Veranda - May 2006

Design Directions
Dwellings
Stephen Sills and James Huniford

Catching up with Manhattan-based designers Stephen Sills and James Huniford is similar to trying to pin down their much-in-demand decorating style. The partners are like quick-sliver, as elusive as any attempt to quantify the originality with which they've infused the home interiors of clients as disparate as Anna Wintour and Tina Turner. The personable designers are often in motion, creating beautiful spaces from Manhattan to Greenville, South Carolina, to Aspen, Colorado, or buying unique pieces perhaps, from Denmark or Syria.

"Clients come to us who don't want a recognizable decorator look," Sills says "We really tailor our work to the individual and the location. For us, that's most important."

For the rest of us, the good news is that we can now tap into the creativity behind a Sills Huniford Associates interior. Culling from their twenty-plus years in an all-custom business, the two designers now make some of their signature pieces available at their Madison Avenue shop, Dwellings, and online at www.dwellingshome.com.

Huniford explains, "As our work appeared in magazines and our book Dwellings: Living With Great Style came out, there was lots of interest in the chairs and sofas that we had designed for clients. We have found ways to make the furniture more affordable, but it still has a custom touch, and the proportions we spent years working on make it suitable for a New York apartment or a house anywhere in the country."

In defining the Sills Huniford style, words such as architectural, eclectic, subtle, crisp and classic come to mind. Like their interiors, the well-chosen furnishings that appoint them are perennials. Drawing on impressive decorative knowledge and a strong sense of proportion, the designers combine fittings of virtually any period with wit and restraint. In a home by Sills Huniford, one can expect the unexpected, such as pigmented walls given texture with an eighteenth-century plaster-and-straw technique or a fireplace framed by a pair of antique semainiers to accord it distinction.

The Dwellings collection is based on their brand of versatile and subtle luxury - so classy it needn't shout. The upholstery and case goods marry with the most esoteric antiques, yet are also completely at home in a modern, glass-walled tower. The Dorset sofa with its seductive cabriole legs is wrapped in a blend of cotton and rayon - read durable - that subtly combines threads of sand and seafoam in a textured weave.

The designers get the upholstery essentials right, including scale and comfort, in nine delicious fabric choices. Lots of solid or grainy surfaces and textiles allow freedom of expression in complementing them, like using a limed oak table with a concrete top as a foil for a rich Persian carpet or sleek Art Deco candelabrum.

The Daly Chair, with its deconstructed silhouette, was inspired by a 1960's French design. The diminutive Bedford Slipper Chair, useful in filling a little gap in any decorating scheme, is covered in a soft olive velvet. One needn't go outside the line for unusual accessories. Vintage pieces include gilded candlelit sconces, fluted columnar vases and gypsum "logs" that look stunning upended as a still-life in a fireplace. Each is offered in a limited edition. Within the line, there's room for customization: a table can be ordered at dining, coffee or side table height and in a choice of finishes.

If the collection lays the foundation, the abundantly illustrated Dwellings book (Bulfinch, 2003) divulges the secrets behind eclectic interiors that work. There's practical advice such as "Always buy the best upholstery you can afford. High-quality seating will last a lifetime." And to take the process a step further, the two partners have recently launched Dwellings Design Studio, a decorating service that builds whole rooms around the line. "It's a team approach with all the creative people in our office involved," says Huniford.

Nothing signifies success like endorsement from your peers. Half the clientele at the shop are actually interior designers.