More Than Pretty

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Ellie Cullman’s Park Avenue apartment could almost be mistaken for a private museum, with its curator an expert in antiques and American fine art. She has built an empire of her own in the interior design world, known especially for her creative use of decorative wall painting. Last year, Architectural Digest named Ms. Cullman one of 30 deans of American design.

The second-floor apartment is filled with Asian sculptures and prints and, especially, paintings. Most of Ms. Cullman’s collection consists of American paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries. It includes Milton Avery’s watercolor on paper “Sunbathers and Umbrellas” (1935) and a charcoal on paper by Edward Hopper, “House on Cape Cod” (ca. 1950), one of Hopper’s signature house portraits. “I like things to have a reason why they are all together,” Ms. Cullman said. “I like all these American artists talking to each other. They couldn’t be more disparate, but they all like each other.”

Ms. Cullman recently decided the duplex, which she shares with her husband, Edgar Cullman, a partner in a family equity firm, Culbro Corporation, needed to be completely re-done. She has spent 22 years as an interior designer, and so did most of the interior work herself, hiring architect John Murray to refresh and update the architecture.

Ms. Cullman said she prefers to redecorate her homes every seven to 10 years. She renovated two previous apartments (both within a five-block radius of her current home) and a house in Stamford, Conn. This is the first time, however, that she has made over this apartment.”I’ve been living here since 1986 and it just looked tired,” Ms. Cullman said. “I wanted to make it less formal and much more fun and splashy, with a lot more energy and warmth.” She decided to redesign the apartment in the spirit of Italian architect Rosario Candelo who designed the 1929 building Ms. Cullman lives in.

First, Ms. Cullman banished everything brown. Then she installed “layered” lighting, a signature of her firm, Cullman & Kravis. Each room boasts overhead lighting, standard lamps, and lights that shine on art and sculptures.

In the Persian-blue colored library on the first floor, there are lights on the top of the window recesses, and a Polish brass chandelier (circa 1830). In between built-in bookcases and over a bronze-colored couch hangs a 1962 Kenneth Noland painting,”Warm Reverie.” Adolph Gottlieb’s “The Green One” (1972) hangs upstairs in the study.

The Cullmans’ sculptures are mostly Asian and Indian. The earliest piece is a Han terra cotta dancer (second century B.C.E. to second century C.E.) which is on a sideboard in the dining room. There are Tang pottery pieces from the sixth to ninth centuries, Indian sculptures from the sixth to seventh centuries, 16th-century figures from a Japanese temple.

The couple lived in Japan between 1969 and 1971, in the early years of their marriage. Ms. Cullman was also exposed to Chinese art and antiquities there. The dining room walls are covered in antique Chinese wallpaper made in 1770, chosen, she said, because it allows one to enter the artwork and be enveloped in it.

“We never use wallpaper unless it’s antique because of the seams,” Ms. Cullman said.”With antique wallpaper, I live with the seams, but regular wallpaper is so commercial. In our office we design our own patterns directly on the wall because then we don’t have a seam.”

In the foyer and the hallway upstairs, Ms. Cullman used Vietnamese bark paper in a brick pattern. She hung a set of four 1815 paintings by an unknown Chinese artist, depicting China trade in Hong Kong, Macao, and the city then known as Canton. “I like these paintings because my husband and I have visited most of these places,” she said.

In redecorating the expansive living room, Ms. Cullman started by pulling colors from a large antique Bidjar carpet from Persia. “I start every room with a rug, because if you are interested in antique carpets, it is the critical path for the room,” Ms. Cullman said.

Over the fireplace in the living room hangs Max Weber’s 1942 Cubist portrait of a woman. The first piece of art Ms. Cullman and her husband bought together, a colorful 9-foot 17th-century Japanese screen, also hangs in the room. It depicts a view of Kyoto, where the couple used to travel monthly for pleasure.”Japan is where I learned aesthetics,” Ms. Cullman said. (Specifically, she studied flower arranging.) On an adjacent wall hangs “Quiet Afternoon” (1901), Edmund Tarbell’s painting of a young girl reading.

While Ms. Cullman’s home can certainly be described as lovely, a merely good-looking home does not satisfy her. “Pretty is not enough,” she said. “We distinguish ourselves by fine arts and antiques.”


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