Gotland’s Glass Grrl


    “Glass can be a a lot of different things, not only handmade objects to drink from, but also performance. I seriously believe that creating glass, hot glass, is the greatest art. That’s how crazy I am about glass. To create, and get your hands dirty with ashes and your brow sweating, and make […]

Carissa’s the Bakery


In the spring of 2019, we were asked to help realize the design vision which would expand the beloved Carissa’s the Bakery into a larger restaurant at 221 Pantigo Road in East Hampton. In the fall of 2020, Carissa’s won the JAMES BEARD AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING DESIGN OF ALTERNATIVE EATING AND DRINKING PLACES. We are […]

Young Mi Kim: an Open Vessel


Young Mi Kim works and teaches from her studio in Bearsville, and at the Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock NY. Each of her ceramic pieces is one-of-a-kind and slowly, meticulously hand built. She layers strands of clay in a coil, carefully working upward as she discovers the shape. She writes, “In essence, each layer marks time […]

Brooklyn Heights Haven


The Brooklyn Trust Company Building at the corner of Pierrepont and Clinton was designed and built in 1913 in the Italian High Renaissance style, modeled after the Palazzo della Gran Guardia in Verona. It was recently converted to luxury condominiums, and Lawton Mull were asked to decorate a spacious model. We were inspired to set a […]

East Side Aerie


A hi-rise on East 62nd Street redesigned by architects Messana O’Rorke. A one-bedroom model apartment: downtown-meets-uptown; spacious, clean, and flooded with light. The perfect tabula rasa for a Lawton Mull interior narrative. As with all of our projects, the space dictates the story. Here, we imagined a couple, of different ages and gifts–one young and a textile […]

Park Slope Two-Bedroom


After all these years, we still approach decor as a narrative act. Each space demands a story, and we know it’s ready to be told when the rooms seem inhabited by a distinct few characters. Across the street from this property is a primary school, and the soundtrack of playing children seemed to inform the […]

Brooklyn Family Duplex


At 709 Sackett Street, a new construction with good bones, clean lines, and an eco-conscious profile, Lawton Mull sets another stage. The buyers we imagined for this property are not unlike us: in their early/mid 40’s, with children and work that they love, and looking for a place to lay down roots. We chose furniture […]

The Vespine Table


We admire the wasp, an extraordinary designer and engineer. Of their family, Vespidae, hornets are renowned for their skill in making the paper which is their building material. They injest leaves, bark, wood pulp…and transform it into the layers which protect the cells of their colony from the elements. According to legend, the man credited with the […]

A House in Prospect Heights


We have recently embarked on a staging adventure, i.e. preparing a property for the market or, as we prefer to do it, pretending we live there. Here are photographs from one of our projects, a house on Dean Street in Brooklyn. We had an opportunity with this house to choose not only the furniture which […]

Vail Modern (for H.D.H.)


Come inside. You’ve done enough, on the slopes of Chamonix or the sidewalks of Bushwick; on skis or the slippery blades of preoccupation. End your exertions. Drink a hot toddy, read something you’ve read before but can’t remember except to know it will restore you after another bout in winter’s ring. Lawton Mull’s reinterpretation of […]

LM in the news: FT June 2015


We were thrilled to provide some examples of how Old Master paintings and drawings can and do work in modern interiors. To us, not only are they works of lasting beauty and value, but they lend a home a sense of cultivation and permanence. Thanks to Bendor Grosvenor for including us.

Parlor


“What do you call one’s self? Where does it begin? Where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us – and then flows back again…One’s self – for other people – is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s clothes, the books one reads, the company one keeps – these […]

Salon


In our favorite 19th century novels, dinner guests partake of their cigars and light entertainment away from the table where they sated themselves. This is our version of that salon. Louis Philippe gilt wood mirror, Biedermeier games table, Bao tou carpet with peacock on flowering branch, wallpaper screen.   Pair of ebonized armchairs attributed to […]

The Men’s Club, a New Take


As the weather turns toward autumn, our thoughts follow to warmer interiors: books and blankets, leather and wool, early nights indoors. A more masculine aesthetic, without forsaking poetry. Let the links take you to closer views of each item. That’s the Manhattan skyline in the twilit distance, muted by sheer white curtains. Seen here, a […]

A Room of Her Own


There are friends we don’t see much of over the summer. One elegant lady has been particularly missed. She was our muse as we installed this salon. We like to think it captures something of her femininity and her boldness, an equipoise she achieves without breaking a sweat. Shown here, a pair of Billy Baldwin […]

Meditation on Neoclassicism


Our favorite part of the job: rearranging furniture. We started with this pair of armchairs attributed to Wilhelm Schmidt, a petrified wood log, carved wood gilt plaster mirror, and an armload of eucalyptus… This was better: 19th century folding iron daybed, Louis XVI fauteuil, Paul McCobb travertine-topped coffee table, 19th century Italian writing table, velvet […]

Dinner with an Italian movie star


Something about a monumental Scavo vase and six tufted white leather chairs brought to mind Fellini’s muses, Sandra Milo or Anita Eckberg.                 This earthy walnut slab seemed like a table top around which the ladies might have gathered to commiserate about il Maestro, aka Fefe. Buon appetito, amice. Large console […]

Canoe Room, Revisited


When you have a splendidly intact 19th century Kerala canoe, you want it to be in every room you conceive. We allowed ourselves to expand beyond a minimalist frame. The longer we circled the room, the more we felt compelled to add: an antique Indonesian batik textile, a simple ebonized mid-century French étagère , a […]

Canoe Room


“It’s the same today as it ever was. He who seeks beauty will find it.” Bill Cunningham We have had this very fine Kerala canoe for some time, but had been waiting to build a room around it. It seemed to require the right carpet. When a few weeks ago we acquired a handsome Turkish […]

Dinner for Two


“How did I come to create such things? It was one and the same power that led me to dreams and silly pranks in childhood, later to sickness, and finally to art…Fantasy has put its hallmark on my existence, it is fantasy that makes me happy and makes me sad. I recognize it constantly inside […]

Guest Bedroom


“I have always thought that by observing things with a great deal of attention and perseverance you eventually wrest some of their secrets from them, making them utter what they would most like to keep to themselves.” Julian Green, Paris Click on links to read about some of the furniture and objects in this interior. […]

Living Room


“Tables and chairs, beds, mirrors, a clock to remind the happy couple of the passage of time, an armchair for an hour’s pleasant daydreaming, carpets…pictures on the wall, glasses for everyday and others for wine and festive occasions…Are we to hang our hearts on such little things? Yes, and without hesitation.” Sigmund Freud, in a […]

Breakfast Room


“Yes,” cried Mrs. Gereth, with a fine freedom of fancy, “there are things in the house that we almost starved for! They’re living things to me; they know me, they return the touch of my hand…There’s a care they want, there’s a sympathy that draws out their beauty.” Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton Just […]