Summer 2017

Summer 94 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com Lovell notes that the gallery hall is one of her favorite rooms, with the entry details, stonework, and architecture providing a strong backdrop to the art and furniture. “I wanted the art and sculpture to break the symmetry of the room, for there to be a dialogue,” she says. For the greatest visual impact, the team placed Karen Gunderson’s Churning Sea (2007) against the white wall at one end of the room, since, notes Lovell, “Most people read a room from left to right when they enter, and this is the first thing they see; it’s very powerful.” The black and white theme is throughout the room, including the circa-1930s black lacquer De Coene Frères sideboard acquired from Karl Kemp Gallery (over which hangs Cuban artist Wifredo Lam’s Idolo of 1954), and the geometric floor. The deisgn of the floor underwent multiple versions of color mockups before the team made a decision. Their focus was to create a visual scheme that balanced the patterning of the original vaulted ceiling (which was raised for grander scale), incoming daylight, and proportions between the dark stone and travertine. Though the floors in each room are varied, architectural materials were integrated from one room to another, such as with the terrazzo floor in the library, which has a similar themed pattern to the floor in the gallery hall. The 1953 brass kinetic sculpture, Construction , by Sidney Gordin, plays off the pattern in the stone. facing page left to right Complex details within the living space, here specifically in the gallery hall, work together to create a harmonized expression upon which to explore and expand a sophisticated understanding of fine art and objects. The clean lines of a pair of circa-1950s Maison Jansen French modernist consoles, from Karl Kemp Gallery are elegantly enhanced by the integration of the gray gunmetal, patinated bronze, and black granite top; a color scheme repeated throughout the space. The detail and scale of the pair of six light pendants wrapped in black leather, with antique bronze chain and glass bobeches, made in Paris by Hermès craftsmen after Jacques Adnet, is the perfect complement to the gallery space and serves as an homage to the large Jacques Adnet & Hermès desk in metal and black leather and brass, circa 1950, in the adjacent library. To seamlessly integrate mechanical systems, the team cleverly concealed them behind plasterwork and grillwork below the vaulted ceiling at each end of the hall; each façade was designed by Suzanne Lovell Inc.