Past Perfect

When I first laid eyes upon Jeffrey’s Bilhuber’s guest room/study in his then new Manhattan apartment a few years back I immediately sensed familiarity, but I couldn’t place it. Had I seen this room before, in a previous incarnation, or did it remind me of another room, its impression floating somewhere in my memory? Recently I discovered it’s the latter while thumbing through the pages of The New York Times Book of Interior Design and Decoration published in 1976: the room that my memory clung to was the living room of interior designer Richard Lowell Neas.

The similarities are obvious and hardly require explanation: an envelope of pale gray and off white accented by camel, chamois and, in Bilhuber’s hands, persimmon; a profusion of antlers staggered up and down walls; the cross-hatching design of Bilhuber’s wall-covering mimicking the cornice design of Neas’s; the mix of contemporary and period furnishings and objets d’arts. I had always admired Lowell-Neas’s brand of understated luxury and was equally taken with Bilhuber’s more eclectic and eccentric take on a this contemporary classic.

The shelter sofa-cum-daybed in Bilhuber’s room, above, is identical to Neas’s, below, save for the addition of passementerie. The same Groves Brothers’ Marianne cotton used to cover the walls wraps the day bed.

Richard Lowell Neas was a trompe l’oeil artist as well as an interior designer. For the floor of his living room he conceived a design of large squares simulating the striation of cut agate. For the cornice Neas created a treillage pattern.

The floors in Bilhuber’s study were stenciled by Mark Uriu and the cross-hatched pattern of the wall covering was framed-out into panels with nailheads.

Good design is transcendant, and Bilhuber funneled that dictum with great style and wit by referencing the atmosphere of Lowel-Neas’ living room while imparting his own with his usual brand of classic American chic.

The first photo of Jeffrey Bilhuber’s study was photographed by William Waldron for Elle Decor. The other photos of his study were photographed by Jeffrey  Hirsch for the New York Social Diary. Photos of Richard Lowell-Neas’s living room were photographed by Norman McGrath and featured in The New York Book of Interior Design and Decoration, 1976.