architectural_digest

MEYERS TIDIES UP THE LAWN WITH HER LEAF BLOWER. BELOW PALECEK CHAIRS SURROUND A TABLE FROM LUCCA ANTIQUES IN THE KITCHEN’S DINING AREA. unburdened by the effort to impress (while of course making visitors coo with longing). More than a few of Meyers’s new additions, such as the antique table in her entryway, come from Rose Tarlow, whose store in Los Angeles has been a favorite source for years. (It’s where one particularly eye-catching side table featured in Diane Keaton’s bedroom in Something’s Gotta Give was found.) The one construction project Meyers did undertake, an airy new poolhouse with a wall of sliding glass doors, seamlessly echoes the main house. “I like creams, I like whites, I like black accents,” Meyers says, gesturing around her living room. “I’ve always been in this zone.” Asked about her decision to use white linen fabrics for both her den and her liv- ing room, she pauses, an almost quizzical expression on her face. “I think I hesitate to do color because I don’t know that I’d ultimately be happy with it.” Then she adds with some urgency: “It’s not quite as bright white when you see it in person,” she says. “The living room tones are a little more flax colored.” According to Sikes, it’s these subtleties that make all the difference when decorating à la Nancy. “We may have looked at 50,000 different ivory linens,” he jokes. The different palettes in the two spaces are the result of very careful deliberation, he explains. “The family room has off-white sofas and flax drapery, while the living room has nubby flax upholstery, ivory pillows, and darker flax drapery.” He considered

AN ARTWORK BY ELLSWORTH KELLY HANGS ABOVE A SECTIONAL UPHOLSTERED IN C&C MILANO FABRIC IN THE UPSTAIRS FAMILY ROOM. A STRIPED FABRIC BY FERMOIE COVERS THE OTTOMAN, AND THE RATTAN CHAIR IS BY BONACINA 1889. it a triumph when he persuaded his color-cautious here with Mark, saying, should we change it? But he ELLSWORTH KELLY client to add muted notes of greens to the family room. said, no, it looks great.” And it took “years” of gentle pushing until Meyers agreed, after much coaxing, to position a pair of slat- The filmmaker’s grandest gesture by far was the back chairs at the entrance to the living room. “It’s construction of an 840-square-foot poolhouse, sited in Nancy’s DNA to question and analyze everything,” on a raised limestone terrace. “If I were to write he says. “The road of getting there is a process.” about the build of this thing, I would call it ‘I thought I needed two umbrellas,’ ” she jokes. Its genesis, she WHEN IT COMES TO MEYERS’S luxuriously large reveals, lay in the unremarkable fact that after cutting kitchen featuring not one but two islands, however, down an overgrown ficus hedge, she needed some he refuses to take credit. Created when the house shade by her pool. That hypothetical pair of umbrel- was constructed 24 years ago, the major elements— las became a full-fledged poolhouse, which in turn from the Cotswolds-style stone floors to the glass- led to a new pool (now rectangular instead of oval), fronted white cabinetry—remain unchanged. The as well as a quest for clay roof tiles to match the ones room is still one of her favorites. “I always wanted on the house. For inside the structure, Sikes designed a big farmhouse-style kitchen,” she explains. “In my clean-lined built-in furniture (again, white upholstery) old house I would have to ask someone to scooch for a beautiful blend of form and function. in so I could open the refrigerator door.” Sikes kept his hand light here, swapping in barrel-back wicker It was a huge production to be sure, but then again, chairs and white Ann-Morris pendants. “These nothing that this Hollywood heavy hitter couldn’t counter stools are new too,” Meyers notes, adding a handle. And in a nice closing of the circle, the archi- confession: “I saw them in a photo of Ina Garten’s tect she hired to design the structure, Loren Kroeger, house and I copied them!” was on the original team of architects from Howard Backen’s AD100 firm who designed the proposed In another example of judicious restraint, Sikes smaller house next door that Meyers left standing at left Meyers’s home office untouched, its handsome the altar 16 years ago. In effect, our heroine got to dark-wood desk centered in front of huge windows. keep her big house and get her brand-new little house “It has good vibes,” she admits. “I remember standing too. Talk about a happy ending. “It’s great, isn’t it?” she says. 100 ARCHDIGEST.COM

THE TERRACE IS FURNISHED WITH SEATING BY THE WICKER WORKS WITH CUSHIONS OF PERENNIALS FABRIC. STONE-TOPPED COCKTAIL TABLE BY SUTHERLAND FURNITURE; RH UMBRELLA; FORMATIONS HURRICANE LANTERNS.

