Interior Design

New York City interior designer and professional photographer Vicente Wolf loves to travel the globe, visiting exotic countries like Ethiopia and India,because travel opens his eyes and his creative mind to a new and exciting world of design possibilities.

Through the years, Wolf’s buying trips have helped him expand and enhance his business. In 2000, he started a second company, VW Home, which is open to designers and the public and sells everything from the spirit house he exported out of Thailand to the colorful parrot-feather headdresses he collected from Brazil.

“My travels have influenced several collections,” he says. “Things that I see lead me to make prototypes and present them to companies. I just did four fabric collections for Kravet that were inspired by my trips to India, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Laos. And my new bed linens for Homestead are based on elements from Burma, the Himalayas, and the desert.”

Wolf, whose interiors bespeak a global aesthetic, also parlayed his personal and professional experiences into another economic enterprise. Crossing Boundaries: A Global Vision of Design, the travelogue/design book that he wrote and photographed, was published in September by the Monacelli Press.

“Sometimes I get a literal inspiration from my travels,” says Wolf. “Sometimes it’s more of an ethereal inspiration. For instance, I was on a boat in Borneo jumping rope on the roof, thinking about a project, and I looked at the sky, which was slate blue and powder blue and white, and I said, ‘That’s the color scheme for it.’”

The easiest way to see how Wolf ties his travels to his work is to view his interiors through his own travel-savvy eyes. Here, in four rooms, Wolf gives insight into his life as a peripatetic .

A PRIMITIVE SOPHISTICATION

“I met this woman in Ethiopia. She was selling things to tourists in the marketplace. I wasn’t interested in any of the items, so I started focusing on the sellers, and I saw that her necklace was made of found items—keys, shells, buttons, an IV feeder. I bought the necklace, then I literally bought the clothes off her back. She had made the goatskin top, and I traded her for it. I gave her some woven fabric I had bought from another tribe.

“I used the necklace, as well as a loincloth I bought in the same country, as accents in the living room in this very modern house in Watermill, NY. I like the yin and the yang of juxtaposing objects; the architecture of this house, juxtaposed with the necklace, is the other spectrum of sophistication. Here, the walls are white and the floor is dark. The modern painting, which looks like water, makes the necklace look more primitive and the painting look more modern. The two objects on the floor are 18th-century Swedish architectural elements, and the chair, also from Ethiopia, is decorated with inlays of buttons and coins. These are all fragments of something else. They all are parts of something put together to form a new thought.” Photography by Vicente Wolf.

A REFLECTION OF SYRIA

“When I’m in Syria, I’m always aware of light and its reflections, whether they come from fountains, mirrors, or even off marble walls. I am intrigued by the interior courtyards because in the old days, life in this country always occurred in the courtyards, and the insides were always lush and green. I loved the idea that the garden was contained inside and that the 18-century mirrors in this space actually frame the garden.

“For this bathroom in Old Westbury, New York, which has a large window that looks out to the garden, I created a look that reflected what I had seen in the reflections of the Syrian courtyard. Both spaces rely upon symmetry. I used a large English mirror similar to the pair from Syria to reflect the garden outside, and I covered the walls with sheets of reflective glass. The backgrounds are painted the color of leaf light. The concrete bathtub I designed reads like the fountain set in the floor of the courtyard and its spigot also reflects this theme. The limestone floor and the white-marble table from India are all elements that reflect light. The crystal sconces, which are very dressy and dramatic, are more likely to be seen in a ballroom than a bath, and it’s that element of unexpectedness that brings us back to the hidden garden in Syria.” Photography by Vicente Wolf.

MAKING THE ABSTRACT CONCRETE

“I learned long ago that when you are doing a room in one color, never make everything the exact same color because it becomes static. There are 15 different shades of blue in this wall that I photographed in Ethiopia, and that’s what makes it vibrant. I was driving by and stopped the car. I’ve learned to stop and observe things. The door, when you see it against the white and mud color, the range is what makes it visually so intriguing, like an abstract painting. It’s the same concept I used in designing the guestroom in Connecticut: I punctuated the blue with white, and I wanted to create the same sense of abstractedness as in the wall, so I tried to bring all the different shades in and blend them together. The reason I chose blue is that I always feel a guest environment should be perky and inviting but noncommittal. Blue and white is light and fresh, and there’s no sex in it-a single man, a single woman, or even a couple will feel comfortable in it-and it becomes a neutral.

