Rooms: Steven Volpe

Description

Steven Volpe combines a minimalist approach with a classical sensibility and a connoisseur's appreciation for authenticity. Adept at mixing pieces from different periods - eighteenth-century pieces combine with midcentury furniture and contemporary art, for example - Volpe brings a richness to his modern interiors. Volpe was one of the first to champion loft living, moving into a 75-year-old converted warehouse, but he brings his classical training into the modern spaces he favours. 'I learned what was appropriate and proper, and now I, too, can break those rules,' he says. One of the ways Volpe breaks the rules is by melding art with decor in his interiors, endearing him to a sophisticated, artistic clientele. This volume showcases ten recent projects, exploring work in a range of spaces, from New York City penthouses and modernist California homes to a traditional London townhouse. Each project displays Volpe's refined sensibility and understated luxury, showing how he creates thought-provoking environments that quietly stimulate all the senses. With stunning photography and in-depth essays by Volpe and Architectural Digest writer Mayer Rus, this handsome volume offers inspiration and ideas to designers, art lovers, collectors, and homeowners.

Steven Volpe founded Studio Volpe in the 1990s in San Francisco. He also owns the art gallery Hedge, where he offers a diverse range of twentieth-century pieces and contemporary art. Studio Volpe has been published in Architectural Digest, the New York Times, WSJ: The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Elle Decor, and other international journals. Mayer Rus is the West Coast editor of Architectural Digest.

"Like the historical and artisan pieces expertly assembled within them, Steven Volpe's interiors tell a great story. Though often quiet in terms of color and pattern, the spaces are never sterile-rather, Volpe develops intrigue through a masterful assemblage of texture and objects. As Mayer Rus writes in the tome's opening essay, "His spaces evoke and reward sincerity and curiosity. They become elixirs, at once calmative and stimulating, teasing beauty and order from the chaos of everyday existence." It's a level of simplicity that can only be achieved, ironically, when done with great complexity, as evidenced by the architect's stories of painstaking-and downright engrossing-restorations shared within the nine home tours detailed in the volume." -ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST