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This Legendary Designer's NYC Apartment Has Three Different Libraries

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

From House Beautiful

"It’s like decorating for ghosts.” For Ann Pyne, president of McMillen Inc., one of America’s most prestigious design firms (and its oldest), the decades-long process of decorating her own Upper East Side Manhattan home has been far from uncomplicated. After all, she shares it not just with her husband, John, and two dogs but also a few lingering spirits with very strong opinions: among them, the legendary Eleanor McMillen Brown, who founded McMillen in 1924, and Brown’s similarly formidable successor Betty S. Sherrill, who also happened to be Pyne’s mother.

It’s a rather weighty legacy, admits Pyne, who purchased the apartment in the 1980s during her previous life as an English teacher and writer; she eventually joined the family business in 2001, at age 50. (Her daughter, Elizabeth, now works there too.) “There’s always a question of, Will they approve of what I’ve done, or disapprove?” muses Pyne. “Do I wish they could see, or am I happy they can’t? How have I carried on the McMillen tradition, or have I broken it?”

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

The answer is probably, happily, all of the above. Over the years, Pyne has filled her apartment with treasures and castoffs from the McMillen archives (there’s a bench that Mrs. Sherrill and a colleague “carried right out of the Winter Antiques Show”), family heirlooms (like her parents’ daybed, which John F. Kennedy once stained with shoe polish), and a rather rebellious array of antiques (“It was a McMillen dictum that the late-19th century in America was the only ugly period in the history of decorative arts, and that’s precisely what I started collecting,” Pyne quips).

“Everything in here either came from somewhere sentimental to me or reminds me of a certain moment, and my challenge has been how to integrate it all,” the designer says. “But to me, the construction itself is the art form!”


Living Room

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

A group of etchings by James McNeill Whistler, several family portraits, and a favorite Raymond Legeult oil painting hang above a sofa passed down by Pyne’s grandmother. Wallcoverings: Stark fabric (above chair rail), Gracie wallpaper. Cocktail table: Philip and Kelvin LaVerne. Lamps: vintage, through Liz O’Brien.

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

Curtain-maker Guido De Angelis—a McMillen “go-to” for clients like Henry Ford and Marjorie Merriweather Post—created the dramatic window treatments using Fortuny fabric and Houlès trim. The woven-wood shades “have a bit more heft than matchstick blinds,” Pyne says; their vertical stripe makes the ceilings appear taller.


Foyer

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

The reproduction Louis XV chandelier once belonged to Pyne’s parents. “They outgrew it, but I like to keep it as a reminder of when they were young and just beginning to ‘buy nice things,’ ” she says. Her dogs, Elbert and Monsieur, recline on the antique bench. Pillow fabric: Manuel Canovas.


Dining Room

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

The key to making bright-green upholstered George III side chairs work, says Pyne, is the "glamorous" silk rug from Beauvais Carpet. "It was copied from an original period rug owned by Hubert de Givenchy," she adds. Dining table: vintage Paul Evans through Rago Auctions. Candlesticks: Hervé Van der Straeten through Maison Gerard. Pendant: Delos and Ubiedo.


A Home School for Grown-ups
When her two children moved out, Pyne hatched a plan to transform their now-empty bedrooms: “I didn’t want to make a guest room or a room for my husband to go sleep in. I wanted to make more room for books!” she proclaims. The “decorator’s library,” which was once her son’s room, is filled with interior design tomes; the “fine arts library,” her daughter’s former bedroom, is now covered with watercolors. And the “literary” library, where she once did most of her writing, features four walls of bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks. “I never even read some of those books; now, I can’t read them because they’ll fall apart,” she laughs.


Decorator’s Library

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

Pyne worked with decorative painter Arthur Fowler to create the geometric pattern on the walls. “I think of the puzzle-like shapes as a metaphor—it’s a game of fitting all these disparate ‘treasures’ into a graphically coherent whole,” Pyne says. Desk and chair: Pierre Jeanneret. Drinks table: Edward Wormley. Upholstered chair: Garouste and Bonetti. Lamp and cocktail table: antique, through R.E. Steele Antiques. Curtain fabric: Stark with Houlès trim. Rug: Fedora Design.

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

The daybed has a particularly juicy history: "Jack Kennedy got shoe polish on the previous upholstery while he was on a date with one of my parents' single lady friends," recalls Pyne. "He hadn't taken his shoes off—perhaps to make a quick escape!"


Fine Arts Library

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

A brushstroke-striped Pierre Frey wallpaper plays off the framed watercolors. Pendant: Gaetano Pesce. Floor lamp: Dennis Miller. Table: Eero Aarnio. Chairs: Jean Royère. Rug: Stark.


Bedroom

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

Watercolor paper and pages from an unpublished memoir by Pyne line the walls. A sculpture by Elizabeth Turk hangs over the bed. Bed: custom, in Travers fabric. Nightstands: vintage Parsons table (left), Bugatti (right). Stool: Maison Gerard. Rug: Patterson Flynn Martin.

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

The "bugs" on the lamp shade (by Miguel Cisternas through Maison Gerard) are actually shells with hand-embroidered accents. "One either likes it or doesn't—there's no in between," declares Pyne.


Kitchen

Photo credit: Douglas Friedman
Photo credit: Douglas Friedman

Barely touched since 1984, the kitchen showcases Pyne’s “small but treasured” collection of black-and-white photographs, which includes works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and more. Large photograph: Matthew Pillsbury. Chairs: vintage Thonet. Wallcovering: Farrow & Ball. Floor tile: American Olean.

Photo credit: Douglas Freidman
Photo credit: Douglas Freidman

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