Steven Gambrel

There are a few interior designers whose work I always earmark, their artistry often gracing the pages of Elle Decor or the other American shelter magazines I have been ravaging for more than 20 years. In listing their names I will omit some, but off the top of my head Celerie Kemble, Jeffrey Bilhuber, Daniel Romualdez, Victoria Hagan, Robert and Courtney Novogratz, Emma Pilkington or even (when I'm feeling grown up) Bunny Williams. There is not a published project by any of these designers that I have not torn out, examined, filed, coveted.

However, my Michael Kors of interior design, my absolute rockstar, is definitely Steven Gambrel and FINALLY he has a book coming out, "Time and Place" (though sadly we have to wait until April for the pleasure.)

In "Shingle Chic" (Elle Decor, June/July 2002) the fab editor Mitchell Owens, now at Architectural Digest, described a wonderful house Steven Gambrel had renovated for a client, conjuring "a cottage that a globe-trotting great-aunt might have inherited probably back in the 1940s, filled with a transatlantic haul picked up everywhere from San Francisco to St. Tropez, a place where she partied hearty through the '60s and then left to a sporty young relation." I don't think I ever looked at an interior in the same way again. This is the special gift Gambrel has, giving a house such presence that you really can imagine a wonderful, even eccentric character infusing it with life. 

I have thumbed through the images of this Gambrel-designed pad, pictured in House Beautiful, so often that I feel like I have stayed in the house. Or at the very least visited and enjoyed a mint julep. It houses works by artists like Massimo Vitali and Marine Hugonnier, a gorgeous mix of furnishing and texture, and I particularly love the kitchen lighting. It was Steven Gambrel who inadvertently taught me that you don't need to use downlights (who knew!), lighting should be purpose placed, and shadows and dark corners are ok... a house does not need to be lit up like an airport. I'm not sure that our architects have enjoyed translating that into a lighting plan for our house-on-the-way! But I'm hoping it will give it warmth and depth in all the right places. 

House Beautiful, August 2009