DESIGNER FRANK DE BIASI A NEW SOURCED THE LOGGIA’S RESIN WICKER SECTIONAL IN TANGIER. VINTAGE SALTERINI PAINTED-METAL ARMCHAIRS, COCKTAIL TABLE, AND CONSOLE. ANN-MORRIS LANTERN AND SCONCES. Designer Frank de Biasi updates a grand Palm Beach manse for Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler and her family TEXT BY MITCHELL OWENS PHOTOGRAPHY BY KRIS TAMBURELLO STYLED BY LAZARO ARIAS

W LEAF

LEFT EMILIA FANJUL PFEIFLER © 2022 THE ESTATE OF SIGMAR POLKE / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/VG BILD-KUNST, BONN, GERMANY ON THE LOGGIA WITH A MOROCCAN TABLE AND CHAIRS. ertain cities are known for City’s Upper East Side. “His work has such a distinctive look, iconic architects, talents especially the way he handled windows, which are a real whose houses and apart- giveaway if you’re familiar with him, and the staircases are ments set knowledgeable always so pretty.” So when she and her financier husband, hearts aflutter. In the Brian Pfeifler, decided to make Palm Beach their permanent historic Florida resort address after years of shuttling between Florida and New community of Palm Beach, York, the couple went in search of that architectural ideal. one of those visionary builders was John L. Volk, Designed in 1940 by Volk himself, the prize was a stucco- an Austrian émigré who clad, tile-roofed British Colonial sited on the highest point arrived on the gilded island in Palm Beach. Stylistic pedigree wasn’t the only aspect that in the 1920s and left a legacy of villas ranging in style from garnered their admiration; the fact that the expansive house Mediterranean Revival to neo-Georgian. “My grandparents’ had been enjoyed by large families right from the start was house was a Volk,” says Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler, a cofounder an emotional draw. (L.A. Rams owner Daniel F. Reeves, who of the Drawing Room, an elegant pop-up space on New York commissioned the house, was the father of six.) “I grew up in a world where family is super important, and when we

LEFT A LE MANACH FABRIC ENVELOPS THE DINING ROOM, AND A FORTUNY PRINT DRESSES UP THE CHAIRBACKS. THE JACQUES ADNET CHANDELIER WAS A PARIS FLEA-MARKET FIND. RUG BY STARK CARPET. BELOW A PAINTING BY SIGMAR POLKE HANGS ABOVE THE SOFA IN THE LIBRARY. THE SAME GUY GOODFELLOW COLLECTION PRINT COVERS THE SOFA AND THROW PILLOWS, ARMCHAIR, TUFTED OTTOMAN, AND ROMAN SHADES.

“We have three kids that have friends over constantly, four dogs that run around everywhere, and a hamster. It’s a perfectly sized house for that kind of life,” says Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler. GEORG BASELITZ

