Walking through the rooms, Gaby describes an ethos of keeping what she can ‘and working with it’. Two sets of Sophie’s curtains remain and much of Jocasta’s built-in cabinetry has been retained, along with some lacquer-like paintwork and Delft tiles. Poignantly, there is also the imprint of the door that once connected to the adjacent house, in which Jocasta’s partner of 30 years lived – the architect Richard McCormack, who in 2014 chronicled that time in a slim, self-published volume titled Two Houses in Spitalfields.
A Seth Stein ceiling light hangs above a bespoke Formica-topped table by Create Studio, with Hans Brattrud dining chairs. Framed panels of a Gary Simmons’ artwork, featuring the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair, pick up on a custom-dyed Create Studio rug.
Simon Upton
Gaby and David brought much of their existing furniture and furnishings with them. ‘The only rule was we had to change the location of the art – a painting couldn’t go from a bedroom in our previous house to a bedroom in this one,’ notes Gaby, adding that almost every picture is by a friend. The arranging of the rooms was, she says, ‘instinctive’, and was generally led by one particular item, along with her eye – honed by the possibilities of filmic transformation and the importance of mood.
She mentions, too, the enduring influence of her late mother, Zehava Helmer – to whom Park Avenue, with its stylishly worldly lead, ‘is something of an ode’ – and the Mexican architect Luis Barragán, who employed colour as a structural component. In the dining room, eight panels of cerulean blue artwork by Gary Simmons extend onto the return wall and informed the colour of the rug, which was stitched together from dyed strips of Turkish carpet. The table, topped in a decisively bright yellow Formica, reflects another service that Gaby offers clients.
The front door opens onto a private courtyard.
Simon Upton