Nouveau Niche
November 1, 2007
A little of what Salvador Dali called "the terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau" can go a long way. All those tendrils, vines and flowers (many almost off-putting in their primordial sensuality) can feel darkly preternatural when deployed with a heavy hand.
It is something the owners of this Manhattan townhouse—an investment banker and his wife—not only understood, but appreciated. They loved the sinuous forms and exquisite craftsmanship of this late-19th- and early-20th-century rage. Yet though they are avid collectors of the period’s art glass and posters by Toulouse Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, G.K. Benda and others, they could intuit how much was too much.
The wife, for her part, approached it from a broader aesthetic perspective. Active in New York’s visual arts world and possessing graduate degrees in Italian literature and Renaissance history, she was not one to paint by numbers. "I’m not terribly fond of Art Nouveau furniture," she says. "It’s a bit uncomfortable and too ornate. We wanted the collection housed in a way that was organic, but didn’t necessarily say Art Nouveau."
So the couple paid four
architectural firms to devise an appropriate setting for their collection and
lifestyle. The winner, Gertler & Wente Architects (GW), collaborated with
the couple’s designer, Robert Gaul, and contractor Randy Polumbo from 3-D
Laboratory, assembling a team of craftsmen who would be up to the task. "It
had been fitted out adequately by a developer, but not richly," says project
architect Angela Dirks. The first step? Gutting the 5,500-square-foot
lime-
stone mansion.
The clients wanted a showstopping entry. Taking a cue from motifs found in their collections, GW created an oval foyer with a gracefully spiraling stair that Hector Guimard would have envied. "This was an extraordinary opportunity to explore craft at the highest possible level of finish, quality and complexity in many different trades," says principal Larry Wente.
Tom Ryan, for example, is an English-trained blacksmith from Koenig Iron Works in Long Island City who fabricated the foyer’s staircase railing. "Most railings are very traditional, with repeated geometries," observes Dirks. "This one is lyrical and freer. The spindles actually wrap around the posts like tendrils."
Stating the obvious, Gaul says of his clients, with whom he’s worked for 15 years: "They’re detail-oriented. We sampled at least 10 cherry stains before deciding which to use on the woodwork."
Of course, all the woodwork was custom-designed by Dirks and made in the Paris atelier of Thierry Goux (who executed millwork for the boutiques of another GW client, Christian Dior), then shipped over and assembled. In this painstaking process, Dirks drew and sculpted pieces in clay—such as the living room fireplace and the cartouche design that recurs on doorways and window frames—then had them sent to France for Goux to realize.
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