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE BOUGAINVILLEA FRAMES THE LOGGIA; VINTAGE SALTERINI CHAISE LONGUES WITH CUSHIONS OF FIG LEAF FABRIC BY PETER DUNHAM TEXTILES; LANDSCAPE DESIGN BY SMI LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. A COCKTAIL TABLE TOPPED WITH A MASSIVE MARBLE SLAB AND AN ANTIQUE MANTELPIECE, BOTH FROM ITALY, ANCHOR THE LIVING ROOM; PATTERSON FLYNN RUGS. A BLUESTAR HOOD ADDS A POP OF COLOR TO THE KITCHEN; GORDIOLA GLASS CEILING LIGHTS FROM SPAIN; COUNTER STOOLS BY DÉMIURGE NEW YORK. bought the house, it had belonged for decades to a really nice an idiosyncratic yet welcoming whole. The effect has as much family with five children,” says Fanjul Pfeifler, granddaughter to do with the Pfeiflers’ informed input as with de Biasi’s knack of a Cuban sugar king who immigrated to Florida when Fidel for juggling periods, styles, and materials. Castro came to power in the late 1950s. “We have three kids that have friends over constantly, four dogs that run around “Brian and I really care about every last doorknob,” Fanjul everywhere, and a hamster. It’s a perfectly sized house for that Pfeifler unapologetically admits, “and Frank allows us to get kind of life.” Accommodating that domestic vitality is where really involved.” The threesome headed to Italy, France, and AD100 interior designer Frank de Biasi, who masterminded England to get “lots of antiques, stone mantels, tiles, and more two earlier residences for the clients, comes in. This time to make the house more special,” the designer says. Part of around, though, at their suggestion, he relocated to the island that booty is the living room’s hunky cocktail table. “We went from his home in Morocco (AD, April 2020) for six months to this incredible place in the Italian countryside where there to oversee every detail of the renovation. “I really got into the were piles and piles of stone and tiles,” Fanjul Pfeifler recalls, architecture, the design, and the local artisans I could work “and bought this crazy piece of unfinished marble and just with to make the house special,” de Biasi explains. “It’s the had a base made for it.” coolest thing I could ever have done.” Wide planks sourced at a salvage operation in upstate INCORPORATING MOST OF THE FURNITURE and contemporary New York pave much of the main level, relieved by well-worn abstract art from the couple’s former New York City apart- squares of vintage marble in the entrance hall and equally ment—even the children’s rooms are outfitted with smartly distressed parquet de Versailles—partly covered with the custom- recycled familiarities—the designer has produced a house made Portuguese needlework carpets to which the couple that blends formal, rugged, bodacious, and cutting-edge into have become addicted, thanks to de Biasi—in the beamed living room. “We don’t love a lot of carpeting, and since this is an all-season house we left the wood raw,” Fanjul Pfeifler points ARCHDIGEST.COM 107

IN FANJUL PFEIFLER’S BATH, A 19TH-CENTURY ITALIAN INLAID MIRROR AND PRESSED FLORAL SPECIMENS BY STUART THORNTON HANG ABOVE A MARBLE TUB FROM URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY. LEFROY BROOKS FITTINGS; WATERWORKS MARBLE MOSAIC FLOOR. out, though, she shruggingly admits, getting splinters in their hosts a heterogeneous mix of furnishings that shouldn’t work feet is not uncommon. Walls have been heartily textured, too, together but happily do. “We didn’t want to make it too off from stucco carefully combed like pinwale corduroy in the the mark,” de Biasi says of the eclectic assemblage. “It just feels living room to pine boards that have been lightly wiped with comfortable, like old Florida.” gesso, then waxed by hand, in a guest bedroom. The latter mimics the room’s original Volk paneling, a detail that managed NINETEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN PHOTOGRAPHS of landscapes, to get damaged during the renovation but which de Biasi Roman statuary, and palazzi swirl up the walls of the stair deftly reconstituted. hall, where a 17th-century Italian inlaid commode found on a shopping trip in Rome is positioned beneath two Ed Ruscha Coupled with doors, windows, and moldings whose natural paintings, one bearing the words SCREAMING IN SPANISH. finish hearkens back to houses constructed during Palm (“I’m Cuban,” Fanjul Pfeifler says, laughing. “We do a lot of Beach’s midcentury glory days—the 1937 wood-walled octago- screaming in Spanish.”) In the kitchen, Danish-modern chairs nal pavilion ordered up by society portraitist Bernard Boutet are positioned in front of a blue-and-white Dutch-tile mural de Monvel is a de Biasi favorite—the unpretentious background 108 ARCHDIGEST.COM

