Dramatic Entrance - Exclusive Interview with Michelle Nussbaumer

Interesting facts about Michelle:

Though first, I attended an actors’ course at college, I was finally immersed in the world of stage set design, which layed the foundations of my interest in interior design.

My house in Texas is very personal to me; a family home that is very based on collections built over years and inherited pieces from my husband’s family and mine. Respect for history and family: this is what I like and what I'd love to show in my work.

A constant source of inspiration for me: the artistic style of architect Renzo Mongiardino, Henri Samuel's classic-modern eclectic imagery and nature.

Maximalism is the core of your work, every interior you design is a summary of grandeur. Are we right in thinking that your motto is ‟More is more. Less is never more”. Where does your passion come from?

It's obvious: from my family! Because they have always loved beauty, my eye was trained from a young age. My mother was a well-known painter and took me to many museums and galleries as a child; our house was full of art, antiques, and fellow artists. My grandmother was an eccentric and she had purple sofas, leopard print carpets and an imperial yellow convertible sports car. Her and my grandfather had filled their rooms with crazy treasures, from bearskin rugs, Asian antiques, her paintings, modern furniture to wonderful pieces that we found at the Apache reservation nearby, where my love of the tribal was born. Excentrism is in my blood, and so my interiors are embodiments of passion. I want people to live in and enjoy their environment to have their own personal world at home, one that excites, soothes, and pleases all the senses.

What is your major goal when desigining homes for your clients?

To create eye-filling, eccentric, beautiful assemblages – a merging of the precious and the playful with a little bit of whimsy and fantasy. This is why I give a mixture of the values being important to people and characteristics of different eras, the19th century England or the glamourous beauty of the 1940s. This is how ‟multi-layered rooms” are born. I begin my design process by seeing how the client interacts and uses the rooms in their homes and then I have inspiration for how to create a beautiful space for them. The home environment should be reflective of the way people live and of the style and place of the house.

How was this vivid, ever-changing but still very solid style born?

When I met my husband, we moved almost immediately to Rome. I started shoppingfor our house, a villa on the Ancient Via Appia. I had the chance to furnish it on my own and I started to feel that the more it reflected our lifestyle, the more inviting the interiors became. But I also learnt that a house should never be finished; it is alive. A place where it is good to grow, evolve, and change. That is why I always aim to make our Dallas home timeless. My four children grew up here, we had many animals, it has always been full of guests and the smell of cooking – with life itself. Also, I have always thought of the garden as an outdoor room with seating areas and beautiful vistas for people that are enjoying the space. It’s important to have comfortable seating or even a bench placed far away under a tree – a perfect spot to meditate or read your favorite book. I just love it!

Your major inspiration is traveling. Is their a magical compass working in you showing where to go for inspiration?

Though I was born in Texas, I have also lived in Europe and South-America, so I have grown a very unique concept of design. I love to pull together objects and elements that I have discovered off the beaten track and mix them with antiques and modern art to create an atmosphere deep with personality, exotically perfumed, and enlivened with a touch of the eccentric. Three of my favourite places are Mexico, India and Morocco, which are similar to one another in many ways. Each is a desert environment where colour blooms – they often love bright, saturated ones, which strengthened my love of colour. The worlds tribal and indigenous peoples all use the same materials, each in their own way, and I like exploring that in my work. I take delight in researching and working with craftspeople and artisans who make the material culture of their community. My passion is searching out treasures from the worlds’ most fabled markets – the Medina in Fez, the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, the Marché aux Puces in Paris, the neighbourhood markets in Beijing.

How can we make these objects an integral part of the home interior?

When we discover, select, and bring home objects and art as reminders of our experiences, they are not only treasures, but also treasuries of meaning and memory. I like to present furniture with interesting provenance because I believe every home should have objects with stories to pass on to future generations – possessions and experiences of life. In this way, it is not just about the visual but an aesthetic that engages all the senses – this is how a house stays alive. A great way of bringing back memories of our journeys into our homes can simply be framing a panel of intricate antique wallpaper or vintage fragments of fabric and hanging it as a work of art, making it much more contemporary and somehow much more fun!

Exciting floor, wall and furniture coverings are the first to catch the eye in your kitchen and dining area interiors. Which techniques do you like to apply?

I like to incorporate whatever makes me happy in my own kitchen. Functionality is key. When the kitchen trends are sometimes directed towards a glamorous WOW, that really doesn’t matter if it doesn’t actually function. I’m a cook and I love cooking, so all of the kitchens I design for myself and my clients are geared toward that first. That being said, I do like to hide kitchen appliances behind lacquered doors - I love that you don’t see most of the appliances, there’s something glam about it.

What advice would you give to those who'd love to add a little drama to their home atmoshpere?

One thing that I learned, and still value from my days in the theatre is the importance of setting a scene, and its major tool is decoration. Vivid colours but a haromonious color palette can also do the trick. Something that needs to be considered when deciding on a colour scheme is the quality of natural light – its saturation, hue and intensity–- which changes from place to place. When I am working on a house, I always visit several times to see what sort of chameleon the colour I have selected is and how it responds to the different qualities of light at various times. Scale is also one of the most important tenants when you are mixing colours and patterns. I love to use eye catching designs and fold patterns for curtains as it is a case of scale meeting scale. The window panels and draperies are large enough to ensure that the entire pattern is visible but contained enough so that it doesn’t overwhelm.

Do you have other tricks to play with colours?

Every room needs moments to rest the eye so that the palette and the pattern don’t become too confusing or overwhelming. I love using black for that purpose. For me, it brings a stillness to a room. I use it to frame vignettes, to establish a focal point, and to add some weight to the rest of the palette, especially when the palette is particularly colourful.

You have mentioned mixing colours and patterns several times. How can we decide what goes well with what?

I think that mixing patterns is an art form, as is all design. There are of course rules, but sometimes it feels so good to break them! People are sometimes frightened of strong colour, and so they often hold back. But I find it is important to look, leap and carry the power of the palette to its maximum strength. Colour is emotion, memory, and mystery. I tend to establish a visual theme or harmonious colour palette. Once the theme is clear, those repeating threads of colour reinforce the patterns and pull together the mixture. A good rule of thumb is play with different scales. If you use a bold floral for example, try mixing it with a smaller stripe or paisley. Make sure all of your patterns incorporate different elements. You don’t want a room full of twenty different florals. Antique wallpaper, scenic panels, or a parade of hand-painted pagoda silhouettes above a dado do more than create a theatrical entrance: they create an environment in which the imagination can take flight.

She creates homes, designes home decor items, and also writes books. Her latest publication, 'Wanderlust', also available at the New York Metropolitan Museum, is the essence of her creative philosophy, showing for what, for whom and how she works

Visuals: Elizabeth Lavin, Stephen Karlisch, Douglas Friedman