Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1508058
Opposite page: In the back house are an Italian mid-century bar designed by Vittorio Dassi, B&B Italia chairs, Knoll coffee table, and Ingo Maurer sconces. In the salon, a gilt Serpentine mirror by Rose Tarlow. Vladimir Kagan swivel chair. B&B Italia sofas, David Iatesta floor lamps. Coffee table is a Paris flea-market find. Abrash rug. Bronze side tables by Cedric Hartman. Martini tables from The Lacquer Company. "Vladimir Kagan, Karl Springer, Christian Liaigre, Jean-Michel Frank, and Ettore Sottsass were all geniuses, so everything they designed works together." — Corbin See antiques, and before joining his father's firm, he worked for Orion Antiques, where he honed an appreciation for a variety of styles and eras. He's now the principal of Sees Design's Dallas studio. His client's living room has a layered, collected feel that comes from years of editing. Her original Angelo Donghia sofa, purchased shortly after she moved in, was replaced by a curvaceous Vladimir Kagan sofa. "She came to me with that sofa — she was onto the Kagan trend long before West Elm and CB2 started knocking it off — saying, 'Let's turn this room up one notch.'" The seductive new sofa was just the right touch, but the room's Tibetan rug proved too assertive by contrast and had to go. It was replaced by an understated black sisal topped with a zebra hide, a moody twist on a timeless design trope. The Kagan sofa is flanked by tables of two very different design styles and eras. A boldly patterned 1980s table by Memphis founder Ettore Sottsass is one of the first pieces See bought for the room 15 years earlier. Back then, few knew what Memphis was; now, the furniture is highly collectable. "It's tricky to use Memphis, because it has so many primary colors, but it's like a modern painting. You have to think of it as art," he says. It's juxtaposed with a bronze Dessin Fournir table that he says "looks like a Roman antiquity. The balance between the two is literally like hot and cold." In 2018, when the client brought See a photo of an ostrich-plume floor lamp she'd fallen in love with at Grange Hall, he was initially skeptical. "I was a little