A Video Chat with Mario Buatta

On Wednesday night the New York School of Interior Design will be toasting my friend decorator Mario Buatta at a gala dinner and honoring him by renaming the school's library and student work space the Mario Buatta Materials Atelier. Mario, you know, is the great decorator who famously Americanized the English country house style and became known as the Prince of Chintz. He has created aeries for a slew of high profile clients including Barbara Walters, Mariah Carey, Billy Joel, and Hilary Geary Ross, and, along with Mark Hampton, redecorated the 119-room Blair House, the official White House Guest House in Washington, D.C.

Mario loves color, comfort, flowers, and light. His decorated rooms have a glow – nothing seems to stick out, and everything works together. He achieves this by adding and subtracting hues, fabrics, textures, furniture and accessories – combining and removing, until the whole has a painterly effect, like an Impressionist painting.

Living room from a past Kips Bay Showhouse.
Combine his creative talent with a wicked sense of humor and you have a New York original. Readers already know about his cockroach gag. Years ago he arrived at a party in our apartment and casually handed me a carefully wrapped gift box which slipped out of my fingers and fell to the floor with the crash of its smashed contents. My heart stopped. "It was a family heirloom!" cried Mario, before he smiled.
It wasn't an heirloom, it was a trick. The box was filled with shards of glass.

A bedroom from a past Kips Bay Showhouse.
Mario recently celebrated his 75th birthday, and still works tirelessly creating his signature beauty, these days aided by a cane after a summer of medical challenges. Recently he agreed to sit for a video blog interview.
We met not in his apartment but in a sprawling pied-à-terre which he decorated for a client in the Sherry-Netherland. The apartment, which has been published in Architectural Digest and stretches along both Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, gleamed with Mario's signature blend of elegance and ease.
Mario made some business calls before our appointment.

For the interview, we would sit in the corner couch. Yes, sweeties, out the windows Bergdorf Goodman is on the left and the Plaza Hotel is on the right. Quite a spot.

The view down Fifth Avenue.

We sat down in this luxuriously comfortable perch

and had a chat.
Click to watch:

A Preview of The Spring Show NYC

With Mario Buatta at Doubles (photo by Ann Watt)
Your loyal correspondent was invited last week to a luncheon at Doubles, the private club at the bottom of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue. On my way in I ran into my friend decorator Mario Buatta and we headed down to the small, intimate club which has a bar and two dining rooms. The occasion of the luncheon was a preview of The Spring Show NYC, a brand new antiques show mounted by the Art and Antique Dealers League of America which will be running April 28-May 2 at the Park Avenue Armory.

After a drink at the bar, guests sat down to tuck into lunch and hear a little bit about the upcoming antiques show which will be sponsored by 1stdibs.com. Geared for a young, new audience, sixty dealers will present furniture, accessories, and art from around the world. Our friend Lars Bolander will design the fresh and bright mise-en-scene, which to you and me means the visual look of the show.

After the brief run-down and a couple of questions, table conversation resumed when suddenly the woman sitting next to Mario Buatta let out a shriek and jumped out of her seat. Mario, who is known for his funny high jinx, had wound up a big, black, plastic cockroach and sent it whizzing past her plate.

The opening night preview of The Spring Show, to be held on April 27th at the Park Avenue Armory, will benefit the ASPCA and have, fittingly, an animal theme. The honorary co-chairs of the Connoisseur Committee are the glittery Manhattan couple Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Get out your spring finery.

Christmas at Carlton Hobbs

Detail of a giltwood mirror made in Cairo, 1820.

Darlings, you might remember that Carolyne Roehm hosted her book party at Carlton Hobbs, the antiques dealer who is housed in a former Vanderbilt mansion on East 93rd Street. I decided that as a Christmas present to myself, I would return for a visit with Carlton himself to get a closer look at the house and his antiques.

The manse was built in 1930 by Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt. Here she is in a portrait by Boldini:

When she built the house she was already divorced from Mr. William Kissam Vanderbilt II:

Together they had a son William III who died in a car accident, and two daughters, Consuelo and Muriel Vanderbilt:

Mrs. Vanderbilt herself was independently wealthy, as her father, James Fair Graham, an Irish immigrant, made a fortune from one of the richest silver finds in history in Nevada. She and her sister Theresa Fair built several grand houses. For her Manhattan home she enlisted one of the most famous architects of the day, John Russell Pope, to construct a limestone neoclassical French style mansion which would be happily at home in Paris.


In 2002, London-based antiques dealer Carlton Hobbs bought the building and spent four years, with the help of his managing director Stefanie Rinza, perfectly restoring it.
Let's ring the bell.

Inside, Carlton and Stefanie give me a tour through the riches. Carlton is known for his unusual British and European antiques and art mainly from the 17th - 19th centuries. Here is the entrance hall, spotted with treasures.

Mrs. Vanderbilt's dining room was completely lined in marble and had big double doors for large crowds. It's now beautifully refurbished, and there one finds this carved wood table from Italy gilded in pure gold leaf. From around 1770, the fine carving evokes the glory of imperial Rome.

The second floor offers more galleries so up Mrs. Vanderbilt's staircase we go.

