Stephen Drucker
If you could have a second home anywhere, where would you live?
In London at The Albany.
What are three words to describe your style?
1. Tranquil
2. Spare
3. Symmetrical
Tell us about your childhood bedroom? My aquarium could have been in Architectural Digest.
What’s the first investment piece you ever bought for your house? I was a college senior. The contents of the ocean liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were being liquidated on the Cunard pier in NYC. I bought an Art Deco bone china teapot in the shape of a cube.
In the history of design, if you could hire any designer other than yourself, who would it be? Andrea Palladio.
No room is complete without dimmers.
People think of me as a design pro, but I am really an editor. I could just as easily been the editor of Field & Stream.
Things you omit from:
A flower arrangement: Anthurium
An hors d’oeuvre platter: Hors d’oeuvres
A bar cabinet: All those stupid tools
A song for:
Dinner at home: John Pizzarelli “Ring-a-Ding-Ding”
Working at your desk: Blossom Dearie “Lucky to Be Me”
Going for a run: “West End Girls” (Lockdown Edition)
Biggest Vice? Old-school NY Jewish deli food.
If you were on an Ambien high and internet shopping, what would you buy? I’d be up all night configuring the Porsche 911 I’d be too embarrassed to be seen driving.
Do your clothes reflect your design sensibility, if so, how? Yes, I keep the background basic and neutral, then shop for sparks from Sid Mashburn, Loro Piana, Brunello Cucinelli, and Paul Smith. As architect John Woolf said about decorating, “You only get one gimmick in a room.”
Who is your star crush? James Norton
What is the thing you would never do on a project, but don’t detest when you see others do it? A showboat kitchen with ten Jamb lanterns and an acre of marble.
If there were a fire, and you could only keep one design book, what would it be?
Inspired Design: The 100 Most Important Interior Designers of the Past 100 Years. Jennifer Boles did this book for me at Vendome Press. The whole history of interior design is in there.
For posterity, what would you like your work to be known for? I hope the stories I wrote for decorating magazines conveyed that it’s never what it seems in the photos.
A Few Favorites:
Movie: Moonstruck
Book: The Portable Dorothy Parker
Scent: My lemon tree in February
The fabric you always come back to: Rogers & Goffigon Cyclades
Dream project: A tiny apartment hidden up a flight of stairs in the water tower of a Rosario Candela apartment building.
Meal: Cheese omelette with a baguette and good butter
Drink: Badoit
Hotel: The Tresanton in St Mawes, Cornwall
Travel Destination: Venice and the Veneto
Artist: John Singer Sargent
A cause near and dear to me: Historic preservation
Thing to collect obsessively: 19th-century sepia Grand Tour photographs of ruins
Era in the history of design: Swinging 60s Mod London
Museum: Thorvaldsensmuseum in Copenhagen
Paint Color that always looks great: Farrow & Ball Borrowed Light
Favorite person to follow on Instagram: @castorfleuriste
Dogs, Cats, or No Pets? Other people’s dogs
