When it comes to collecting furniture, decorative objects and art, Gil Schafer and Courtnay Daniels can barely stop themselves.
Mr. Schafer, 63, a partner at Schafer Buccellato Architects, has spent a lifetime collecting antique furniture and contemporary art. “I’ve always been the English and American furniture guy,” he said.
Ms. Daniels, 56, an interior designer, sometimes prefers “wonkier things,” she said, including expressive Italian and Swedish furniture. Born in Columbia, S.C., she also has a longstanding interest in photography featuring artists and subjects from the South.
Both Mr. Schafer and Ms. Daniels are skilled at using their collected objects to compose distinctive interiors. But after marrying in 2018, they had to combine their sometimes divergent tastes into a cohesive home while renovating their apartment on the Upper East Side of New York.
Some of their favorite pieces landed in the entrance hall, where they are set off by waxed walls in a deep-green color Mr. Schafer likened to pond water.
“When you walk into an entrance hall, it should feel like the best of the people you’re going to visit,” Ms. Daniels said. “You get a sense of what you’re going to see in the rest of the home.”
They recently discussed a few favorite finds that bring them joy every day.
Easy Upgrade
Faux Quince Blossom Branches, $74 each at Afloral
A tall plant or a bunch of cut flowers can immediately improve the look of almost any room. But houseplants don’t always thrive, and continually replacing fresh flowers gets expensive.
“We used to have plants in here, but they all died, of course, because there’s not a window in sight,” Mr. Schafer said.
Eventually, they realized that using dried or faux branches in a vase could provide the same look with far less hassle. Artificial branches and flowers have “become so good that they look real,” Ms. Daniels said.
When choosing branches, bigger is usually better, Mr. Schafer added. “Go big, go bold,” he said. “People sometimes misunderstand scale and how important a large-scale thing can be in a space.”
That’s why 54-inch-tall branches from Afloral are a favorite. “If you took them away,” Mr. Schafer said, the room “would feel very empty.”
Splurge
Mirror by Eve Kaplan, from about $4,600 at Gerald Bland
One of the couple’s prized decorative objects is an artful mirror by the ceramicist Eve Kaplan. Her mirrors are typically made as custom commissions; Mr. Schafer and Ms. Daniels received theirs as a wedding gift.
“She creates pieces that reinterpret something old in a modern way,” Mr. Schafer said, which reflects the same dance between traditional and modern design that he and Ms. Daniels continually engage in. In this case, “it’s a ceramic starburst mirror, but then gilded,” he said, which recalls antique gilt convex mirrors.
“In a windowless space, having a little gilt and a little sparkle is a nice thing to reflect the light,” he said, “which I suppose is a very 18th-century idea as well.”
When you plan to splurge on a special object for a room, “you don’t have to go buy a chandelier” or other attention-grabbing item, Ms. Daniels said. “It’s nice to have a little jewel of a piece in a room,” which can be quietly discovered by guests.
One of a Kind
Photographs by Dawoud Bey, Stephen Daiter Gallery
Among the faux branches and antique furniture in the entrance hall is a pair of portraits. These photographs are part of Dawoud Bey’s 2012 series “The Birmingham Project,” which commemorated the 50th anniversary of a deadly bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963.
Such a statement might seem heavy for a home’s entrance hall, Ms. Daniels acknowledged, but as a collector of Southern photography, she believes all of the region’s history must be reflected.
“He took a child that was the same age as one of the children who died and a woman 50 years older and put them side by side, so you see the life that was lost and the life they would have lived if they had survived,” Ms. Daniels said, adding that Mr. Bey’s more recent work is currently being exhibited at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York.
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