Brothers in New York City


My brother, Kelly.


Tom - his charming partner.

How lucky am I?

My "baby" brother, Kelly, and his partner, Tom, have hired me to design their newly purchased "old home" in Minneapolis. There is little from their past life that they want to take with them, so we are shopping for a house full of furniture - entry, living room, den, dining room, kitchen stools, bedroom, guest room and office. This is a lot of furniture! But how fun is that?

So, since they also love any excuse to go to New York, we decided to do a shopping trip to the city. I have a photo shoot next week. It is my birthday AND our anniversary early next week and I thought it sounded like a grand idea to roll this all into one big trip.

Today we started at Holly Hunt and found the chairs of Tom's dreams. Hand made walnut by a very small but caring little company called Troscan. We also landed on the bed and uber cool Poliform bedside tables. Then we went in search of the perfect table. We were all a little worried about wood - but what else is there? The house has been recently renovated and the owner put in walnut floors. (A bit of overkill to me! This house would have had oak. That is what I think it should STILL have.) And there is a gigantic original oak buffet in the dining room - lots of wood! So what do you do for a table and chairs?

Well, now that we found a chair we liked - claro walnut - we kept our eyes open for a table and, upon dropping unexpectedly into a shop on E. 58th, we found a steel table with a very high cool factor - made of recycled parts of old steel machinery - it was fantastic! So now, we have this cool urban table with amazing hand crafted walnut chairs.

Then, we moved on to confirm sofas at A. Rudin, select the cording for the linen velvet for one sofa and moved on to lunch. After lunch - I am all iced tea - they are bloody marys and beer - we went downtown to a great little shop on the lower east side - called Il Cafiero. www.ilcafiero.com. Fantastic! We found a pair of vintage mirrored lamps for the bedroom. And, maybe a really interesting vintage Tommi Parzinger chest for the entry. But, if they don't get it - I may. It is quite good. A perfect "bar" - lots of storage.

From there, we hit BDDW for the breathtaking experience of that showroom and the extraordinary kindness of the staff. www.bddw.com. So impressive. People were just nice to us all day. Professional, thoughtful - so, so good to work that way. Of course, they found a few things there! On to Ochre to check out the light they have to have. And we found the perfect coffee table for the living room - one piece vintage Paul McCobb - 1955 - brass with painted glass top. So freaking cool. It just suits them. I told them they'd have to hang on the loveseats and smoke. You just know an ashtray belongs on this table.

I love New York.
And my brothers.

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