Love How You Live | Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg

Suzy Chase: When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, Cookery by the Book and Decorating by the Book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and homecook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.

Rodman & Rudy: Hi, I'm Rodman Primack. And I'm Rudy Weissenberg. And we have a new book called Love How You Live. It was published by Phaidon and and it came out just this fall and we are thrilled to be conversing with you.

Suzy Chase: Today on the show. It's all about adventures in interior design. The very first line in the forward is “I never made this connection.” Rudy Weissenberg said to Rodman Primack, his partner of more than two decades. “We both spent a lot of time in those houses and they were like safe havens.” Primack didn't skip a beat. “Oh, I think about it all the time”, he said. And could you just dive a little deeper into homes as safe havens because it's something that I think about all the time.

Rodman & Rudy: I think all of us are looking in our lives are looking for safety. I think that that's just like a basic human desire is to find safety and that can look like a lot of different things. And I think when you live in a place like the United States where we have access to a lot of things that can become something really big or something really small or there's just a lot of privilege inherent in being American. And I think that the desire to find a space that you feel really comfortable in is possible because we've got so much possibility and so much privilege.

I think that even there was a pandemic a couple years ago that was that it was this huge highlight of how important home is, and I think it became augmented and I think we saw an uptick in design and furniture. And home is not just about that. It's not just the superficial inclusion of certain design elements, it's really about how it makes you feel. And I think if you can arrive at a place of feeling safety, and I think that includes a balance, right? Safety is balance, it's feeling okay, it's feeling in your mental health and your own health and personal space and whatnot. If you achieve that, that's great. I grew up in Guatemala during the war and safety was something that we were always seeking, and I remember that it was really scary. You never knew what you were going to see on the street and coming home was a big deal because it meant real true safety. And so I think for us, no matter what happens, just finding an abode where you can come and take a breath and recharge is something that we want to always achieve.

And I think also as interior designers and decorators and living in this world, we can get a lot lost a little bit in thinking about the look of stuff and how important it is that something looks a particular way. And I really don't think it's so much about how it looks as how much it feels. And then sort of what I was trying to get to earlier about, and I sort of wasn't so clean about it, was just figuring out and being cognizant and aware of the fact that all of the flourishes and decorativeness and blah, blah, blah, all of that's really important. But fundamentally, there's something really basic about what really makes you feel rooted and at home and in your space and that you get to come in and take off your coat and a hundred percent be yourself in that spot and how wonderful it is that we are able to do that and how wonderful it's that we are able to help people hopefully do that in their houses, that that's part of why we get to do this work with people.

Suzy Chase: It's so funny. I grew up in a really chaotic home, a lot of mental illness, and I have my couch that I grew up with, so I feel like I'm giving this sofa a new life, a calm life, and I've made my home here in the West Village calm, unlike what I grew up with.

Rodman & Rudy: I think it's something, mental health is something we never spoke about in the past, but I think so many things are reflected on how people live. If you have a very chaotic home, I think it's a reflection of how your brain is working or not. So getting to the nitty gritty of how someone wants to live, how do you accomplish that? And actually also thinking about how do you use your home? How do you go about your day and your space? Because some people nowadays, people build in the massive kitchens and they don't cook. So why if you entertain and you don't cook, build a bigger, larger living room and make a smaller kitchen.

Rodman & Rudy: I think both of us are sort of against what's happened a lot recently, which is this kind of performative luxury or performative like, oh, you've got to have this, as Rudy says, this huge kitchen. When you don't cook, don't figure out what it is that really makes you happy and what drives your life. How do you really want to spend time in that space? What does that space really need to do for you? And let's not think so much about how that's going to translate into a magazine or to how your friends are going to feel about your house or how someone else is going to make an opinion

Rodman & Rudy: About it. I think for me, my dream would be to eventually have a bathing room, your dream spaces. I think I've been to places where people have this very zen-like bathing room, which is completely apart. It's not a bathroom, it's literally a quiet space where you can go take

Rodman & Rudy: A bath. I grew up with a bathing room. You did? Yeah. My grandparents and my grandparents' house, which we talk all the time about our grandparents. My grandparents built this really one of three Japanese houses that they built. I grew up in the last of that house, the last of those houses, which was finished in 1971. My sister and I had a bathing room that was this all tiled room, had a big open shower and a big deep tub. It was amazing and a terrace off of it that was filled with orchids that my grandfather propagated and collected. And so we had that bathing room.

