Some people want to call the whole thing off when they don`t see eye-to-eye.
Others stick together in spite of their differences: When she says Victoriana, he says hard-edge metal; she buys modern, he cherishes Grandma`s table; she`s Sports Channel, he`s Coltrane.
Never mind.
In the eternal dance of acceptance and assertion, some stylistically mismatched couples have made it through the home furnishing wars.
Elizabeth Herz, a Manhattan real-estate broker, summed up the design differences she has with her husband this way: ”I picked out the piano for the way it looks, he chose it for the music. Ralph is practical, I`m the aesthetic one.”
When they were married 20 years ago, Elizabeth Herz brought ”all my modern stuff” to the union. Her husband, Ralph, medical director of American Group Practice, health-care management consultants, had ”lots of his grandmother`s stuff from Cleveland and some pieces from an ex-girlfriend,”
she said.
Ralph might have guessed there would be changes when he discovered his wife had traded in the 1949 Rolls-Royce he gave her as a wedding gift for two Le Corbusier sofas.
Mix agreed upon
These days, their New York apartment is a captivating mix: In the living room, a Rietveld chair is paired with an early 18th Century Windsor chair and an abstract painting of Mt. Fuji by Saito above a 19th Century ancestral portrait.
The carved wood table in the living room is dear to Ralph. ”It was my grandmother`s,” he said. On it stand two big globes, one atop the other; this is what the Herzes call their ”Gone With the Wind” lamp, which could have been in Tara. ”Ralph nearly fainted when I agreed to buy it,” Elizabeth said.
The dining room is another matter. It is furnished with Elizabeth`s marble-topped, chrome-base table by Gae Aulenti, an Italian architect, with Thonet cane and chrome chairs.
On the wall is a small painting by Adriaen van Ostade, a pupil of Rembrandt`s. ”The subject is nit-picking, maybe not the best subject to look at during dinner,” Elizabeth said. ”But I`ve grown to love it.”
The Herzes` design truce was not reached overnight. Many of the things Elizabeth was not fond of made their way out the back door to the thrift shop. ”They started out as far away as the bedroom,” Ralph said. ”It takes a few years for a piece to move, say, to the dining room. But when it gets close to the kitchen, I know it`s headed straight to the service elevator.
”My couch made the journey in stages. The pillows stayed around for a few years; then they went, too.”
Ralph has remained philosophical. ”When it`s gone, it`s gone,” he said. ”I don`t really miss any of it.”
Griff and Winshell
When Barbara Griff (white silk blouse, pearls) met Bob Winshell (jeans, checked shirt) nine years ago, she was living in a one-bedroom apartment in New York.
”It was done in a very Victorian way,” said Griff, a television producer and public-relations consultant.
Winshell said diplomatically, ”I thought Barbara was terrific and her place was well, very different from my aesthetic needs-more contemporary, you know, a lot of iron and steel.”
When they met, he lived in a big Dutch Colonial house in New Jersey, worked as a photographer and was becoming a sculptor and art furniture maker. They decided to move to a loft in Manhattan. Combining their two styles was a surprisingly smooth operation: an antique quilt now hangs on the wall. Hers, right?
”That was mine,” Winshell said a bit sheepishly. ”I bought it in New Jersey years ago, but before Barbara, it spent its life in a closet. It was the colors, not the antique aspect, that caught my eye.”
Hartley and Fontaine
In a rambling prewar apartment, Pat Hartley and Dick Fontaine, who usually work well together, are busy fine-tuning their living styles.
Hartley is a producer and writer, and her husband, Fontaine, is the director of feature documentaries and music videos; they moved to New York from London 11 years ago.
The apartment seemed like just the right temporary place for them. But though Hartley said that ”the living room was empty for four years and I loved it that way,” she is an inveterate rescuer of things like pianos that are about to be thrown out or embroidered fabric ends or a Buddha that had been in a thrift shop.
So, slowly, things accumulated. One day, in an effort to hold back the tide of clutter, Hartley decided to throw out dozens of pairs of high-heeled shoes that she no longer wore. She was ambushed in the hall by Fontaine, who took possession of the shoes.
”I couldn`t face the specter of throwing out our past,” he said. ”And anyway, I liked the way they look.”
Other adjustments ensued. For example, Hartley is the kind of woman who likes to have the television set on all the time, preferably tuned to sports events, even if she`s not watching it. She also likes ”all that rock stuff.” Fontaine, who feels stylistically akin to the early Miles Davis, listens to modern jazz whenever he can. And in spite of having a lot of room, they said, they tended always to do things together in the same room.
”Recently, it occurred to me that I don`t really like jazz,” Hartley said. ”Recently” was when Fontaine`s earphones came into play and when the couple`s individual nests or, in Fontaine`s words, ”personal little environments,” came into being: Hartley grouped her odds and ends around the mantelpiece in the living room; Fontaine moved his records, tapes and stereo equipment into the dining room.
”When we each took possession of our separate spaces, I asked myself,
`Is our relationship falling apart?` ” Hartley said. ”It was kind of scary. When I was growing up, when people did things apart, it meant they didn`t like each other.”
Fontaine sees it a bit differently. ”Instead of living with our communal fantasy,” he said, ”we finally evolved to a place where we got our individual desires satisfied. In our case, it required an enormous number of rooms.”
Penzer and Leonard
Susan Penzer is a Manhattan real-estate broker and the owner of a vintage clothing store is Sag Harbor, N.Y. She`s always on the phone. Bill Leonard is a real estate property manager with a fondness for books and television.
When Penzer and Leonard decided to live together a couple of years ago, her small apartment already had been fine-tuned by Alan Buchsbaum, one of the most innovative designers of the last 20 years.
”Nothing could be touched not even the direction of the light bulbs,”
Leonard said. ”I thought the place was a little stark, that it needed warmth, like a rug or a TV.”
And to tone down the essentially feminine look of the place, Leonard hauled out his panoply of plaid throws. Penzer accepted.
But somehow she didn`t completely get over it. When it came time to re-cover the sofa in the Sag Harbor house–designed and renovated by Leonard
–Penzer had a ruffle added to the mattress-ticking upholstery. Oops.
”Now that was a very, very big mistake,” she said.
