Save this story Save Story Save this story “I hate those Sex and the City martini glasses,” the interior designer Rita Konig confesses—referring to the goofy inverted triangles from which your overfilled drink inevitably spills. I couldn’t agree more. Maybe it was the ’90s era Cosmo that ruined them, giving them a perpetual pink tinge in the mind’s eye, with none of the steely elegance that a martini should possess. “But I love it when you see a martini in a tiny stemmed glass,” she continues, and I concur here as well.
Konig has built her career as a decorator with such highly specific opinions. (“The room needed a decorative wrench thrown in to stop it all from being a bit smug,” she writes in a forthcoming book.) And this week she brings her sensibility to bear on a new line of household goods entirely designed, sourced, and commissioned by Konig herself.
The only correct shape for a martini glass.
The line includes (the perfect) martini glass , handblown in Venice and made of borosilicate glass so it can endure the tussle of the dishwasher; but also boxy and oblong garden baskets, perfect for collecting stems or vegetables; an antique silver ice bucket in the shape of a pumpkin; what she’s calling a “potion” bottle that could serve as an elegant vessel for a single lucky stalk, even a few pieces of furniture. These items and more are now available, only on her site .
Though Konig has done collaborations before, this is the first time that the products are entirely her own—and she sees it as something of the fulfillment of a long-held dream. “My mother [ the decorator Nina Campbell] has a shop in London that I worked in as a child and then I ran in my 20s. I loved that. I love the packing up and I love the parceling and I love the crinkle of tissue, the bag, the awning on the front of the building.”
If the curation and cultivation of this line feels of a piece with an alternate fate as a shopkeeper, it also represents something of a watershed moment for her in her current career. “In my mind,” she says, “There are these two branches of my business. There's decorating—but I kept thinking, I want this other branch, which is the things that we use and need.” Houses need a lot of stuff, she points out, and while she certainly encourages her clients to put their eclectic collections or oddball inheritances to use, she also believes that even when you’re buying something that will have a very pedestrian function—a box for your firewood, for example—you should like to look at it.
Among the collection are a set of ceramic nesting bowls in shades of cream or mossy green or dusky azure that she uses as food and water bowls for her dog. “It seems like an extravagance, but actually you are looking at it the whole time,” she explains. As she writes in her forthcoming book, Returning Home: The Story of A Well-Loved House , “Rooms are not decorated with fabrics and wallpaper alone; it’s the stuff that makes the difference.”
As we’re speaking, she compliments my Zoom backdrop, an attic room wallpapered in a perfect cascade of ochre and pale grey flowers , which I am soon to relinquish to my teenage son. (Three boys will only tolerate boarding together for so long, it turns out.) I am struggling with it; it’s my own bias, but it just doesn’t feel like a teenage boy’s room. She tells me about a room in her house that was once her bedroom, with walls covered in a black and white floral print and curtains in blue felt. That room eventually became her husband’s dressing room, and then her daughter’s room. “And it’s always sort of amazed me that if I had started out thinking I must choose a wallpaper that’s going to do all these three things, I never would’ve chosen that wallpaper,” she says. “And yet, it was really sweet and it was fine. And I think that yours will be too. The things you put in and the things he brings will make it his.”
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Source: Lifestyle
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