Merchandise Mart • 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Suite 163
Ground floor in the Design Resource Center
212-595-0900 • MFPNY.com • New York • Chicago • New Jersey
Architizer News
Shop LuxeHome, Where You’ll Find All The Design You Could Ask For
While most architects profess to being purists, either Miesian minimalists or one-off trendsetters, the reality is that most shoppers are for the most part—gasp—wildly eclectic in their tastes. Enter LuxeHome, an enfilade of showrooms in Chicago’s famed design center, the Merchandise Mart. Here, designers and shoppers alike can weave in and out of stores offering products as varied as high-end appliances to antique furnishings, stone tiles to sustainable carpets. Continue.
Old Word stone, terra cotta and wood make give even the newest homes a
welcome warmth.
LuxeHome’s success as a one-stop shopping venue means it is always expanding and adding more showrooms to its boutique roster. Two new shops offer products with a history. Exquisite Surfaces, founded in 1997 by the Nataf Family, meticulously selects antique salvaged materials and creates unique hand-crafted products that stand outside of time. The store launched on the West Coast and now has showrooms in Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Laguna Niguel in California as well as New York, Greenwich, CT on the East Coast. And now Midwesterners can shop in their new Chicago showroom.
Wood salvaged from the Coney Island Boardwalk now lives in some of the finest homes and establishments.
Exquisite Surfaces offerings include antique and aged French oak, antique and reproduction limestone fireplaces, Provencal fountains, garden elements, antique Jerusalem stone, salvaged roof tiles, antique Tunisian tiles, decorative ceramic tile collections from France, Spain, Italy and North Africa and more. While they may source historic materials, many designers and homeowners incorporate them into contemporary architecture and interiors. The fabric of Old World stone, wood and ceramic tile can lend a patina and texture that appeals to the most staunch modernist equally.
Buyers for Exquisite Surfaces are constantly searching for unique materials, traveling throughout the world, and meeting local artisans. They recently added a collection of hand-crafted tiles from Sicily and a line of antique cement tiles from Belgium. It is worth the trip to their showroom—not only can you look, touch, and feel their meticulously salvaged materials.
Coney Island Boardwalk
Another new resident at LuxeHome, Manhattan Forest Products, also sources materials that have mellowed with age. The millers re-harvest vintage New York wood from historic buildings to use in bespoke flooring, including antique oak, heart pine, chestnut, and other antique hardwoods found in old factories, mills, and breweries. They have salvaged wood from water towers and even the Coney Island boardwalk in New York. MFP is a full-service mill and lumber supplier, with the capacity to produce and ship internationally reclaimed flooring, custom molding, sawn and hand-hewn beams, architectural millwork and a wide range of other wood products. As a custom mill, they have the flexibility to produce products made from just about any type of wood, to your exact specifications. While many customers like reclaimed wood that shows its wear and tear, others prefer “new face wood” or wood that has had the top worn layer of reclaimed wood shaved off to expose the virgin surface beneath.
On Tuesday, October 23, from 6-8pm, Margaret Russell, Editor in Chief, Architectural Digest, is hosting cocktails and hors d’oeuvres in Exquisite Surfaces showroom (Suite 1-143) in LuxeHome, 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza. Please respond to rsvp@archdigest.com
On Thursday, November 15, from 6-8:30pm, LuxeHome Presents the Sixth Annual CHILL, the Sixth Annual Charity CHILL Event, featuring superb wines from winemakers worldwide paired with cuisine from distinguished chefs amidst the ambiance of the world’s largest collection of premier boutiques for homebuilding and renovation.
Sophia
Weiss Lapat
Sophia
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312.382.8441
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212.203.6536