The view from the stairs:

Here is Carlton's current piece de resistance: it's an entire room from an 18th century French mansion, including paneling, bookcases and chimney piece. This library from the Hotel Gaulin in Dijon, France, was built in 1775. Can't you just picture Marie Antoinette wandering through?

It was most recently owned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which divested of it. The handcarvings of lime wood and pear are poetic, and the white tinted glaze has faded to a dreamy beige.

The tops of the book shelves are decorated with free standing vases carved in three different designs.

Carlton says he has a number of suitors interested in the room. Price: $3,800.000.

In the adjoining room hangs this gold and silver gilt mirror from 1820. It was made for the palace in Cairo and bears the arms of Pasha Mohammad Ali, the creator of modern Egypt. Carlton, pictured in the mirror's reflection, likes how it incorporates both Middle Eastern and European design elements.

The opposite gallery is the largest room in the house, and Carlton reports that it was Mrs. Vanderbilt's ballroom. Here is the view out to 93rd Street.

The gallery includes this really unusual German object from 1790. It's cork facade is painted to evoke decay and rotting and the passage of time. But these cork doors swing back to reveal inside

the most luxurious mahogany and gilded bronze secretaire. The glossy richness hidden within the humble exterior was breathtaking. Price: $1,450,000.

I loved this bureau, one of a pair, made of ebony and decorated with gilt brass and tortoiseshell. Designed for Carlton House, the home of the Prince Regent, later King George IV, it's furniture as jewelry: sparkling, festive, and ornate.

In the center hall sat this couch of gold gilded over lime. It reminded me of the couch we sat on in Carolyne Roehm's living room.

This English couch from 1805 is finished with individual tassels swinging at the bottom like fringe on a dress.

Then Carlton took me up to the third floor of the house which was Mrs. Vanderbilt's living quarters. Though the public spaces are quite grand, her private quarters, including her sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom, were smaller and more intimate. The rooms are now filled with more of Carlton's treasures, and as dusk fell it was like wandering through the most enchanting forgotten rooms. It left me with visions of days gone by dancing in my head. The tour really was a holiday treat.

I hope you enjoyed it too, and I am wishing you the very best for this holiday season and the coming new year!

A Visit with Carolyne Roehm

BB and Carolyne Roehm (click on photos to enlarge)
Dear reader, your loyal correspondent recently had the wonderful pleasure of visiting with the designer and author Carolyne Roehm at home in her beautiful New York apartment. The occasion was the imminent publication in November of her new book, A Passion for Interiors (Clarkson Potter).

We leaned against plump gold silk-covered pillows for a cozy video interview which you will find at the end of this post. She talked about her love of novels like Gone with the Wind, Pride & Prejudice and Rebecca which feature strong heroines, and Carolyne Roehm herself presents a fascinating story. As an only child of educator parents in Kirkville, Missouri, she moved to New York to be a fashion designer and became an assistant for Oscar de la Renta. In 1985 she married Henry Kravis, cofounder of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and at the same time launched her eponymous fashion designer company, thus arriving at the grand pinnacle of the New York social and fashion worlds. In the early nineties after the marriage ended and her fashion house closed, she applied her exquisite taste, great intelligence, deep knowledge, and passion for flowers, entertaining, art and decorating to write books and lecture as a lifestyle expert.

This new book, her tenth, A Passion for Interiors, examines her love of classical architecture and decorating. "I am soothed and uplifted by the harmonious relationships between columns, capitals, entablatures and pediments, by the wisdom of classical order, the sublime perfection of proportion and scale," she writes. To illustrate her point, the tome presents her New York City apartment, her home in Sharon, Connecticut, and a house she designed in Aspen for her beau Simon Pinniger. This sumptuous book, which is richly photographed and elegantly designed, is an inspiring look at how one gifted designer has applied the classical style with flair in the modern age.

We met in Carolyne Roehm's living room in New York City, which features a double-height ceiling, eighteenth and nineteenth century art and furniture, and walls upholstered with chocolate brown velveteen.

(images from A Passion for Interiors)
Here is an artist's rendering of the room:

Her bedroom in New York also has upholstered walls, this time in a woven cotton of green and taupe flowers. She had her bed hand-upholstered in the same romantic fabric.

Carolyne Roehm's country home, called Weatherstone, is in the extremely picturesque town of Sharon, Connecticut.

In 1999, the house suffered a terrible fire and Roehm lost beloved art, furniture and antiques. The resourceful heroine found opportunity in the tragedy to build what she loves – a double-height living room. In the country, the palette is lighter: blue and green in a shell of white.

In the Aspen home she designed for her beau Simon Pinniger, I am recognizing Carolyne Roehm signatures: a double-height living room, bold color with white trim, and tantalizing textiles.


Carolyne was a warm and charming hostess, and we sat down to talk. "The things that bring life into a room – music, candles, flowers, dogs – that's what makes a room memorable," she said to me. And she told me what opera she listened to sixty times during one difficult three month period. I was lucky to arrange a visit as she was soon off with Simon for a month-long trip to Turkey and Egypt. Enjoy this visit with Carolyne Roehm:
Part 1

Part 2