Ann Pyne

BJORN WALLANDER

If you could have a second home anywhere, where would you live? If I could start all over, on the coast of Maine. Or in Paris...

What are three words to describe your style? May I say, 'that I want my style to be'?

1. Correct

2. Intelligent

3. Memorable (What I mean is 'as producing rooms that can be remembered after they have been seen...')

Tell us about your childhood bedroom? Grey shag rug, twin beds (my nanny in one, me in the other). A wall of built in cabinets and a painted desk.

What’s the first investment piece you ever bought for your house? A lucite lamp from Jansen in Paris when I was 21 years old.

In the history of design, if you could hire any designer other than yourself, who would it be? And aside from anyone at McMillen? It would be Renzo Mongiardano, if he were alive. Or Peter Marino.

No room is complete without something you wouldn't sell no matter how much you needed money.

People think of me as aggressive/oppositional, but I am really passive. I call it 'aggressive/passive'.

Things you omit from:

• A flower arrangement: Baby's breath

• An hors d’oeuvre: Platter doileys

• A bar cabinet: The bottles (I don't like a confusion of colors. I put the bottles in cabinet below...)

A song for: 

• Dinner at home: Maybe La Boehme; Maybe Cole Porter.

• Working at your desk: I only like music when paying bills...but most of the time at my desk is for writing, and I don't like other voices or other rhythms when I am doing that. But when paying bills, The Band. (The Weight or Across the Great Divide)

• Going for a run: Could I change to 'for a workout'? As I strongly object to music while running as I think it is dangerously distracting.

  • FOR PLANKS: Bridge Over Troubled Water.

  • FOR PUSH-UPS: Big Girls Don't Cry.

  • FOR STEPS: Mother's Little Helper...

Biggest Vice? If you ask my husband or anyone else (including me):  Procrastination. Although perhaps procrastination is a failure not a vice. So, for vice: hoarding/collecting.

If you were on an Ambien high and internet shopping, what would you buy? I thought Ambien was a sleeping pill -- could I substitute Cocaine? or Ritalin? I would buy books.

Do your clothes reflect your design sensibility, if so, how? Not to the eye. My clothes would appear to others as conservative, expensive, or just plain boring -- think Akris or Armani, Theory. My design would appear to others as confrontational, one-off, or, maybe... should I say, daring...(and expensive).  

Who is your star crush? Pathetic to say, I don't have one.

What is the thing you would never do on a project, but don’t detest when you see others do it? Give in to what the client wants but I don't think appropriate. (I envy designers who can do this. And I try. I really do).

If there were a fire, and you could only keep one design book, what would it be? The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard.

For posterity, what would you like your work to be known for? Intelligence, integrity and a continuation of the McMillen aesthetic.

MARCO RICCA

A Few Favorites: 

• Movie: Maybe the first movie I saw, "Lassie Come Home."

• Book: Huckleberry Finn

• Scent: Fresh cut grass

• The fabric you always come back to: Don't have one. Cotton velvet? (hate chenille).

• Dream project: Re-do our barn in Southampton in a way that retains its local character, its foot-print, and its lines. But in a totally idiosyncratic way. (And in a way that is structurally sound...)

• Meal: Pepperoni and bread

• Drink: Favorite, Champagne. But if only allowed one for all purposes, Beer. (I guess I like bubbles...)

• Hotel: Maybe the hotel in Portofino on the water. (Splendido). Or maybe Four Seasons in Milan. But all depends on the room.

• Travel Destination: Paris

• Artist: Whistler 

• Thing to collect obsessively: Ceramics. Light fixtures. (Can't decide.)

• Era in the history of design: Aesthetic period in England. Because it was so intellectual. And Louis XV in France. Because design was so geared to the social, the conversational.

• Museum: Quai d'Orsay

• Paint Color that always looks great: Dove White

• Favorite person to follow on Instagram: My daughter, Elizabeth Pyne Singer. But that's a lie. I don't follow anyone.

• Dogs, Cats, or No Pets?  DOGS, DOGS, DOGS