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| Cristina in her showroom. |
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Cristina Grajales is passionate about her work as a furniture dealer and builder of furniture collections. She frequently talks in verbal italics: things are beautiful, amaaazing and she’s mad about colonial Portuguese furniture. It is very endearing and her pieces are just as appealing. She has a truly wonderful eye, one of those rare people who can mix IKEA and Donald Judd, together with some hand-woven textiles from Colombia made entirely out of copper thread, and then put it all into a room in combinations that do not in any way look studied. She credits her upbringing in Colombia by her creative mother for much of her inspiration. She says that Latin America is the part of the world that still deeply resonates with her, the mix of the raw and the sophisticated, that draws her eye to any piece she wants to acquire or designer she represents.
There seems to be one defining characteristic of your taste and that is that the piece has to have some kind of tactile appeal …
It is yes, I really respond to craftsmanship. I just got these stools from a Paraguayan architect that wants me to represent me. It’s a very interesting piece. He designed this very simple little stool, and you can also use it as a table, and then he sent it to one of the most primitive tribes in Paraguay and had it hand-carved as a tattoo. Call me crazy but I think it’s kind of beautiful! I love the fact that the carving is not perfect.
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| Exhibition of works by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne. |
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| Midsummer Night’s Dream Coffee Table, Bronze, lacquer, and glass by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne. |
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Above: Tea Cart, Mohagany and bronze, by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne.
Left: Figure Coffee Table, bronze and glass, by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne. |
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| Exhibition of works by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne. |
Ten Bulb Mounted Light, sculpted bronze, by Paul Evans. |
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Left: Reclining Figure Coffee Table and Metamorphosis Coffee Table, bronze, both by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne.
Below: Etruscan Dining Table, Excursion Coffee Table, and Eros Side Table, all bronze, all by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne. |
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How do you make a decision?
Instinct.
I read that you call yourself a ‘decorative arts consultant’. Do you still call yourself that?
Sandy Hill actually gave me that title because Sandy was the first one to hire me. I tell Sandy that she ‘discovered’ me. She called me one day out of the blue and said, Christina I just bought a house, 4000 square feet out in California—build me a collection. It was amaaaazing! We were able to do themes from Nakashima to some of the greatest Navajo pieces. Look at my Portuguese colonial piece, [an elaborate commode], it’s 18th century … I bought the first one for Sandy. I’m mad about it! |
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| Piano Shelf, Rauli wood, by Sebastian Errazuriz. |
Le Femme Coffee Table, bronze, by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne.
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| Marble Table, bronze and marble, by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne. |
Manzu Table, and Midsummer Night’s Dream Coffee Table, both bronze, both by Philip & Kelvin LaVerne. |
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| Crystal-and-iron lights by Christophe Côme. |
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You grew up in Colombia. What was your house like?
I guess when people say, How did you get your inspiration, and you don’t think about it … well a couple of years ago I was having dinner with a friend of mine and I started talking about my house, the beautiful hand-painted murals we had that represented the area where I come from, which is the coffee region.
And my mother was very creative, so the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the furniture I grew up with was very Spanish, very kind of severe-looking, but beautiful, high-backed, very elegant, dark. And then these rather naïve paintings [the murals] – and then it hit me! It hit me that my mother was a great influence! |
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| Back office of Cristina Grajales Inc. |
| Cristina’s dog Billy’s bed and stuffed animal. |
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| Another view of the office. |
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| Cristina’s dog Billy taking a nap. |
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You’re very well known for spending, I have the figure here, 3.824 million dollars at auction on a [1948] Carlo Mollino trestle table. Was it worth it?! [The sale took place in 2005]
Yes.
It must have been a moment in the sales of mid-century modern furniture that suddenly amped up the whole level of interest.
It was a very special moment because the moment that we paid that amount of money for the table, it wasn’t just for mid-century it was for 20th century design. That moment probably will go down in history as the moment that the glass ceiling was broken for design. It was the moment when suddenly everybody started paying attention. I wasn’t the only person who wanted that table. I had to fight for that table.
What’s going to happen to antiques in the light of this re-evaluation of modern furniture?
I think they need to be re-discovered. |
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| The back office. |
Textiles by Hechizoo. |
Above: The sitting area in the back office.
Right: Mirror, crystal-and-iron, by Christophe Côme. |
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| Another view of the back office of Christina’s gallery. |
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So you’re not an interior designer. Would you say that you build furniture collections? And then you will also put them into rooms? I know that isn’t exactly interior design, but what makes it different?
Well, I think I work backwards. I work from the furniture. Maybe it is interior design but I’m not trained in design, I’m not an architect. I’m really a furniture dealer.
What do you do when you’re not working? Do you go to your new, and amazing, country house?
I hate to say it but it is my new obsession. My house is spectacular! It was just finished last June. It has become an architectural jewel. It’s in Salt Point, Dutchess County. The house is a plywood box and it is covered in perforated metal screens, that are industrial. I did the interiors of the house. It really is an incredible house. Basically every single magazine around the world wants to publish it. We just got an architecture award from the New York Chapter of Architecture.
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| Sets of bookcases in the back office. |
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| View from the office of a building with iron shutters (one of the few left in all of Manhattan). |
| A vintage typewriter. |
A portrait of Cristina’s family. |
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But what do you do when you’re there – other than think that it is beautiful?
What do I do? I look at my birds. I have a new obsession—my birds. I put four bird feeders [out].
What kinds of birds do you see?
We have about five different types of woodpeckers. There was one day when I saw 15 different types of birds. Somebody said to me, If you like the birds so much, you need to get them a little pool. And I thought, Where the hell do you buy a pool for birds? And the friend said, do not buy the ones in metal because they cannot stand. It’s slippery and the poor little birds, they hate them. So, coming out of my building [in New York] in the trash, I found my pool. A fountain with a lion! They love it! So I put the lion next to this architecture, and my birds love it!
Do you like gardening?
I call it editing. I love to edit my garden. I’m not planting anything because we have such a beautiful piece of land and I want to keep it natural, so I call it editing, moving some rocks here and there, cutting branches that are in your way. That’s all I do.
— Sian Ballen and Lesley Hauge; photographs by Jeffrey Hirsch |
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