296: Heirloominati

Architecture and design are the family business.

Nov 17, 2024

Rooms is Magasin’s interiors vertical featuring room-by-room shopping, furniture and decor wishlists, and renovation projects at home in Brooklyn.

Silkscreen painting by my grandmother, Mil Lubroth

It was inevitable that this edition of Rooms be about family. My mother Claude was closing her storage unit in DC, so we booked Amtrak tickets and arranged a U-Haul for the ride back. Naturally episode two would tee up a backstory to soften an audience to the protagonist.

Here’s what we packed into the U-Haul from my mother’s storage unit:

king size sleigh bed in almendro wood custom made in Costa Rica
Thonet bench (my mother’s 16th birthday gift)
2 Tizio lamps
4 Irish iron table lamps
glazed green ceramic pot from Mexico
Moroccan tiled round table
dark wood bench from India
portrait of my paternal great-great-grandfather
3 Persian rugs
my father’s diplomas
6 of my grandmother’s paintings
tiny chair
my mother’s storage chest
Spanish wooden structure for holding ceramic drinking water vessels
objects from my childhood…a papier maché toucan, baby blanket, needlepoint alphabet pillow
various linens

When we brought everything home to Brooklyn, I found myself prickling at all the wood in the house. The poplar door frames, the stained pine floors, all of the various oak and teak furniture we’d collected ourselves over the years, and now, the hugely wood-skewing collection of heirlooms from my family home. An awful admission is that my autonomy was threatened by it: I loved these pieces intrinsically but also blamed them for getting in the way of the from-scratch universe I imagined I could’ve otherwise built in a new house. For a careless moment, I found myself envying people who furnished their spaces without the “burden” of handed-down belongings. What a sad thing to want. I had the thought: Some might find it strange and off-putting if their father asked to keep his old bathrobe in their closet for a few months, but others know what it’s like to wish they had something that still held his scent.

Almost everyone in my family is an architect. Maybe that’s why design feels so emotional. My mother, whose father was an architect, went to RISD for architecture, as did her brother, and her other brother’s son, my cousin, is an architect, too. My mom joined us in Brooklyn after we drove up from DC, and she invited some friends from her college days over to the house for aperitivo. “Uncle” David, another RISD-trained architect, peeled off with Nir for the entire evening, taking measurements and interviewing us about our renovation plans. (He went and drew up a bid set for us that he also sent to my architect uncle Guy before we’d even given him a call…whenever the family has a home project in the works, it becomes everyone’s project.) Franklin, an interior designer from RISD, turned out to live just down the street from us in a place he bought 10 years ago—the after picture to our before. Ignacio, a contractor in Manhattan (his ex-wife is the RISD connection), talked us out of the idea of stripping any more wood (“I’ve known guys to drop dead from that stuff”).

Bringing more of grandmother’s art back from DC was an important move for our home’s soul (my mom’s cohort all commented on her newly hung painting in our living room—they know a Mil Lubroth when they see it). She was a prolific and well-connected artist, associated with Klee, de Kooning, and Albers, though undersung being a woman and a mother during that era. I knew her work had reached collectors far off from where she produced it in her Madrid studio, but what I did not expect was, on a stop into Horseman Antiques on Atlantic Ave with my mother, for us to find one of her prints hanging on the wall. After the shock and awe, we said, “let’s leave it here for someone to discover.” Let me know if it’s still there you happen to go by.

Living

My sister sitting in front of our Omersa & Co. leather donkey stool; leather elephant stool from Chairish

Building

At the threat of…death…the plan will no longer be to strip the paint from the wood frames and the door. We’ll be painting instead—something we’re looking forward to discussing at our Farrow & Ball color consultancy scheduled this week.