Did anybody get cold feet about that aquatic wallcovering in the dining room?
It was an easy sell. The owners have a koi pond right outside the window. When we saw the pattern of that wallcovering, which is so beautiful, we thought it would be perfect. We knew that, after all this time they’ve had some of those koi for 15 years they’d never get bored with the pattern and say, “OK, enough of the fish. We’ve got parakeets now.” Why did you paint the wainscoting and trim such a dark color? The room is so big and gets so much light, we thought it would make it feel a little cozier and would help with that wallcovering. It has a lot of depth but also a lot of luminescence because of the silk stitching on top of the hand-painted paper. It makes every one of those fish, every flower petal shimmer. And that huge Venetian chandelier has a glow that’s like looking through a glass of Champagne especially after you’ve had a few glasses yourself. It goes with those Queen Anne-ish chairs that are sort of Syrie Maugham by way of Samuel Marx. I think those chairs have a sense o