Suzy Chase: You have so much in common.

Rodman & Rudy: Well, we were raised by very similar mothers and grandmothers. So it's just interesting that I think they were of a time, and it kind of translates to the universality of how they saw the world, I think with post-war and then the children of people that lived through the war. I don't know. I think there's a lot of things that were universal, universal themes

Suzy Chase: In the book you write, the idea is never to impose a preconceived visual idea on others, but rather to lead them to their own language for living. Can you chat about that?

Rodman & Rudy: It's really exciting for us when we get to collaborate with people that some have a lot of experience building homes for some others is the first time they do something like this. But to take the time to really go through how they live and how they envision the new projects. Usually someone that now they have the privilege of affording maybe a larger home or in a different location or a different format. So for us, it's really exciting to sit down and kind of go through the day to day on how they live their lives.

Rodman & Rudy: And I would also say that I sort of was saying it earlier, and I think it comes through in the book, it's much less about a particular style or a particular vision of decorating. And so often we connect with people that are interested in collecting contemporary art or collecting furniture or collecting something. And that leads us, I think, to creating an environment that speaks to that desire to collect and to surround themselves with objects that they love. And so start gaining value not just because of what the market says they're worth, but because they start having history and stories behind them. So even if you buy something at auction, that auction where we were fighting so hard for that chair and we were able to find it and it matches perfectly and is the right size, and then we have to send it to get repaired and then it shows up. There's so much love and story behind that chair that it starts becoming part of the history of the house. And people get really excited about having that connection with the object.

And I totally, and I think we both agree that we are attracted to so many different kinds of interiors and so many different ways that people are living, but it's more about like, oh, that feels super authentic and real more than like, oh, they have the best taste. Of course, you can look at someone's a Deeda Blair's living room be like, oh, that's just so pretty and perfect and amazing and she has impeccable taste, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. Who cares? Why do we care so much about taste as opposed to just really being in love with objects and beauty and sort of something that, I don't know, I just don't like the judgment behind this idea that I'm an arbiter and you are not. I think in ways I have a lot of knowledge and we've both been working in this for so long and we can bring our knowledge and experience to it, but I don't think it's so much about looking at someone and being like, oh, that's just gross. You don't know. No, come on. Let's have more adventure and have more confidence in that adventure than something that's super binary

Rodman & Rudy: And push it a little. Let's go in different directions. Let's figure out what we can do.

Suzy Chase: I feel like you're more about getting to the heart of the person.

Rodman & Rudy: Totally, yes. That's when we feel, I think that's what we, so yes, we have these new clients on the west coast and they came to us and it was very funny. The wife said, you're so cool. And then I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. She's this incredibly successful person in tech. And I'm like, you are the coolest person. She's so spot on and within six months and so nice and so nice. And within six months, both of 'em are becoming furniture experts. And we are so excited to have these very deep conversations with them about periods and seeing how their taste is developing or they're honing in on their tastes just because we're seeing a lot of things together and that's why we call it an adventure because we are going on this adventure together and it's very different. They're interestingly leaning into Milan from the forties and fifties, whereas other clients start leaning into big serve from the seventies. And we love both. I think to Ram's point, it's all valid and it's all great. And for us it's also a process. No one knows everything. So it's a process of educating ourselves

