In order to make the creative world feel a bit less lonely and a bit more connected in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve been publishing a new blog series—CoviDiaries—that brings us into the homes and minds of various designers, illustrators and other professionals, to see how they’re coping. Today’s tale comes from Bonnie Siegler, designer and proprietor of 8point5, who reveals the design treasures she found at a special house sale.
In December 2017, my husband and I drove to the “Vogue mansion estate sale.” It turned out to be the former home of Cipe Pineles and William Golden, two of my design idols. The house was a tall brick Victorian building. It looked like it could have been on upper Fifth Avenue at the turn of the century, but instead was perched atop a ridge in a pretty, rural section of Rockland County, NY. Amazingly, the house was filled with the things Pineles and Golden collected, made and used. Everything was for sale: books, furniture, kitchenware, toys, their design archives, their unused stationery, extra Christmas cards they had designed and dozens and dozens of perfectly assembled model airplanes. I felt like I was having a fever dream going through their flat files. I still can’t believe it, even now.
Last month, I finally went through the big box of stuff I bought there to document it, not for any particular reason (until now) but because that’s the kind of thing quarantine gives you the time to do.
The first image is a photo I took of the house on that cloudy day, and the rest make up a small sampling of the subsequent treasures I encountered inside.
