Clients Jerry and Maxine Swartz
Designer Frank Faulkner partitioned the open living space with a lacquered wall and a mirrored clerestory, then furnished the space with pieces from owners Maxine and Jerry Swartz's extensive collections: a horse's skull, a Thai offering basket, and a vintage Italian sofa on which he "didn't even change the upholstery." Pillows are covered in African chieftain's cloth. The painting, Sphinx, is by Faulkner.
A subway bench wrapped in rattan stretches out under the living room windows. New shelves accommodate discoveries from the Swartzes' travels: a 19th-century scale, African pottery, and Asian sculpture. The eagle-armed neoclassical chair is a "junkyard find" that Faulkner transformed with saddle leather and gesso (the designer's "panacea").
Floor-to-ceiling bookcases flank the bedroom's wool-upholstered wall. A lush Ming aralia (Polyscias fruticosa) thrives in a terra-cotta vessel at the window. Jerry and Maxine Swartz have nurtured the Asian native for years, moving it with them to three homes.
Frosted glass doors conceal built-in storage.
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add & subtract

Judiciously displayed collections define an Astor Place apartment
Type: 
Interior Design
Author name: 
Frank Faulkner
Type: 
Text
Author name: 
Harry Sawyers
Type: 
Photography
Author name: 
PETER MARGONELLI
Author name: 
Produced by Betsy Marx

Working with clients who are collectors, says designer Frank Faulkner, means having access to a well-stocked pantry. “You can put together a ‘meal’ without it being a treasure hunt for the perfect ingredient.” Faulkner,distant kin to the literary William and an artist in his own right, has his own facility with language when describing his design intentions. He speaks in terms of harmonies, logic, scale, and compatibility.

In Jerry and Maxine Swartz’s downtown Manhattan apartment, Faulkner’s disciplined eye sorts out clutter, giving order to the environment by editing out the “junk holding the space hostage.” Faulkner redefined the open living space with lacquered walls and sliding glass partitions. A vintage Italian sofa is positioned to take in the apartment’s stellar street views. Throughout, floor-to-ceiling shelves display books, machines, and sculpture gathered on the couple’s travels.Tropical plants the size of small trees fill windows adorned with simple roller shades.

But Faulkner’s work is as much about subtraction as it is about addition: He admonished his clients to “be on guard against tables getting covered in trivial junk.” He warns of becoming “over- come with acquisitions, losing the structure of the room, and squandering a really generous space.” He’s right.And in his “judicious” use of horse skulls, cow hides, sculpture, and ceramics, Faulkner realizes there’s only so much to go around. Perhaps the painter Frank puts it best when speaking in terms closer to his distant cousin’s art: Having a great collection of furnishings at your disposal,he says,is like possessing an “extensive vocabulary.You can distill words and speak simply, but the eloquence comes from a depth of possibility.”

Resources:

Artist and Interior Designer Frank Faulkner, frankfaulkner.com. Smoke & Mirrors, 358 Warren St., Hudson, NY 12534; frankfaulkner.com.