“The rest of the objects in the room also blend cultures. The Noguchi table is set with white urns I designed and had made in India, and the lamp is made of pickled wood, a texture that gives it an aged look. The clients ride, so I put one of their favorite photos of horses in a white frame, which gives it a dream-like quality.” Photography by Vicente Wolf. FFI

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While no one is arguing against the democratization of design, there will always be a need and a desire for the handmade, the custom, and the original. While technological advances that encourage design for the masses have swept away entire industries, there are, in any field, artists who love and nurture “old-fashioned techniques. There are also those who use the latest technology to create designs that would not have previously been possible. So here’s to those designers and artists, dedicated enough and brave enough to mix the old with the new.

Sisters and business partners Amy and Noelle Mills launched their custom wallpaper business, Paper Mills, in 2005 after several years of working in design and production for other specialty wall-covering companies. Based in a residential/work loft on the edges of Brooklyn’s rapidly regentrifying Bed-Stuy neighborhood, Paper Mills designs and produces wallpapers that are graphic and bold. “Our aim, when we started, was to inspire new interest in wall coverings as a design tool, says Amy Mills. Having witnessed many mill/studio closures, they wanted to start small. They wanted the freedom to think in an open and innovative manner about a category many of their peers saw as safe, boring, and old-fashioned. “We saw that consumers in our age group, 30-somethings, weren’t able to find designs that spoke to their sensibilities, explained Amy.

Working with hand-block printing and hand-screening techniques, Paper Mills offers low minimums (nine yards) for custom coloration and patterns. They can also create site-specific papers, working closely with interior designers to adapt creative ideas to fit real-world situations.

“What separates us from others is we come at this with 15 years of real wallpaper experience, and so our papers look wild but are easy to hang, are Class-A fire rated and wear well. We recognize that paper hanging is a craft in and of itself, and so design our papers for hangability and ease of care after installation,â€� says Amy.

Their processes are certainly not new, but Amy and Noelle believe that the pairing of modern imagery with the “beautiful accidentsâ€� that happen with block printing creates something fresh, interesting, and engaging for today’s design-aware consumer. “I think it’s a very exciting and challenging time to be a designer. There has been such an explosion in the design world. The farther you can push your boundaries and stretch materials to their limits, the more innovative things will get, Noelle says.

And Amy believes this is true not only for the industry as a whole, but for her individually. “Since I have started my business with my sister, it has improved my life in ways that I never thought of. I am being creative. I can create my own schedule. We design things that challenge our artistic sensibility, which of course makes for a feeling of being well rounded and alive.

Their relationship began in the theater, and ever since Anne Elias and George Cartwright have explored the ideas of masquerade, mimicry, disguise, and interpretation. As the owners and artists behind Elias-Cartwright Inc., a decorative painting company, they are committed to working within a centuries-old craft, made relevant for today.

“We consider ourselves artisans, with a detailed understanding of the materials, science, and history of decorative painting, explains Elias. “In Italy, France, England, and many parts of the United States, there has long been a design tradition where fine art and functional art co-exist. Our work is part of that tradition.

Elias has an MFA and worked for several years in the entertainment business, in the areas of scenery and art direction. Meanwhile, Cartwright, a sociology major, was learning the meticulous processes of the many decorative-painting techniques by working his way through the ranks of a well-established, highly regarded, New York City–based studio. Cartwright spent 12 years learning what was, at that time, a relatively unknown design specialty.

“We’ve always worked directly with designers who understand and appreciate our skills, says Elias, “so I don’t have a really good sense of when this whole faux-finish approach exploded. But for us it has meant working more closely with our clients, the designers, so that their clients are truly educated on the fine-art aspects of our work.

While they work closely together, each has their specialty within the business. Elias enjoys doing more pictorial projects, while Cartwright loves to work on specialty finishes, especially on furniture. “This is an old tradition we’re working in, and my goal for our business is to continue to keep it relevant for today, says Elias. “There will always be clients who want certain classic looks, but we’d also like to introduce a wider audience to the infinite possibilities of decorative painting. I love to take objects, and with our work, transform them so that they are useful and beautiful for today’s interiors.

FFI

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