A BONE-AND-BRASS FOUR- POSTER FROM JOHN ROSSELLI & ASSOC. STANDS IN THE PRIMARY BEDROOM. PAINTED BEDSIDE TABLES FOUND ON 1STDIBS; WICKER BENCH FROM MOROCCO; CEILING LIGHT BY STEPHEN ANTONSON. “I really got into the of an Old Master landscape, while the dining room walls architecture, the design, are upholstered in a king-size blue-and-white gingham check. and the local artisans Between French doors that open to the loggia—arguably I could work with to the family’s favorite location for meals, conversation, and just make the house special,” hanging out—a feverish Harold Ancart mixed-media work Frank de Biasi explains. is positioned above a gilded Italian neoclassical console. In Brian Pfeifler’s dressing room and office stands a vintage Jacques Quinet desk wrapped in macho black leather, while the couple’s bedroom is sluiced with flowing curtains run up in a Brobdingnagian blue-and-white plaid cotton that de Biasi designed and had woven in Tangier, where he lives. “Nobody else has it, which I like,” he says of the fabric. “Reinventing the wheel is what I like to do with every project.”

design notes THE DETAILS THAT MAKE THE LOOK A WOVEN COTTON COVERLET FROM MOROCCO ADDS COLOR TO A GUEST ROOM. MOROCCAN ARCH PLANT STAND; $580. HABIBIBURTON.COM NIGHT OWL BUD VASE; $95. HABIBIBURTON.COM FLORIN WALL LIGHT; PRICE UPON REQUEST. JAMB.CO.UK BOBBIN CONSOLE BY TURNER POCOCK FOR CHELSEA TEXTILES; $2,279. CHELSEATEXTILES.COM AMALFI CARREAUX COTTON BY LE MANACH; INTERIORS: KRIS TAMBURELLO. ALL OTHERS COURTESY OF THE COMPANIES. TO THE TRADE. PIERREFREY.COM GUSTO CANASTA WINGBACK CHAIR, BONE INLAY TABLE; UPHOLSTERED IN REGATTA LINEN $2,075. JOHN STRIPE SHEER BY SCHUMACHER; ROBSHAW.COM $4,500. GETTHEGUSTO.COM VINTAGE KILIM; I’m old-school. I want to see PRICE UPON it, touch it, talk with the dealer. I’m tired of buying things online.” REQUEST. WOVEN.IS —Frank de Biasi PRODUCED BY MADELINE O’MALLEY 110 ARCHDIGEST.COM

Brian and I really A VINTAGE BLUE-AND-WHITE care about every TILE MURAL DRESSES UP A last doorknob, and WALL IN THE KITCHEN. Frank allows us to get really involved.” —Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler KINTBURY STRIPE FABRIC BY GUY GOODFELLOW COLLECTION; TO THE TRADE. JOHNROSSELLI.COM LEADED LANTERN; $3,437. ROSEUNIACKE.COM THE CIRCULAR YACHT TABLE; $28,375. SOANE.COM BOTANICAL STUDIES WALLPAPER DESIGNED BY DE GOURNAY, CREATED WITH MICHAEL S. SMITH; PRICE UPON REQUEST. DEGOURNAY.COM THE BAR IS COMPOSED OF GLASS MOLDING, PANELS, AND DOORS BY STERLING STUDIOS OF LONDON. SOANE BRITAIN BARSTOOLS. JEFFERSON STREET ARMCHAIR; $4,900. MOOREANDGILES.COM

Designer Nick Olsen’s Dutchess County farmhouse possesses all the optimism of the young republic— plus some revolutionary detours TEXT BY MITCHELL OWENS PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAX BURKHALTER STYLED BY MIEKE TEN HAVE AMERICAN

SPIRIT VINTAGE PIECES FROM VARIOUS SOURCES MINGLE IN THE LIVING ROOM. THE YELLOW CHAIR WEARS A KRAVET LINEN, AND THE SOFA IS SLIPCOVERED IN A LEE INDUSTRIES STRIPE. JUTE RUG BY PATTERSON FLYNN.

