At Home with Designers and Tastemakers | Susanna Salk and Stacey Bewkes
Intro: Welcome to the one and only interior design book podcast Decorating by the Book podcast hosted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
Susanna Salk: Hi, this is Susanna Salk and I'm with my design partner in crime as we like to say, we are style partners and video partners for the Quintessence At Home With series. And today we will be talking about our-
Stacey Bewkes: YouTube video series where we visit designers at home around the world and our latest book which focuses and was born out of the video series At Home With Designers and Tastemakers.
Suzy Chase: You are the creators of Quintessence At Home With, a video series on YouTube I love so much and I'm not alone. So a little background, Stacey, you originally had the blog called Quintessence. So talk a little bit about that and how did you and Susanna connect to create the video series?
Stacey Bewkes: Sure so the blog, I started in 2010, just as a creative outlet because like many of us, I was design-obsessed. My background was in art, I was an art director and I'd always loved interiors and art and architecture. And my husband was sick of hearing how much I loved this wallpaper and that piece of furniture. So I needed an outlet that didn't involve him. And I just started out of the blue and it grew organically. And then I started doing a few videos and I did one with is Dominique Browning, who was at that point, the editor-in-chief of House & Garden. And Susanna, who I guess read the blog and had worked at House & Garden with Dominique was already an author of many books and I met her at one of her book signings and she called me, I forget, I think later that day and said, "I love what you're doing with the video, would you be interested in partnering for something together?" And I said, "Sure." And it started immediately. And we've been locked at the hip ever since.
Susanna Salk: Just to semi-elaborate on that in the sense that I hadn't been scheming about this idea for the video series for many, many months or even weeks or even days. I met Stacey and then I literally, as I was driving home because the book signing was in my hometown of New Preston, I met her, of course I was already a fan of the blog. I might have already seen that she did that little video of my old boss, Dominique, as she said at House & Garden. But somehow it just all clicked together for me. I just had this kind of vision or idea, literally driving home where I thought if Stacey knows how indeed to do videos and between the two of us, we know so many designers already from her work on the blog and my work on House & Garden and Elle Decor before that, why don't we give design a voice?
Susanna Salk: Why don't we explore designers' own home? So people can hear how funny and fearless and smart these designers are in real life. Instead of just three flat, two-dimensional images in a magazine, let's move and groove through a house. And as she said, I called her and she so nicely said yes right away. It was almost like we knew we were already had done it before we were going to do it. And we made a list as we spoke of who we would ask, top 10 designers. And we split the list in two and 15 minutes later, we both texted back and said, "They all said yes." And I will say one of the reasons I think that the series is so successful, not just because people adore house tours, but we just committed to it 100% right away. And we were lucky enough to be able to give all our time to it.
Susanna Salk: And once we got a great response, we just said, "We better just keep going as fast as possible." And we worked together so well. One thing that's so invaluable about Stacey also is that I, as the Producer, when we walk into a house she's ready there with her pistol and her video camera. Now it's almost only the iPhone. I'm thinking, what shot should we get? What am I going to say? How are we doing this as the Producer and host? And she'll so often say to me, "Did you notice how that stairway leads up in that kind of curve? And that's wallpaper is from such and such British company." Her knowledge of design is so vast that I don't think she even understands how much she's given me over the years as a host, just in comments and her eye of seeing things that is really been of value to me.
Stacey Bewkes: Oh that's really nice.
Suzy Chase: I love that so much. What really struck me was how fast you two came up with this idea, it was just lightning fast.
Stacey Bewkes: It was.
Susanna Salk: Well that's why, yeah, we just knew we had to put the stake in the sand and just keep going before somebody got there before us, because I would say in six months we had done so many of the top designers. I think people feel so comfortable because they see Stacey with her camera, her little camera and me, it's just the two of us. They don't see this huge crew.
Stacey Bewkes: People can't believe that's the two of us. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you a cute story. One of our early videos was one of the shopping videos, which is how we started and then segued into At Home With, and we were shopping at the Cowtan & Tout showroom in New York with Mario Buatta and he had texted or emailed me ahead of the time. And he said, "Oh, they want me to sign a liability statement." I wrote him back and I said, “Mario, my camera fits in my purse."
Susanna Salk: And we'd even done Timothy Corrigan's chateau in two hours. We don't do a lot of takes if at all. So we can move very fast and it's very painless for people. I mean, they know that we'll be out of there in 90 minutes.
Stacey Bewkes: Yeah, and they say it's fun. People seem to enjoy the process with us.
