Prince Segal Design: The Inspiration for Designing Your Own Home

DESIGN INSPIRATION

My partner asked me the other day about the inspiration for designing my house in East Hampton. Design inspiration is a difficult thing to define… especially for an eclectic designer like myself… whose VERY first purchase for the house (before practical things like beds, china or one sofa or chair) was a table carved like a sunflower. It just seemed… right… although you can’t even put a glass on it.

If I have to pinpoint the primary inspiration I would say Italian. The truth is I would TRADE my house, which I cherish, for a farmhouse in Tuscany in a split second! You know the one I am talking about… stone, many 100 of years old, 16” walls with a winding road framed with tall, sinewy trees and a vineyard in the valley below. But I digress.

With no clients to dictate direction or impose restrictions, I was free to just create… although that is not always an easy thing. Sometimes restrictions keep you focused and on a somewhat straight path. And having me as a client can be daunting. Just ask the salesperson who wrote up my decorative hardware order… we lost count on the finishes.

I love natural materials… organic and tactile with a matte finish. In the kitchen I chose slate counters with a slate farm sink. It was actually the first slate sink made by the fabricator. My house was his testing ground and I was his guinea pig. The walls are cross cut travertine. I used the material in a show house I did in New York City (published in several books – see our website) and knew I would use it for my house. I inserted terracotta decorative tile and molding to add contrast. I even dyed some of the terracotta so it would be the perfect color. You get the picture… I can be compulsive. But I justify it by convincing myself that in interior design this is a GOOD thing.

And then there is the kitchen range hood! Suffice to say my Mother called it my Sistine Chapel. It took a year to complete. Most Saturdays my wonderful Italian contractor, Francesco, would come from the city to work on the house. For the hood he would cut my marble tiles into little pieces and would mud a small section of the hood and I would actually put the pieces on each section… designing as I went. I was on a ladder and would have to bend down for each little piece. My back!!! While I was “creating” he was sitting watching the soccer matches drinking my best cognac. The two ceramic heads were actually plaques from Italy. I removed them from their iron holders and don’t have a clue how he got them on the hood. Francesco could do anything all I had to do was ask. When I told him I wanted the hood bordered in copper (I love copper) mimicking the design on my stone trim on the walls, he got his brother (who had just come to America on his very first visit on his very first day) to come to the house and with a blow torch… and voila… a border.

The “tile” rug embedded into the wood floor, in front of the sink, is glazed tile and terracotta. I designed it and had it fabricated in Tunisia. Time was NOT my enemy… this house represented my design laboratory and fantasy all at once.

In the back hallway I had an artist, who had a small handmade tile company, create ceramic leaves that Francesca embedded into the floor… one painstaking leaf at a time. I laid out the tiles so it looked like the wind blew in the leaves from the side door. He then, by hand, chiseled out the wood and inserted a leaf. It took several hours to do each one. It was worth every drop of my cognac!

I have had people come to the house, some have even become clients, and say they want me to duplicate the house for them. But my response to them is that this is my vision… and what I can do is help them find theirs. Everyone has “design inspiration” they just have to find a way to tap into it.

The truth is every time I walk through the front door the house inspires me… with a sense of beauty and tranquility. How great is that!