An English-French Manor-Style Remodel by Fiorito Interior Design

It is sometimes a surprise what beauty can lurk under the surface of a room. A client with a 1970s kitchen and eat-in area cut up by an unwieldy peninsula was desperate for it to reflect her love of all things English-and-French-Manor-Home.

Working closely with my client, we removed the peninsula in favor of a lovely free-standing island that we painted a shade of French Blue. This is topped with Old World sink hardware (note the ceramic HOT and COLD medallions on the faucets!) and a gorgeous marble counter with a very special edge profile that evokes an antique French Boulangerie counter from the 1910s. Pendants with patinaed metal shades over the island further the charming Old World feel. Handmade white and blue tiles laid in a quilted diamond pattern cover the backsplash, and the remainder of the cabinetry at the perimeter is in a warm cream tone.

The eat-in area near the fireplace got a cozy treatment with custom seat cushions and window seat bench cushions in a classic blue-and-white Toile de Jouy matching the island stools.

The nearby living room got a similar treatment. We removed dark wood paneling and dark carpeting in favor of a light sky blue wall and lighter wood flooring. A new rug with the appearance of an heirloom, a new grand-scaled sofa, and some of my client’s precious antiques helped take the room from 70s rec room to English Sitting Room.

All photos by Bernardo Grijalva.

Happy designing!

Know Your Sofas: The Camaleonda Sofa

Let's face it, there were a ton of super-cool sofas designed and manufactured by super-cool furniture designers in the 1960s and 1970s. The Togo sofa by Michel Ducaroy (here), the Terrazza sofa by de Sede and Ubald Klug (here), the Élysée Sofa by Pierre Paulin (here), and the Serpentine sofa by Vladimir Kagan (here). And to this illustrious list in our series Know Your Sofas, I am delighted to add the equally super-cool Camaleonda sofa by Mario Bellini.

Born in 1935, Mario Bellini's amazingly varied and prolific design career started in 1963. Among many other thihngs he was, and you might want to sit down for this, chief product designer at Olvetti from 1963 to 1991, designed furnishings for B&B Italia and Cassina and Natuzzi, hi-fi systems, headphones and electric organs for Yamaha, lamps for Artemide, Erco and Flos, office furniture for Vitra, and was an auto deisgn consultant for Renault. And he has twenty-five of his designs in the permanent design collection of the New York MoMA. Wow. As of this writing, Bellini is 87 and still designing at his studio Mario Bellini Architects.

But back to his Camaleonda sofa...designed for B&B Italia in 1970.  In a 2020 interview with Architectural Digest, Bellini said, "I crossed two words: camaleonte, or chameleon, an extraordinary animal capable of adapting to its environment, and onda, or wave." This portmanteau is a perfect word for modular seating that can be arranged in many different ways to suit a specific room or environment. Here it is in an original B&B Italia advertisement in 1971.

Photo: Bruno Falchi and Liderno Salvador

The sofa is held together with an ingenious system of cables and hooks. And I love how the upholstery ends up looking like it is draped rather than tightly tacked down.

Here it is in the Malibu home of Beastie Boy Mike D. 

Photo by Trevor Tondro

And here it is in the amazing Brooklyn townhouse of Athena Calderone as featured in architectural Digest in 2018.

Photo by Gieves Anderson

Although the sofa went out of production in 1979 and originals auction off for more than a pretty penny, B&B Italia, the original manufacturers, have brought it back, now featuring recycled and recyclable materials.

Happy designing!