Suzy Chase: One of my favorite episodes of the video series and chapters in the book is Pieter Estersohn in the Hudson Valley and his magnificent 19th century, Hudson Valley home. It makes me so happy. So Susanna, you talked with Peter about having a deep curiosity in life, which informs his interior design. It's such an interesting idea you bring up because that's what I love about you and Stacey is that you're all of us, you're every single one of us going into someone's home. Your curiosity is so evident in every single video. And I think that's what sets this apart.
Susanna Salk: Well, thank you. We usually pick houses that even if they aren't stylistically exactly how we would do something if we were lucky enough to be able to do it, but we always think, would we want to watch this? If we want to watch it, then we know others are going to too, even though everyone has different styles. But our curiosity is from both of us 100% from the moment we drive up the driveway. And particularly when we were in England shooting our dog book, Dogs and Their Designers in the English countryside, there were some major driveways there and we would always just almost practically hold hands and go, "Oh my God." We would just... This sense of finding-
Stacey Bewkes: Discovery.
Susanna Salk: -this house, discovery, driving up, it's a very shared curiosity and one feeds the other. And sometimes Stacey runs off into a room and she's curious about something. Sometimes I run off in the other direction and I'm curious about something. So I hope we represent different people's passions as it were.
Stacey Bewkes: But, and I'm so glad that you said that Suzy, because, well, first of all, you can imagine how intimidating that was for me shooting at Pieter's house, I mean, and he couldn't have been more kind or welcoming. And I also love what you said about... That Susanna and Peter discussed curiosity, because I think that is an incredible defining feature of people who are successful in design, number one, and what people love about the series. And what I also loved about Pieter is not only does he have incredible taste and is an incredible photographer, but he is a complete nerdy egghead. And I so totally loved that about him. He's so intellectually, not just curious, but well-informed. And I think that really showed.
Susanna Salk: Exactly it, it did really show and he's so committed to learning about his area, his old house. I mean, he was so committed into renovating and rejuvenating that house. I think almost everyone we've talked to, there's never a sense of taking anything that anybody has for granted. I mean, there's always a fresh curiosity that these designers have over of their homes.
Suzy Chase: I love when a guest says, "Susanna, you have to see this!" right when you walk in the door.
Susanna Salk: I know, they are really excited. I think they're very proud of all their work and as we all love to share.
Suzy Chase: On the other hand, I think you're a master interviewer and a master listener. It's very, very subtle, but I noticed you keep the conversation rolling along and in the right direction. It's really masterful.
Susanna Salk: Thank you. I often get so excited and I always want it to feel like conversations with friends so therefore sometimes our dialogue can overlap and people will criticize me. Why don't you let the guests talk the whole time? And I don't think they understand that the energy relies on the way we are all talking now, right? Sometimes I mean, Stacey and I have talked about this and it happens to me too, everyone is relaxed before the camera goes on. They have a million billion things to say and they say it perfectly. And we've learned, don't have them say things ahead of time because sometimes it's just a one time spontaneous thing, the way it is in real life. And if you plan it too much of "You talk, then I'll listen, then you say this," it just falls apart. You have to have that kind of spontaneous energy. And I have to keep kind of directing so that energy stays alive. And we have to think, is this person talking too long? Do we have enough coverage to show? Because Stacey has to go back and do all that editing work. It's a lot, people don't realize how much editing goes into it. It's not just one and done turn the camera on and that's it, what you see.
Stacey Bewkes: Susanna is so good on her feet, you don't realize how hard it is, what she does, but, and I'm so glad you appreciate that. It's not easy to make it both informative, fun, entertaining, informative... Oh, I said informative, and spontaneous.
Susanna Salk: Yeah, exactly, what you see is the one take, sometimes we've cut a little bit, but if you don't look at it like a conversation between friends, then it won't be as delightful as it turns out to be. So sometimes people feel like I might rush people or they wanted someone to talk longer. It is a kind of subtle art of what you're saying, listening and talking. So thank you so much, that's incredibly nice of you both to say that, it's everything that I try to do.
Suzy Chase: So moving on to the magnificent book, you took some of your favorite visits over the years and distilled them into images. Can you talk a little bit about that, Stacey?
Stacey Bewkes: Well, as Susanna said before, whenever we're shooting a video, I'm also taking still shots at the same time. I mean, not while I'm shooting video, but on the same visit. And I need them both to integrate into the video and for my blog post. But so many people told us in their comments while watching the videos that they on multiple occasions would pause the video to look at something, that we realized there was a book in here, so people could appreciate some of the details that go a little more quickly in the videos.
