In a world that so often flattens the past, Suzanne Demisch stands as a steward of layered memory – a collector, gallerist, and restless seeker who sees design as living history. In conversation with photographer William Jess Laird, she traces the threads of her upbringing among New England antiques, her serendipitous partnership with Stéphane Danant, and a lifetime devoted to celebrating overlooked voices, from Maria Pergay to Sheila Hicks. As she moves between folk furniture and postwar French radicalism, between her own preserved apartment walls and the pulse of the gallery, Demisch’s story reveals an enduring fascination with the imperfect, the inherited, and the yet-to-be-discovered – a reminder that the spaces we inhabit are as complex and curious as we dare to let them be.
Photo by William Jess Laird.