design destination
Expect a new experience with each visit to The Concept Gallery, located diagonally across the square from White Birch Studio. Designer/artist Kerri Rosenthal opened the shop in September with a plan to switch the design focus five times a year, each new concept highlighting eight of the forty patterns in her XOKR line. The featured patterns make their appearance throughout the store on pillows, wallpaper, comfy floor cushions, and custom upholstered furniture. “The common denominator is that it always has a joie de vivre, a happy sensibility, to it,” says Rosenthal, who stocks the shop with all manner of accoutrements, from perfume to clothing to candles. Midcentury goes glam next door at Swoon, where Appleton-Webster offers a carefully selected cache of vintage furniture, lighting, and decor. Expect bar carts of chrome and glass, brass accents, and animal prints in muted colors, with the occasional anachronism—a nineteenthcentury clock, perhaps—snuck in as if it belongs. And of course it does. AppletonWebster doesn’t think twice about bend-
ing the rules for a great look; she routinely refinishes or rebuilds tired pieces whose virtues have been obscured by worn frames or dated upholstery. A recent visit turned up a settee smartly dressed in gray-and-white zebra print, a wooden console table glossed up with lacquer, and a black metal chandelier recast in white. “It’s a fresh way of looking at vintage,” she explains. About 90 percent of the shop’s wares are one-of-a-kind, making each find at Swoon a fleeting opportunity.
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3/14/17 3:00 PM