a space that speaks to aficionados and the, well, theme disinterested. And isn’t a space that makes everyone feel comfortable the ultimate trophy room? Giddy up!

See all the pieces from the room on my Derby Deconstructed Pinterest Board, and see more literal reference on my Equestrian Style Pinterest board.

Unless noted, all photos Jody Kivort.