Robert Stilin Debuts a New York Gallery Built From Decades of Collecting
The celebrated interior designer unveils a domestic gallery where vintage furniture, photography, and collectible works mingle in an ever-changing tableau
Robert Stilin’s new gallery follows one guiding rule. “I have to like it,” he quips to Galerie during a recent visit. The interior designer, who was born in Wisconsin and now splits time between Brooklyn and East Hampton, New York, pursues a robust range of collecting interests spanning vintage furniture, artwork, photography, and one-of-a-kind design objects. These passions surface throughout the richly cohesive homes he crafts for clients and for himself, most notably in his cavernous Red Hook loft, where broad windows frame sweeping views of the Lower Manhattan skyline. Inside, paintings and photographs from his personal trove blanket the walls in salon-style groupings that rival the harbor panorama and converse with arrangements of rare furniture upholstered in cozy textiles that carry a slightly rustic Americana sensibility.
The same alchemy distinguishes his gallery, titled Robert Stilin Shop, which opens mid-March on the sixth floor of a Beaux-Arts office building near Madison Square Park in Manhattan. The venture, located next door to his tight-knit interior studio, departs from the expectations of a typical furniture showroom. “Visitors say it looks like an apartment,” says Stilin, who wanted guests to experience one of his interiors with a catch: Every piece is for sale. “I wanted to create a space that’s an extension of my brand and showcase our collection in a Robert Stilin apartment.”
Inventory will naturally shift as objects find new homes, but a rigorous dedication to provenance, restoration, and craftsmanship will consistently underpin the selection. An oak desk by Guillerme et Chambron neighbors a club chair inspired by Jean-Michel Frank, while a spectral painting by Alexandre Kasproviez presides above ceramics that Stilin converted into table lamps. Vintage chairs abound, each restored to the same standard one would expect from Stilin’s interiors. His search for new pieces rarely abates. “I shop every day, even if I’m not trying to,” he says, undaunted by the steady flow of images on Instagram or the demanding art-fair circuit. Travel and longstanding relationships with dealers in France, Italy, and England guide the hunt, including a collaboration with Sarah Gavlak on an exhibition that explored connections between art and furniture at the historic Norton house in West Palm Beach last year.
That Florida city also marks the genesis of his illustrious career in interiors. In the late 1980s, he opened an eponymous home goods store in Palm Beach that presented new and vintage furniture, artwork, and objects within domestic vignettes. An early customer purchased several pieces and soon asked Stilin to furnish a house, which set his design career in motion. That momentum persisted as his practice expanded over the following years and later led him to establish a similar shop in the Hamptons in 2003 after relocating his life and studio there. Both stores eventually closed, though Stilin continued to offer select pieces through his website.
Beyond selling furniture and artwork, Stilin plans to represent emerging artists and designers while staging exhibitions that introduce their work to the prestigious collectors and decorators who frequent his orbit. The first presentation arrives in May with a show devoted to Italian photographer Alessio Boni. Stilin has also announced representation of designer-sculptor Diego Villarreal Vagujhelyi and his New York studio, whose pieces already appear on the gallery floor. His recent works include cast bronze and stainless steel collectibles ranging from tactile objets to monumental tables produced through the ancient lost-wax casting method.
Photography remains a personal passion for Stilin, who counts roughly 200 works by the likes of Wolfgang Tillmans, Tyler Mitchell, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer in his collection. Yet visitors needn’t expect his holdings to remain on the gallery’s walls for long. “Unless there’s a situation where I don’t have a show planned,” he says with a laugh. “But it bothers me when I go to stores, shops, and galleries, and items aren’t for sale.” To that end, the shop will serve as a proving ground for ideas he plans to explore in his interiors—and a laboratory to understand how pieces resonate: “We want to put things in here and see how people respond.”