The New York Observer

As recently as two years ago, people were ashamed to live north of the highway in Southampton. There was such ignominy. “People would say, ‘Oh, oh, oh—I’m sorry,’” said Ivan Bart, the senior vice president of IMG Models, remembering. Then Mr. Bart bought a modest summer home on a pond there and suddenly everything was Read More

Is there a longing for a William Morris time, a handcrafted, special aesthetic going against the machine and to a handmade world of peacocks and furniture made by forest gnomes?

Perhaps. In a sometimes-shoddy age, Jonah Zuckerman, a designer and master craftsman of contemporary furniture using traditional techniques and materials, has a relentless drive Read More

Where will the guests alight, Sancerre in hand, eager for salmon, flying fish and a mint leaf? Where to sit when being disconsolate, eating a cherry, dreaming of a love affair—if you are not in the country, drifting in a swan boat, hand trailing in the water?

In Manhattan, where people already have a Read More

Geoff Isles has seen it all, but he’ll be there anyway. Like so many collectors of craft, he cannot help but fill his home with more and more vases and sculptures. At the 58-gallery SOFA (Sculpture Objects & Functional Art) New York fair from June 1 to 3 at the Park Avenue Armory, these collectors Read More

Just when you thought the past might be vanishing a little too quickly, terra cotta is coming back in new ways, making New York warmer, deeper, and not so flat and icy with glass.

Midnight-blue glazed terra cotta, all full of inky depth, will surround the lower portion of architect Annabelle Selldorf’s 520 West Read More

The model apartment of today is a rather sophisticated piece of work: Not only does it come with an aura of a projected future, but with pre-made, manufactured ghosts.

Two examples at 995 Fifth Avenue—a conversion of the former Stanhope Hotel across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, built in 1926, now with some Read More

Mad scientists in Europe are breeding more new varieties of flowers than ever. But no matter, ask any florist in New York: The star of spring is always the peony. It is the Dior. “No one has ever said, ‘Don’t give me a peony,’” said Michael Davis, owner of Elan Flowers in Tribeca.

“I Read More

Recently, a friend of mine who lives in Brooklyn visited her rich in-laws’ house outside Boston, which had been freshly furnished with pieces by some of today’s most cutting-edge designers. The dining chairs—“ridiculously, horribly uncomfortable,” she said—were by Tom Dixon: his “S” model, which has a narrow spine poised to prod one gently in the Read More