Rodman & Rudy: And them and sort of going on that together. And we got an email the other day from the husband of the San Francisco West Coast client, and he said something like, you guys, I think I'm really recognizing that I like Ponty from the forties, not from the fifties. And Rudy and I were like, high five. That's just like this done amazing. We achieved something. That's an amazing thing. How wonderful is that? And to feel, and now the auctions come out and he's emailing us the day, the auction's online, and we're like, wait, we have three weeks. We haven't even gotten there and we're already on his list. Look at this, look at that. And that to me is like, oh, that's the goal. They've connected. They're going on an adventure. We're going on an adventure. And you can

Rodman & Rudy: Raise a past to understand sort of decorative arts history, why it happens, and then how we can change it just because I feel like it used to be very stiff like 50 years ago, interior design was very stiff because people lived stiffer lives. It was a very different lifestyle. People that had the privilege of being able to live like this. Now it's changing, right? People want to be slightly more informal and what does that mean in the open plan kitchen and how does that impact the rest of the house? So these are conversations that we enjoy having.

Suzy Chase: Talk a little bit about how this book is organized.

Rodman & Rudy: We were approached by Phaidon and Monacelli to come up with a proposal, and Rodman and I thought long and hard about what we wanted to put out because there's so many design books that we wanted to do something that was deeply personal. We've lived in many homes since we met, and it's not by design, but it is just funny how every four to five years we end up moving locations, geography from New York to London to LA to Mexico, and every time building a home that is ours has been very important. And so we thought we wanted to include our projects, and then of course we wanted to bring forth the projects that have been we've done for clients. And so there's a back and forth. I would say to Rudy's point that moving all the time has also I think helped us hone in on certain things that then we've brought into projects. And I think what we've wanted to be able to show this kind of dialogue between the way that we live and the way that clients are living and how we're influencing each other, it's sort of what we speak

And then as opposed to English country houses is very different than see in Hawaiian homes, right?

Suzy Chase: Yes.

Rodman & Rudy: But somehow they speak to each other, but they speak to each other. And it's very lucky that we've been able to spend time in both places. So then we thought, we have clients' homes, our homes we're like, let's not make it that formal, not so let's just go back and forth between our homes and clients' homes. And then part of our practice of what's very important to us is to commission work and work with makers, artists, designers, and commission big projects. And so we thought we also need to celebrate some of the people we've worked with because their artistry, their craft is so important that we wouldn't be able to do what we do without them. And so part of our journey and part of our adventures is always to find those people, right? All those creatives around the world that help us execute projects. And so we thought, why don't we also feature 14 of these incredible talented creatives we've worked with throughout the years? And if we had we been given a higher page allowance, we could have kept going. There are so many more people out there that we have worked with and that we love. We're ready for the second and third book. Keep buying the book, keep buying the book. We need to do another one. And we also wanted to share that. We wanted to be able to share those resources and to have other people get excited about being able to make something with our embroider in Guatemala. She's an amazing embroider. We give her a lot of work, but we, she's also organized her town and a bunch of women in her town to do embroidery with her and they could take more work. So there's this opportunity with the book to shine lights on those people and hopefully get them more work.

Suzy Chase: Now that's Irma Bajan.

Rodman & Rudy: Yes.

Suzy Chase: Is that who it is now? How did you find her?

Rodman & Rudy: There's a lovely lady that has had a shop in Antigua, Guatemala. We'll just start with Rudy's from Guatemala. And so we've spent a lot of time in Guatemala over the last 27 years that we have been together. So Guatemalan craft and Guatemalan makers has been part of our projects from the beginning. We started making textiles there and we started doing things there very early on. And there was a shop, there is this beautiful shop in anti woke, which is a beautiful colonial capital that has the most beautiful linens and things for home that have been embroidered. And I kept buying them. And then finally the lady that owned the store, I went to her and I said, I want to embroider yardage like tons, yards and yards and yards of fabric. And she said, okay, let me just introduce you to Irma, who's one of my embroiders who're selling here, and I think she could do this project for you.

And so it was just like, again, the kind of generosity of someone sharing, of sharing. And it didn't go through her shop. I didn't pay her. And she paid Irma. She just said, let's meet Irma and Irma's from a village outside of Antigua. And so she organized that Irma would come into town and we would meet at the shop and start working on this project together. And now that was 10 years ago at least. And now we go directly to Irma. We go to her village. We do these things, we make things together. She still makes things for the shop called in Antigua, and she makes things for me.

Suzy Chase: You probably changed her life, don't you think?

Rodman & Rudy: Well, I'll tell you something. She is a woman that has ended up, she has children, she has her own daughters, but through circumstances she's ended up being the custodian of the daughters of her sister who were kind of babies. And at the time that we started working with her, she was really struggling to make ends meet very much struggling. And I think we really have been able to help her provide for that entire family. And we went to photograph her at the house and she showed us the addition that she'd recently made and all these different lifestyle improvements that have been a direct result of being able to do that work. And we just, I think, love having those relationships and love being able to continue having those relationships that it's not just very infrequently do we do a one-off collaboration. It's usually the start of a really long-term relationship.

Rodman & Rudy: And it's interesting, I'm sure that you're seeing how the handmade in crafts are making a big comeback in psyche of people. I think it's because we're going so heavy into technology and now everyone's afraid of ai, which I hope is yet another great tool. But I think the counterbalance is how do we make something deeply personal? Knowing who it is, who touched it and how it was done is something that right now I think is also a trope that is coming up that people are finding worth supporting.

Suzy Chase: I love it. And yeah, I can't tell you how many huge interior designers I've heard talk about how they saw this in India and now they're making it here gets me going

Rodman & Rudy: And I totally get it. And the other day I was with our friend Chiarastella Cattana, who's also in the book. We both happened to be in LA and we were chatting about stuff and she's been making textiles and linens on her own and for us and with us also for 15 years. And I only noticed the other day that she had named a blanket after one of our projects. And I hadn't even noticed that that blanket that we love and that another friend had bought and it has in her shop is actually a blanket that she named for us. And I had never noticed. She'd never pointed it out, and it just made me feel so great. That's so nice. Moments that are so special.

Suzy Chase: So there are two homes featured in the book in Kentucky, which I thought was really interesting. Cherokee Triangle and Indian Bean. What is the connection to Kentucky?

Rodman & Rudy: Well, the connection to Kentucky is that neither Rudy nor I have any sort of family or historical connection with Kentucky, but we do have one of our favorite clients that we have been working with now for 15 or 16 years for a long time. And both of those Kentucky projects are for the same family. And another project in the book is for that family. And we're about to embark on a fourth project with that family. And that says a bunch of things. One, how much we love to continue to work with the same family and continue to develop that relationship. And that is something that's been consistent in our practice from the beginning that we kind of just keep going because that relationship is so much fun. But to the Kentucky part, I was introduced to them by our very good friend, Peter Dunham, who's another decorator who was good friends with the family. And they had said that they wanted a decorator and they wanted someone that was really interested in art to work with them. And so Peter said, I think you're the right person to work with them. And that has proved to be true because we've been working with them for so long. And we started with one project and then the other project and in the process totally fell in love with Louisville and with Kentucky and with the people that we met there. And it's created a whole kind of vein in our life through Kentucky and

Rodman & Rudy: Also thinking about urban development, pride of city where you're from, placemaking, people from Louisville are so proud of being from Louisville, this idea of secondary cities. We can meet people in major capitals of the world that are so affected about everything.

Rodman & Rudy: Someone said to Rudy the other day that he finds New York so provincial,

Rodman & Rudy: And I was laughing and I'm like, because if you find me your provincial, you're toast. Yes. But we get to Louisville, we meet all these incredible people, creatives, business people, we even met the mayor. And you realize that secondary cities in scale, I don't mean it in a derogatory term, all these American cities have incredible pride in who they are and they know their history and their main street is something that they're even taking back or has always been a great point of interest. And so when you get embedded in these communities, you really go deep, you really get to meet a lot of stakeholders and you get to learn that about the cities. And so we were thrilled. We love going back to Louisville all the time. We really enjoy it.

Rodman & Rudy: And I think in general, it's sort of changed our perspective about these whatever secondary or third tier cities and what they're doing and what they have today. There's awesome food scenes and there's local craft and there's history and it's so fun to actually learn about that. Fundamentally, we love ham and there's such good ham in Kentucky, that was a big thing. But have you been to Kentucky? Have you been to Louisville before?

Suzy Chase: No, I've never been to Louisville.

Rodman & Rudy: There's a Brown-Forman. They decided, do we go to a bigger city or do we invest in our civic infrastructure? And they decided to stay. And they have all these incredible buildings from the 20th century. And so it's just a delight. And of course there's a Kentucky Derby, which we've been to a couple of times. And

Rodman & Rudy: I have to say, it's probably the most fun you can ever have in America, the Kentucky Derby. It's, that's a huge statement. There's a lot of conversations in context.

Rodman & Rudy: It's the Burning Man for the mint julep set.

Suzy Chase: That brings me to this quote, Rodman that you wrote in the book. I'm a born flâneur. So this process often involves long strolls through surrounding streets, allowing me to absorb the character of a neighborhood district or city. I can't understate the importance of looking beyond a project's immediate four walls. I found that to be such an evocative statement, and that's exactly what you were just talking about with Louisville.

Rodman & Rudy: I just can't even approach a project without understanding context. The idea that a project is dropped from a UFO and land somewhere is just so crazy. There's so much information to be gathered about the quality of light, about the smells, about if you live in a neighborhood that has trees that bloom, that smell amazing, then we've got to figure out how to get outdoor space so that during that time of year, you're outside smelling those trees, enjoying that light. Do you know what I mean? It's just so important. And then if you're a few blocks away from great bakeries and blah blah, that should inform what we think about. All of those things should go into the recipe of what we're creating together. And to bring it back to Louisville, that house, the Cherokee Roadhouse is just off kind of a high street where there's a pie shop and a great old restaurant that everybody in Louisville goes to that's like their clubhouse. And down the street there's some kind of rougher parts of the neighborhood. All of that came into our thinking and about the storytelling that we wanted to tell about this amazing kind of Adams family esque old grand dam of a house on a corner that's a block away from almost what's kind of like a college street like there's kebab shops and blah, blah, blah. They love that neighborhood so much that the new project we're looking at is like two blocks away, a smaller house for next version of their life, but still in that neighborhood. And so that's just important. Or if you're in California, if you're in Ojai, for example, Ojai is so sensual in terms of the temperature and the light changes throughout the day

Rodman & Rudy: And the smell. So the beauty, oranges,

Rodman & Rudy: Yeah, the oranges and the sages and lavenders and all of that has to be able to come into the house. So you've got to really figure out how to make that possible.

Suzy Chase: So Rudy, together, you and Rodman have owned two homes here in New York City, one on 10th Street and one on ninth street, I think that's correct.

Rodman & Rudy: That's correct. We also lived, when we met originally I lived on 76 on the west side in and 76 on the east side. But that's a long time ago. And then yes, we were both, when we returned from London, we returned to ninth Street, ninth, and then to 10th.

Suzy Chase: I'd love to first hear about your place on 10th Street and you say in 2014 you felt ready to tackle New York City again emotionally and physically. So how come

Rodman & Rudy: New York for me is where I became an adult, and it's such a special place because anyone can be a New Yorker, anything and everything in New York that you can find and you can have any life you want. When you explain to people that don't live in New York that you can have a very quiet afternoon at home, it's hard for them to understand that New York is not just what you see in the movies. New York is a very inspiring place. It's filled with culture. Robin and I always say we're like squirrels of museums and galleries, and so what a better place to see all of that. And I just wanted that energy back. It makes me feel, weirdly, I feel very balanced and in touch. Someone said it's because, I dunno if this is true, there's a lot of iron in New York, it's bedrock and I'm a Virgo and someone said that there's a connection between my sun sign and

Rodman & Rudy: I dunno, oh, you can fully edit that part out. You can, I dunno. You can edit. It's so

Suzy Chase: Woo woo.

Rodman & Rudy: It's, but New York is just a place where there's always exciting opportunities around the corner, but you never know what you're going to learn that day

Suzy Chase: Or who you're going to meet

Rodman & Rudy: Or who you're going to meet. And just being in the subway is so exciting to see the new fashions and then you hear new words and I don't know, it's just very, for me, it's super exciting and lives collide because it's such so small Manhattan and even including Burg and Queen, lives do collide in ways that they don't in other big cities. If you're in Beverly Hills, you're never going to go. You rarely go downtown. But in New York they do. People go up and down and across.

Rodman & Rudy: Okay. And I would say that because the beginning of your question was that sentence that I wrote about being prepared to tackle New York. And I'll say really clearly and honestly, we had lived in London and London was like the dream of my life. I grew up being believing and truly thinking that I was like a misplaced Englishman within my family, within my Jewish Quaker family that somehow I had been dropped off by the British or family and all I needed to do was to get back to my home country. And so finally we moved to London and it was like a dream come true for me. And then we were there for a number of years and we loved it so much. And then the auction house I worked for and was partners and we sold it. And as part of that sale, I needed to move back to New York. They wanted me to be in New York for a couple of years. And Rudy was kind of ready to come back to New York and I was not ready. I really was not ready to come back. I thought I was going to be in London and in Europe for the rest of my life. That was just the place and I was sort of done. So that first apartment on ninth street was really just recreating a little sliver because we had a huge apartment in London. We had a little apartment, a little ninth street apartment

And a brownstone on ninth street. And I think you can see it in the pictures. And if you look at the London House, you can see I'm just kind of trying to keep that London house alive. And then when moved to 10th Street, I just was in a totally different mental space and was ready to just do a real New York apartment and not still kind of try to live in this London apartment. And it reflects that shift. And I'll also say Rudy definitively is one of those people that moved to New York and became a New Yorker. And I am still a Californian. I'm still just a Californian loving New York City, but I'm definitely still from Los Angeles. So

Suzy Chase: Funny. I wonder what the difference is?

Rodman & Rudy: He thinks that tomorrow is going to be better and everything's going to sort itself out. For me, there's a lot of angst.

Rodman & Rudy: Rudy wakes up under a cloud, which I think is appropriate for New York City up so

Suzy Chase: Appropriate

Rodman & Rudy: Up with a ray of sunshine. I'm just bathed in sunshine. I have to rebuild every day. Everything's

Suzy Chase: Going to be okay. That's New York. No, it's not.

Rodman & Rudy: No, it's not. I mean, New York is the place of opportunity. It's just

Suzy Chase: Love it

Rodman & Rudy: There's a type of meditation, you'll find it in New York and you type yoga there's in New York, if anything related to fashion, it's there anything related to art. It's there. I mean it's just so exciting in thriving. And you can go at any pace you want. And that's what's so great.

Suzy Chase: You started your gallery Ago Projects to work with contemporary designers and to be working for the advancement of new things. I love that. Talk a little bit about your gallery.

Rodman & Rudy: Rodman was running Design Miami and I was just finishing my second graduate degree in art in public space. And I wanted to tackle on something, but something that hopefully created a conversation. I was ready to come back to Latin America. We've both loved Mexico and worked in Mexico for over 25 years. And so both of us really wanted to be here and support voices that weren't really being looked at or were overlooked by the design world at large. And so we came here and started meeting with people and asking people and doing research on who was doing what. And we started a little program and we launched a gallery. Our first huge show opened February 15th, 2020. So we shut down with

Suzy Chase: Perfect.

Rodman & Rudy: But yes, we're creating a community of designers and makers and it's been five years and we attend international affairs and we do popups all over. And it's really exciting.

Rodman & Rudy: And I can't believe that I was in the design world first at Phillips and then as the director of Design Miami and knew exactly how hard the gallery life was and I worked for.

Suzy Chase: And you jumped back into it

Rodman & Rudy: And I was like, yeah, we should do this.

Suzy Chase: Great idea. February, 2020,

Rodman & Rudy: Everything, it kind of inspires and feeds each other. So being able to do projects with young designers and not necessarily young by years, but young in practice let's say. And in some cases, in many cases, do their first solo exhibitions, help them figure out real production for the first time. Doing all of those things, I think really allows us to also think about how to bring some of that inventiveness into our projects and into the other things that we're doing. So it's like an engine, it feeds itself.

Suzy Chase: So there's this photo in the book and it looks like a corner eating nook in a kitchen, but the wall seems to be like delft or wedgewood looking blue and white tile. And then it extends to the built-in bench that extends to the chairs. And I'm so curious about this room.

Rodman & Rudy: So it's kind of a trick of the book a little bit because it's two spaces next to each other. It's a breakfast room. Yeah, it's a breakfast room and the kitchen next to it, and there is in the kitchen. We collected antique detfh tiles for a couple years on auctions and things like that. And we also commissioned some contemporary ones to mix in there with portraits of dogs and important people in the client's lives. So there's that, and that's sort of throughout the kitchen. And then next to it is this breakfast room and it all opens onto a beautiful patio and then orange groves and all that bounty of California that we were talking about before. It's a good example of what I think we do best, which is to kind of mix old and new and passions of clients because this client who was our first client and now our latest client, because that Ojai project is the first project in the book, the one that we just completed and is related to the fact that they were the first people that hired me.

And I left Larry Gagosian to do their house in Hancock Park. And in that house we commissioned David Wiseman, who's very well known person in the art and design world today, and Scott Calhoun and a number of young artists. And that was how we started the practice with commissioning. And then in that kitchen, we're combining all these different antique tiles from all different places with tiles that we commissioned from a young artist called Aveva Halter. And it's just kind of a great spot, but it is kind of a trick of the book that makes it all feel like it's continuous, but it's not really

Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called The Perfect Bite where I ask you to describe your perfect bite of a favorite dish, and either of you can go first.

Rodman & Rudy: I'll go first because I'm always thinking about food. I love Vietnamese food so much. I love all foods, so many different foods, but I love Vietnamese food because it mixes salty, sweet, sli, crispy herbal vinegar, sweet, salty. All of those things can all exist in one bite of a salad with sliced beef and peanuts and rice noodles and mint and lime. That is my ideal. I just love that all of those things can somehow coexist in one bite.

Rodman & Rudy: I think my Italian grandmother really set the tone for me. We know Ruthie Rogers from the River Cafe, one of the most inventive and generous spirited humans ever, and going to the River Cafe in a city that can be slightly uptight. It's so casual and wonderful. And you look at the river, which you rarely do, she makes a crab pasta that is to die for. And then at the end you have a little blood orange gelato and you're done for weeks. That's the best.

Rodman & Rudy: That blood orange sorbet is the most amazing thing.

Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Rodman & Rudy: On the web? We're a ago-projects.com and our interiors practice is ago -interiors.com and online, we're at Instagram, of course, at Ago Projects and Ago Interiors.

Rodman & Rudy: And individually at Rodman Primack on Instagram and

Rodman & Rudy: My Instagram personality, Rudster.

Suzy Chase: Well, what a life and what a book. Thanks so much, Rodman. Rudy for coming on Dinner Party podcast.

Rodman & Rudy: Thank you. Thank you Suzy

Suzy Chase: Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzy chase.substack.com. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the Book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.