THE KITCHEN FEATURES AN ANTIQUE-TILE BACKSPLASH, A WOLF RANGE, A CIRCA 1800 SCANDINAVIAN TABLE, AND 19TH-CENTURY DINING CHAIRS SLIPCOVERED IN A SISTER PARISH FABRIC. Just over six years ago, Manhattan interior the main floor’s off-kilter layout—knocking together a couple CAROL ANTHONY decorator Nick Olsen recalls, “I was very of small spaces to create a commodious living-dining room busy with work and feeling a bit bedraggled— and reworking the cramped staircase into an elegant Chinese why couldn’t I do something just for me?” Chippendale–style ascent. So he did. Yet as many renovating The answer to that stressed-out lament homeowners can appreciate, some plans remain incomplete. swiftly presented itself: a dilapidated daffodil- For one, he still hasn’t replaced the cinder-block garage with yellow 18th-century farmhouse in New York’s something more pleasing. The swimming-pool daydream has Dutchess County, shingled and humble been back-burnered for the time being, too, though, he brightly and straightforward, and as spare and square as a sugar cube. notes, he gets to splash down in one owned by nearby friends. Driving to and from a photo shoot at a client’s house in the area, Olsen had cast covetous glances over the property, which “Everybody called the place the Yellow House, so of course was prettily perched atop a hill overlooking a main road. I had to go and paint it white,” Olsen says, adding that for a One inquiry later, it turned out that it had been for sale forever. hot second he pondered painting it black. (“Very on trend but Emboldened, he made a lowball offer that, to his surprise, harsh in bright sunlight.”) Though the façade is no longer yel- was instantly accepted. low, Olsen has carried the memory of that sunny tone indoors, His new two-bedroom getaway possessed all the requisite from the crisp linen that dresses a wingback chair in the living swoon-worthy selling points—beautiful mantels, wide-plank area to a giant pencil, a store prop, that leans against a wall floors, picturesque beams—as well as some wince-making near the jet-black Saarinen dining table. Yellow also accents elements that Olsen was determined to eradicate, such as a the entrance hall floor, which go-to decorative painter Chris 1960s kitchen and several sketchy lean-tos. And who knew Pearson crisscrossed with wide yellow and brown bands, and that renters had been cultivating marijuana in the attic? embellished with dark vermicelli squiggles that Olsen once “It was an exercise in stripping away,” the designer says of spotted on some “kooky Italian tiles.” The effect is a madcap the renovation that followed, a process that advanced slowly mash-up of ye olde mochaware and graphic patchwork as funding waxed and waned. “I wanted to rip off everything quilts accompanied by, of all things, a sinewy Thonet chair that wasn’t original,” except for the one-story late-18th-century (“Everybody butch loves that chair”), a dressy Louis XV–style wing that contains the kitchen; that was retained and improved taboret, a tramp-art stegosaurus, and a wood sculpture (“It’s with a Greek Revival porch. Olsen also wanted to regularize supposed to be a bookcase, but it doesn’t work as a bookcase at all”) that resembles an unsteady stack of boxes. 114 ARCHDIGEST.COM

ABOVE DESIGNER NICK OLSEN IN THE GARDEN. A SET OF VINTAGE POWDER-COATED IRON PLAYING-CARD CHAIRS SURROUND AN RH TABLE. BELOW IN THE LIVING ROOM, GREEN CORDUROY CHAIRS FROM MEG BRAFF DESIGNS PULL UP TO AN EERO SAARINEN TABLE. THE EBONIZED COLUMN PEDESTAL AND FAUX-MARBLE TORSO WERE PURCHASED AT AUCTION.

