Chicago aficionados of british style find a kindred spirit in stephen bastone.

Stephen Bastone knows how to compose a picture. “Nineteenth-century painters of interiors would revel in his work,”  says Christopher Hyland, “because at every turn there is a living painting before you.” In the artists’ works, light and textures were rendered in intricate detail: the glint of sunshine on porcelain, the graceful drape of a curtain, the supple richness of velvets and damasks.

In a couple’s Chicago apartment, whose interiors were designed by Stephen Bastone, views of Lake Michigan are framed by gold damask drapes and an 18th-century English settee covered in pillows made from antique French chinoiserie panels.

Like artists before him, Bastone creates compositions replete with such details, and they are obvious in the Chicago apartment of King and Karen Harris. “They like 18th-century English furniture, and they enjoy being collectors,” Bastone says of the couple. So when he took on the project, it was mainly about placing those furnishings and decorating the existing shell of their residence in a prestigious 1920s Lakeshore Drive apartment building. But, he says, “my work has to be rooted in its historic architectural setting.” So he convinced the Harrises to call in architect Michael Watson to build the framework for that decoration in the form of intricate paneling, cornices, friezes, moldings, boiserie and fireplace surrounds.

by Jorge S. Arango

Refer the professional article and make 3 questions to it:

An irish marble-topped hall table highlights the foyer.

In this setting, the Harrises’ exquisite museum-quality furniture—an Irish marble-topped hall table, curvaceous Chippendale chairs, an 18th-century English settee and a priceless chinoiserie secretary of the same period—was now properly “framed.” Then, like a painter building up a thickly impastoed surface, Bastone (who worked with Vincent Fourcade for 10 years and whose clientele included Jacqueline Onassis, Henry Kissinger and Jane Wrightsman) laid the textures on. “Fabric is my specialty,” he says without a hint of bravado. Silk damasks, velvets and custom-designed fabrics predominate, but he ramped up the luxury quotient by employing antique textiles all around the apartment: 18th-century Beauvais needlework panels made into pillows for a red velvet living room sofa; a 19th-century Aubusson tapestry transformed into a valance for the master bedroom; 19th-century Italian cut velvet on the library valances.

Italian 19th-century cut velvet was used to make valances and trim in the library. The Chesterfield sofa, upholstered in a cotton velvet strié, is adorned with pillows made from 16th-century Belgian fabric. An antique Ax minister rug from the Sunny von Bülow estate (in the living room), important 18th- and 19th-century American portraits from Hirsch & Adler, elaborate drapery tiebacks and trims, and beautiful Paris porcelain and bisque lamps (another Bastone signature) complete the look. The kicker? Despite the presence of all that richness of detail, there is not a whiff of exaggeration or excess in these rooms. “He ingeniously presents us,” says Hyland, “with a detailed yet clean environment in which individually brilliant textiles, art, furnishings and objects can be clearly perceived and enjoyed.” In other words, these spaces do exactly what a good picture does—they create images that are indelible.

by Jorge S. Arango

Refer the professional article and make 3 questions to it: