MICHAEL QUINN's BROOKLIN APPARTMENT

I've decided on coming up today with an extra post and at first, I'd like to apologize for I've just insolently copied the stuff from DesignSponge blog; I hope no bloggership ethics violated with this action. And the reason is that I badly wanted to display it here for you could join me in this exceptional design hunting tour!

I can completely relate to the-more-the-better design aproach, - I can't help but love interiors full of darling things and details, yet the general look has to be harmonious, of course. I should confess that when decorating my own spaces I should always be alert with myself for not to turn my house into a "trash for treasures" as I may really go wild with my passion for things;)

And this beautiful house seems lovely balanced on the brink of the overrichness of colors and details - to me it looks gracefully overloaded, probably kitschy (but by no means in a pejorative meaning) and possesses very welcoming atmosphere. 

No doubt, the famouse Alice would have discovered another Wonderland in this fantastic home!

Below is an interview with Michael Quinn:

Photographer Michelle Talan

|Living with so much for so long feels a bit like wandering off into a woods of my own making. I have been collecting things my whole life, but I came to New York after school without too much stuff, and worked in publishing, so money was tight. I used to stay late after work and my friend in the art department would help me make things to hang on my barren walls. It seems laughable now, but it was also really formative, in a way; that time, that devotion, was a certain genesis for something great. Like a lot of other people, I started off with a lot of my family's castoffs, but that tendency to shelter has come to include a huge variety of things, animals, even people. Many people have called this place home over the years, if only for a short while, and I think the place absorbs and reflects those energies. By and large this apartment has become something of a refugee camp for Things That No One Else Wants. I am one of those people who thinks if you love something, you can find a way to incorporate it into the mix; if something speaks to me, there is always room in my inn.|

|photo above: This is more of a Platonic ideal of a desk than a place where I actually do work. I grew up in a really small house, then a series of tiny apartments, so I have a lifelong habit of working, always, at my kitchen table. One of my prized possessions is my father's high school classroom copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. The chair is one of the first things I got when I moved to this neighborhood. I thought it seemed so 1940's Private I, but it has mechanical bull tendencies; it has bucked nearly every person who's ever sat in it. Its patchwork cushion is one my mother made in the 1970's; the pattern is, I believe, "Log Cabin."|

|photo above: Believe it or not, that peel-and-stick tile floor was the selling point. I had always wanted to live in a place with a black-and-white checkered floor. I have an almost pathological tendency to focus on the merits of one single (read: dangerously inconsequential) detail at the expense of the oft-lauded "big picture." (Here that picture included a toilet lurching dangerously towards the tub; a crumbling plaster ceiling; doors that swell like melons in the summer and fly open at a touch in winter).|

|photo above: This mantle is one of those gorgeous built-ins that can only be experienced by living in an old apartment. It's so wonderfully ornate and grand. The mantle features my nativity collection, inspired by one my grandparents had; even with the years' inevitable casualties, they never took away, they only added, so there was about a 5 to 1, Mary to Joseph ratio. There is something about this idea that feels so right to me. Here, we have an abundance of kings; the shepherds are not very well represented.|

|photo above: Considering my catch-as-catch-can approach to decorating, it seems appropriate that there is a lot of patchwork here. The vinyl furniture is from my grandparents basement on Long Island; they had a complete room set up down there, little regarded, like a memory. If there is a blue-ribbon prize for ferns, I would like to award it to myself, although truth be told the light coming in is of the forest-floor variety. This is one place where ferns and the notoriously finicky African violets thrive.|

|photo above: This was my grandfather's organ; he couldn't read a note of music but he could play anything after hearing it once. Alas, this is not a gift I share. Once a year I like to bang out some carols at Christmastime; the "vibraphone" setting hides a multitude of sins. It's like all reverb, all of the time. The Liberace songbook was in my grandmother's library, as it is mine, with no visible trace of irony.|