Suzy Chase: So in the introduction, Susanna, you wrote about how you get so much inspiration from each episode and you didn't expect to be inspired to make tweaks to your own home. For example, this very thing is on my own vision board for an eventual backsplash moment in my kitchen, it's Johnson Hartig's Schumacher blue and white Plates & Platters wallpaper on his backsplash. And I remember seeing that video and I thought, "Oh, that's so cute." And then he put it in his dining room and then I got this book and opened it up and you did the same thing.
Susanna Salk: I totally copied, I mean, that's the best thing about decorating-
Suzy Chase: I love it.
Susanna Salk: Yeah, it's the one place where you can really plagiarize and it's okay because my house doesn't look exactly like Johnson's house and I really copied it from his first house, if you recall, so we've done Johnson twice. We did his first house in LA and his second house a couple blocks away, which is in the book. In the first house, he just had come out with that fabulous Schumacher collection and he had pinned it behind his stove as a backslash.
Suzy Chase: And you touched it and you said, "Oh, it's pinned."
Susanna Salk: Yeah, he taped it up. And that is exactly what I did, I called Schumacher, I got a little roll of it. I had a little moment behind my stove, literally within a week I had totally copied it and done it behind my own stove.
Suzy Chase: It's darling and it's on the inside cover of this book.
Susanna Salk: Yes, it was our endpapers, how could we not have? Right, and then in his new house, he of course made a whole dining room of it.
Suzy Chase: And then he customized it I think.
Susanna Salk: I know it's crazy, then he, yeah, Stacey, then he sponge-painted around it.
Stacey Bewkes: Oh, I see what you're saying, yes, I thought you mean he customized the wallpaper. Yeah, no, he further enhanced it.
Susanna Salk: Yeah and I think he's going to then do more things too, he's going to put real plates and platters over it, he said he hasn't gotten around to it. See, that's what I mean about the designers always pushing it, doing more, refining it, editing it, having fun with it, right?
Stacey Bewkes: And that's one of the reasons why Timothy Corrigan keeps buying chateaus. He loves the process so much that he's continually buying one, and redoing it, he's on his third or fourth chateau now.
Susanna Salk: But he says this one's his last one.
Stacey Bewkes: Yes, he did say that.
Susanna Salk: I sort of believe him.
Suzy Chase: This book is so wonderful because it's perfect for a fan like me because I can take a slow, methodical look at a room, a certain fabric or how something is laid out along with the in-depth descriptions, which I love. It really highlights the fact that all these homes have a story and a meaning that you tie up so well in a beautiful bow. So some of the outstanding homes, although I love them all in this book, are, for example, Alexandra Champalimaud and the family compound. There was a summer camp when she bought it.
Susanna Salk: Yeah, an arts camp.
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh, can you talk a little bit about that?
Susanna Salk: I had seen the house, I think it was photographed in House & Garden when I worked there, that's a great sense of pride and excitement for me personally, to have seen that shoot years ago when I was a junior editor or marketing editor at House & Garden. And then I moved to the area years later and we have a video series with Stacey and I get to know Alexandra who is so delightful and then ask her and she tells us, "Yes, come film." And then seeing this wonderful arts camp. I mean, to me, the life that she has created with her husband, Bruce, who bought the camp and started renovating it before he met her, to me, has always embodied to me a dream life of generations of family gathering in the summers, different outbuildings, a huge main room that they've kept from the days when it was a theater where the grandchildren perform plays or play music. The kitchen still has the graffiti from the old campers on it. This kind of quiet, rambling elegance, not taking anything too seriously, but just everything to me that is good about life and important about life is embodied in that house.
Stacey Bewkes: Now Alexandra has done all sorts of work, but her primary work is luxury hotels. And it's amazing when you think of what her work is like and what her personal predilections are as she said in the video, I believe, "This is the real me." She-
Susanna Salk: And she said something like dirty is good or something, yes.
Suzy Chase: I'm also obsessed with Michael Trapp's home in Connecticut and all of his treasures and that pilot whale skeleton.
Stacey Bewkes: Is that not incredible?
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh, and his collection of plates from a shipwreck.
Susanna Salk: I never even thought before I met Michael about shipwrecks, that one could buy things from shipwrecks and display. Them everywhere you turn, this is from a shipwreck here, this was from shipwreck here. I mean, I just love that about him, that that's where his curiosity takes him, literally under the sea.
Suzy Chase: And Kate Brodsky out in the Hamptons with her joyous use of color and that 17 foot sofa.
