NEW YORK—The annual Architectural Digest Home Design Show showcases a large selection of furnishings for the art-minded to decorate their homes, but the event is also a place for the inexperienced to get advice on interior design from leading industry professionals.
This year’s 10th annual, four-day event was held at Pier 94, where hundreds of designers, traders, manufacturers, and industry experts connected under one roof. Visitors to the show could also attend the designer seminar series to pick up insightful tips on the subject.
On March 18, the second day of the show, the “Incorporating Art With Design” seminar featured interior designers Eric Cohler, Francis D’Haene, and Vicente Wolf.
Having artwork in the home is often a great way to enhance the elegance of your space, but how do you avoid feeling like you’re living in a museum? How does one incorporate artwork without losing the warm, inviting atmosphere of a home? These three renowned designers provided some useful tips.
Vicente Wolf
Vicente Wolf’s company in New York has designed for clients around the world, and he has published three books on interior design. An avid photography collector, he likes to arrange his collection on picture ledges and leaning against a wall. He likes to arrange the photos into a group that suggests linearity.
To group artwork in a haphazard pattern, Wolf recommended arranging the pieces on the floor first before hanging them on the wall. He said that hanging a picture in the corner of a room gives an air of intimacy.
Wolf also gave these important tips:
• Hang artwork with two nails instead of one to keep them straight.
• Hang pieces at eye-level.
• Good lighting is crucial.
• Artwork should not act as a decorative element, but should be symbiotic with the space.
Francis D’Haene
Francis D’Haene is a Belgium-born designer who often designs for art dealers and collectors, as well as notable galleries in Chelsea and uptown New York.
For his art clients’ homes, he takes a minimalist approach to avoid taking attention off the artwork as much as possible. As an extension of the client’s gallery, the home should have good lighting and plenty of space, usually with white walls. For a photography collector’s home, a white, gray, or black palette is best.
D’Haene suggested using furniture and furnishings as art pieces, like a uniquely shaped chandelier or armchair that can add something quirky or sophisticated to the room.
The most-memorable example he showed us was from his design of a barn house in Westhampton, New York, where he installed a large window in the wall to look out into the surrounding landscape, framing the nature outside as the “artwork” of the space.
Eric Cohler
Eric Cohler often appears on House Beautiful Magazine’s list of Top 100 designers and founded his own firm, Eric Cohler Design, in 1991. Inspired by his travels around the globe, Cohler often incorporates natural motifs into the pieces he uses in a space. His example of mixing organic and inorganic is displayed in a rug resembling the stripe patterns on a zebra.
Cohler likes to use “a saturation of colors,” borrowing inspiration from Manet’s paintings and “The Gates” art installment in Central Park on display in 2005.
He showed many examples of his unique take on color palette, including using dark blue to give a lacquered look and incorporating different shades of white that complement each other to invigorate a space. White is also an absence of color, he noted, which can give a sense of “fluidity” and “etherealness.”
Lastly, he told the audience a valuable lesson for designers: The designer should never dictate, but instead negotiate with the client. The client and designer should maintain a balance in the decision making. If you only stick to your ideas and opinions, Cohler says, “as an artist, you’re finished.”
The three designers opened up the floor to questions and provided plenty of examples from their designs to illustrate their points.
As Cohler noted at the end of his presentation, art fuels the soul. The next time you want to re-vamp your home, consider buying a piece of artwork that can complement your space well.
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