Sarasota and the City

Hometown designers find inspiration in New York City.

By Carol Tisch

If you love design and the Big Apple, the third week of May is the best time to visit. You can squeeze in a visit to the ever more impressive Kips Bay Decorator Show House, which cleverly remains open through the last day of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair: the most thought-provoking interior furnishings trade fair I’ve visited anywhere in the world.

Pure bliss: Tisch checks out the work of renowned designers at the most prestigious show house in the world.

So I made the annual pilgrimage as did several Sarasota designers and home furnishings shop owners, each with our own cram-packed itineraries. Marilyn Morgan, ASID designer for Sternberg Interiors (www.sternberginteriors.com) and professor at Ringling College of Art and Design, made the rounds at ICFF with two agendas.

First, she looked for innovative product as well as surface and color trends. Second, Marilyn actually brought swatches from current design jobs so she could actually finalize selections. “I never specify a product unless I see it in person,” she says, “and if a new firm sends a catalogue that looks interesting, I make a point of stopping at their booth at the show.” Coincidentally, Marilyn and I had booked the same flight home. She was sitting with her daughter (Kim Mancini) at Newark Airport. Both waved me over, neither realizing I knew the other. Small world.

Two of ICFF’s staunchest supporters, William Tidmore and Robert Henry (Tidmore-Henry and Associates Interior Design) make the show, Kips Bay and a New York City theater, museum, and street fair tour part of their birthday celebrations each year. Their birthdays are a week apart and ICFF falls smack in the middle.

“How could anyone in the design business not attend ICFF?” Tidmore says. “For years, you couldn’t get good residential contemporary furniture, so we were specified commercial furnishings to get a good contemporary look. This show mixes exhibits by large commercial manufacturers with artisan designers who focus on contemporary.” In addition to stopping by booths of their favorite sources for previews of products soon to be available, the pair is partial to exhibits of student work, actually taking the time to discuss with industrial design students the furniture and surface materials they created for exhibition at the show.

On the way to ICFF on Saturday, Tidmore and Henry stopped at their favorite New York City street fair. “It’s on Ninth Avenue from 58th Street all the way to the Javits Center,” Henry explains. “We find great Chinese antiques from a vendor who has a small booth at the street fair every year.”

Also in town to celebrate her birthday was Gerrie Heibel of Envie Home Décor (www.enviehomedecor.com). Gerrie’s daughter, owner of a home furnishings shop in Chicago, is about to open a new store in Brooklyn, and the pair did a whirlwind tour of ICFF along with a lot of other work (and fun stuff) in just two short days.

Will Sarasota be a hotbed of European design as a result of this show? Will Italian metallic leather furniture and crystal-studded sofas make it here? Let us know what you think.