Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1547305
Opposite page, clockwise from left: In the primary bedroom, an Indian bone bed from John Rosselli with headboard, valance, and double- sided canopy embroidered by Penn & Fletcher and sewn by the De Angelis workroom. Bedding by Leontine Linens. Framed botanicals and small pictures against custom de Gournay wallpaper. Chaise upholstered in custom-colored fabric by Lisa Fine. This page, clockwise from top left: John B. Murray raised the apartment's doors by nearly a foot and finished them in French-polished mahogany. The bedroom faces Central Park. Custom de Gournay wallpaper in pale robin's-egg blue, beige, and white is flecked with silver leaf. Hand-carved faux ivory doorknobs by P.E. Guerin. Penn & Fletcher scalloped and embroidered the custom-colored Bennison linen draperies. A job that Murray had estimated at nine months took almost three years. The co-op board was in transition, the pandemic dragged on, and the building replaced its service elevator midway through. Even the dining- room sofa, custom-made by De Angelis, refused to cooperate. When it arrived, it wouldn't fit in the service elevator. Kincaid's daughter, who worked on the project, stood guard by stretching out on the sofa right there on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Back it went to De Angelis, where it was cut into three pieces, then meticulously reassembled upstairs. "It looks so perfect," the wife says, "but nothing ever is easy in New York." The living room had to work as three rooms in one. In her new Rizzoli book, Cathy Kincaid: Memorable Rooms, Artisanal Collaborations, Kincaid describes how she pulled it off. She carved out a reading corner by the window that opens into the bedroom. In another corner, a mahogany breakfast table is paired with painted Chippendale chairs from Jonathan Burden, the New York dealer and conservator of fine furniture. The main seating centers on the fireplace, where a work by Pierre Bonnard presides over an antique English mantel flanked by Vladimir Kanevsky's lifelike porcelain flowers. The chairs swivel, so guests can turn to talk or face the fire, and a subtly patterned Doris Leslie Blau rug grounds it all. "It's comfortable without being casual and accommodates everything from a quiet morning to a room full of guests," Kincaid says. She spent so many hours at those west-facing windows that she watched the treetops turn from green to copper. "All the seasons changed while I was working on that apartment," she recalls. In every room, Kincaid did what she's known for: She called in the artisans. De Gournay hand-painted the wallpapers; New York embroidery house Penn & Fletcher embroidered the upholstery, draperies, and bed; and P.E. Guerin made the hardware. Nearly every surface in the apartment has passed through a craftsman's hands, and the clients made a point of seeing the work up-close. The couple made the rounds, working out designs with Penn & Fletcher founder Ernie Smith in his Long Island City workroom, joining Kincaid at de Gournay in London to watch its painters at work, and touring P.E. Guerin's Greenwich Village foundry with their children. "I like that kind of old-world craftsmanship,"