Stacey Bewkes: Is that not amazing? And I love how she used to work at one point for Jeffrey Bilhuber, and I loved how she called him to double check on the proportions and to make sure it wasn't going to be too gargantuan. And he encouraged her to really make it big and comfy for the whole family.
Suzy Chase: When you think about it, just conceptually, you think, "What? That's going to look awful," but it looks fantastic.
Stacey Bewkes: I think you could say that about many things in her house. If you heard, "Oh, she's doing this or she's doing that," you'd think, "Really?" I mean, she is really, as Susanna loves to say, Kate is really rather fearless and is tempered by her sort of traditional background that she got from her mother. It's a really fantastic combination.
Susanna Salk: I mean, so much of what people should do is take the book and use it to be more fearless. People worry too much. And there's certainly so many examples where, yeah, if you said pink sofa that was the proportion of a car in a living room, you would think it was ridiculous. But of course, when someone takes the risk, the calculated risk and it looks great, you begin to understand how being fearless is very important.
Suzy Chase: So Susan and William Brinson, they're such a cute couple and their stunning DIY home, the enormous medallion on the living room ceiling and that Instagramable bathroom where you Susanna brought up a great point, which I am filing away about using old oriental rugs, little scraps of them in a bathroom.
Susanna Salk: I do it all the time. Once I saw that I started doing it.
Stacey Bewkes: Me too.
Susanna Salk: Yeah, you just get them on Etsy. You just go three by five and they don't even have to be expensive, you just... Yeah, it's the best, it looks great and they're so durable. I would also argue to use oriental little rugs in children's rooms, in nurseries because they're just very durable and they can live with the room long after crib days.
Stacey Bewkes: And they hide a multitude of sins.
Suzy Chase: So what's up next for Quintessence? Another book, HGTV, the big screen?
Susanna Salk: We're going to keep plugging along with what we do best, which is working together on our own. We have a lot of great visits planned coming up. Of course COVID curtailed a big European trip that we had planned that was so amazing. So our main goal is I would say in the fall to go back and get Timothy's finished chateau-
Stacey Bewkes: We're hoping.
Susanna Salk: And then some great videos in Paris, including his apartment hopefully, but we have a couple of great shoots coming up in New York, Ashley Stark being one of them. We also are going to Seattle to do Ted Kennedy Watson, a dear man and friend. He has a new book coming out and to see his home and his island home in Seattle. Oh and we were just in San Miguel, Mexico, shooting designer, Jeffry Weisman's amazing home. That's coming out shortly.
Stacey Bewkes: Yeah, you'll die when you see that.
Susanna Salk: You'll die.
Suzy Chase: So Susanna, I was at the main house book party, gosh, a few months ago and I saw you there and I was like, "Oh my God, Susanna Salk's here." So I was looking down at my phone to see where my Uber was and I saw you go get your coat, it was like next door outside. And I looked up and you were gone and I was going to-
Susanna Salk: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Suzy Chase: I was going to say hi.
Susanna Salk: You should have, next time promise me that you will.
Suzy Chase: So I'm so thrilled to chat with both of you.
Stacey Bewkes: Well, thank you. Thank you for having us.
Susanna Salk: Thank you for having us and thank you for your commitment and your passion for design and all things wonderful. I mean, doing what we do is only as good as people loving the series and loving our books and loving our work. So we do it so that we get the enthusiastic feedback, the way we feel about things. So thank you.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media and YouTube?
Stacey Bewkes: Well, YouTube is Quintessence. And then obviously I have my blog, which is quintessenceblog.com. And I am Quintessence on Instagram.
Susanna Salk: When we release a video on Quintessence A Home Tour, we do little trailers on both of our Instagrams and Stacey will post that video in full on her IG profile as well as to course on our channel. So if you subscribe and you just hit subscribe on YouTube, you'll always get an announcement that it's up or through our Instagrams and also on Facebook, we announce it too, and we post it on Facebook as well. Also on my website, I'm pretty sure on Stacey's too, but on susannasalk.com, you can click on video and every video is there as they come out. So all the videos are there and they're all of course on our YouTube channel.
Suzy Chase: To purchase At Home With Designers and Tastemakers, head on over to decoratingbythebook.com. And thank you so much, Stacey and Susanna, for coming on Decorating by the Book podcast.
Stacey Bewkes: Thank you, Suzy.
Susanna Salk: Thank you so much, Suzy, was an honor and a true pleasure.
Outro: Follow Decorating By The Book on Instagram. And thanks for listening to the one and only interior design book podcast, Decorating by the Book.
