When the gallerist Suzanne Demisch places her lens on a space she
doesn’t just see ways to furnish it—she sees the chance to discover a narrative.
Suzanne’s work reflects her fascination with the passing of time, through
objects that convey a sense of the lives they’ve led, with a taste that skews
to the unconventional and the rare—pieces that were formed more so out
of creative expression than simply function. That approach is intuitive, but
always academic, with an ever sharp focus on provenance and pedigree.
When Demisch went looking for a home, she sought a space steeped in
the history of post-war New York that was befitting her own modernist touch.
Here, in the East Village, she found exactly what she was looking for: a place
seemingly lost to time. The apartment had been owned by the photographer
and painter, Saul Leiter, for more than a half century, and appeared to have
been spared from the frantic development of the city around it.
While Demisch Danant, the legendary design gallery she cofounded
alongside Stephane Danant, has been celebrated for curating exhibitions of
exceedingly high precision, her apartment is imbued with the warmth of a
family home. Where one might imagine objets d’art chosen for their status,
one finds an interior appointed for function and ease that is highly personal.
If Demisch’s home is her story, it is one that conveys the thoughtfulness of the
found and hand-touched. What is made imminently clear is that her choices
are inward, each an emblem of the kind of real connoisseurship one gains
from a life well-lived.