Aesthetic Duo Chris Mitchell & Pilar Guzmán on Their Favorite Dansk Items

“We show every part as a result of we’re not disciplined sufficient to place issues away,” jokes Chris Mitchell of the properties he shares together with his spouse, Pilar Guzmán, and their two sons. Maybe, however the couple has mastered the artwork of show. Be it the glass shelving for china that turns their kitchens into museums, or a bedside association of old style haberdashery gadgets in brass and leather-based, they’ve developed such a knack for filling their areas with simply the correct mix of objects (and, after all, furnishings) that final fall they revealed the how-to e book Patina Fashionable: A Information to Designing Heat Timeless Interiors.

“We consider no floor needs to be empty, however we don’t assume it ought to appear to be Ms. Havisham,” says Mitchell, who left the highest ranks of journal publishing (Self-importance Honest, The New Yorker, GQ) to renovate and promote cottages within the Hamptons. Guzmán, who involves her present position because the editor of O journal through Condé Nast Traveler, Martha Stewart Residing, and Cookie, describes their groupings as a mixture of utility and folly underscored by logic—be it the same materials or which means.

Patina Fashionable takes its title from their love of the strain between previous and new; between spare, clear strains and the usage of supplies that simply get higher with age, comparable to brass, wooden, and bridle leather-based. “It’s trendy however sort of vintage; it’s new nevertheless it’s received this sort of patina,” Mitchell explains of the Patina Fashionable fashion. “There’s a coolness and an honesty to that mixture.”

That patina additionally comes from the truth that every part they preserve out is used, cherished, spilled-on. They may stack fashionable books on espresso tables, credenzas, and mantels, however of their case, they’ve learn all of them. Take their collections of Dansk teak trays, designed by Jens Quistgaard for the corporate—now owned by Food52—within the Fifties and 60s. They purchased their first of three units of three trays at a flea market 20 years in the past, not understanding what they’d use them for, simply that they beloved the way in which they appeared. Then got here children and the start of a ritual: Friday film night time, which continues to at the present time. They fill the trays with sushi, water, wine, and glasses within the ground-floor kitchen of their Brooklyn brownstone and carry them as much as the TV space on the second ground, the place everybody gathers across the espresso desk. “We watched each Pixar film, then made our manner by all the nice classics,” says Guzmán, who retains the trays hanging from a hook within the Brooklyn pantry. “You simply seize one. We use them a ton.” (Within the Hamptons, they’re displayed on the island when not in use.)

Mitchell just lately purchased two of the long-lasting Dansk “surfboard” trays on eBay, however they not often make it upstairs. “I’ve this humorous behavior of shopping for issues and never doing a metric conversion,” he says with fun, recounting how he as soon as purchased a eating room desk that turned out to be a espresso desk. “The tray got here, and I used to be astounded by how beneficiant it’s. We use it as a show tray as a result of it’s large.”

The couple use trays all through their properties so as to add boundaries that corral litter and make issues really feel extra resolved, says Mitchell, particularly on mantels. “Issues will be shut collectively, so long as they’re contained on a tray.”

Mitchell and Guzmán have many alternatives to rearrange their collections, seeing as they have an inclination to promote their properties out from beneath themselves. “The final two homes we offered absolutely furnished,” he says. “We packed our garments, our belongings—and our trays.”