“DECORATING IS ALWAYS VERY PERSONAL TO ME, and I wanted to do tongue-in-cheek Americana,” Olsen explains of the painted floor and the animated spirit of the rooms that open off of it. Recollections of his childhood home in Pensacola, Florida, suffuse the decor’s DNA. “My late mother was country living to the max,” he observes. “Red, white, and blue, pine- apples, plaids, checks, stencils—she loved it all.” Olsen does, too, but he’s taken that vocabulary of the past and then fascinatingly fractured it, breaking it down here and building it up there in ways that are cheeky rather than reverential. The result is a big, sexy melting-pot mix that perfectly complements what Olsen describes as “a proud little house.” A plush Napoléon III club chair is parked beside a When it comes to decorating, “I like to take things to the edge of crazytown,” Olsen says. skeletal cocktail table by populist designer T.H. Robsjohn- Gibbings. A West African stool crouches next to an old slipper chair clad in chintz, not far from a CB2 table and an IKEA floor lamp. The art is largely abstract (“I need to put the geometric next to the organic next to the floral”), works by Carol Anthony, Simon Nicholson, and Robert Vickers sharing wall space with a mirror wrapped in the kind of frame one associates with Old Master paintings and a pair of big tole birds that Olsen placed on either side of the stove hood. “My pseudo-narrative is that the house was renovated in the 1940s,” Olsen explains of a fiction that gave him permis- sion to combine granny fabrics with café-society special effects—such as the white trompe l’oeil drapery (created by decorative artist Agustin Hurtado) that seems to ruffle the guest room’s walls—an Art Moderne chest of drawers, and vinyl roller shades that have been finished to match. “I like to take things to the edge of crazytown,” Olsen says, “but still keep it comfortable and warm.” Pearson painted the motif of the guest beds’ coverlets onto the floor, so it appears as if the red-white-and-blue printed linen-cotton has flooded the room, entirely obscuring the original floorboards. In Olsen’s own bedroom, Pearson dappled the white walls and ceiling with colorful painted checks, kinetic accents that were inspired by the bedspread and bring to mind Piet Mondrian’s 1940s masterwork Broadway Boogie Woogie. “Anyone who’s afraid of paint, I just say do it,” Olsen says. After all, he points out, there’s not a lot one can do to make a pine floor interesting without resorting to two or three coats of latex and a bit of imagination. “Unless it’s beautiful or has some inherent value, I’ll paint it.” 116 ARCHDIGEST.COM

THE GUEST ROOM’S FAUX-DRAPED WALLS AND CEILING WERE PAINTED BY AGUSTIN HURTADO. CHRIS PEARSON PAINTED THE FLOOR TO MIMIC THE BED COVERLETS OF PIERRE FREY’S SIRENES.

“My pseudo- narrative is that the house was renovated in the 1940s.” ABOVE CHRIS PEARSON PAINTED THE PRIMARY BEDROOM’S WALLS AND CEILING TO COMPLEMENT THE BEDCOVER OF A JENNIFER SHORTO FABRIC. BLU DOT BEDSIDE TABLES; CHRISTOPHER SPITZMILLER LAMPS (ON DRESSER). RIGHT THE HOUSE’S WINDOW AWNINGS WERE MADE BY DAVID HAAG.

THE ENTRY FEATURES DECORATIVE PAINTING BY BOTH HURTADO (WALL) AND PEARSON (FLOOR). THE BLUE-GLASS MIRROR IS BY SKYFRAME IN NEW YORK CITY. SISAL STAIR RUNNER BY PATTERSON FLYNN.

one to watch Sarita Jaccard and swimming pool for actress and comedian Jessica Williams. Meanwhile, on the grounds of a Paul R. Williams “When I arrived it was all grass,” says landscape designer house in Hollywood, Jaccard is sensitively restoring Sarita Jaccard, describing her client’s 1925 home in the outdoor spaces, planting a large olive tree and Los Angeles. Today the plot (pictured) teems with native loads of California varieties. Thanks to a degree from plants, among them milkweed, salvia, and California NYU in environmental studies, she is attuned to the wild rose. “We wanted to bring it to life with colors and ecological impact of each job, favoring native, climate- attract bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.” Jaccard, appropriate plants that require less water, choosing a creative pollinator herself, is still rather green to the locally sourced materials, and urging her clients to garden world. The Argentinean American got her start in consider gray-water irrigation systems. “I look at every 2017, working for the L.A. landscape guru Art Luna after project as a story that existed before me,” explains cold-emailing him. About two years later, she launched Jaccard, who is also mindful to acknowledge the role her own office, now made up entirely of Spanish speakers. of Native people as the original stewards of American Projects have been bountiful ever since, ranging from the land. “What do I want to add to this story?” West Adams home of artist Henry Taylor to the garden saritajaccarddesign.com —HANNAH MARTIN 120 ARCHDIGEST.COM PHOTOGRAPHY BY PIA RIVEROLA

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