The Thursday Show: David Netto and Paul Goldberger on Rosario Candela, the mastermind behind New York's most desired apartments. Plus: Why brands are pivoting to the trade

23:53And I spoke to him briefly at What's New, What's Next. And he was like, you know, what real estate people say is it's location, location, location. But also it's Jim Druckmann, Jim Druckmann, Jim Druckmann. And clearly, you know, having close relationships in the trade, as Jim does, is really paid off. And so this is an interesting move and maybe a harbinger of things to come. No, I agree. And in addition to Peter Dunham, the arrival of R. Hughes at the New York Design Center is also our friends from Atlanta is a big move. So, I mean, the Tebow story and I and I know that there are some more companies that will be announcing New York Design Center related news soon.

24:30So we'll have more to say about that. But more arrivals coming and the drama continues. Next up, we're going to talk about the Custom Workroom Conference in Rhode Island. Fred, you went there. I can't wait to hear all about it. We not only went there, me and the founder of Business of Home, Julian Oran, crashed it, essentially. We drove two and a half hours and showed up without registering, but they were very kind and led us in to check it out. It's a really awesome conference. It was started, I think, six or seven years ago by this company called Workroom Tech that does education for people who want to get into sewing for drapery workrooms and upholstery workrooms.

25:08And it was about 300 people from all over the country who all have either their own upholstery workroom or their own drapery workroom kind of coming together for seminars and workshops. And our friend and former podcast guest Grant Trick spoke at the event. So it was just a really fun little window into this corner of the industry that I'm not normally diving as deeply into. Yeah, I'm curious to hear what everyone was talking about and what some of the takeaways were for you. Well, the biggest takeaway was just that, you know, you think you know the design industry well, and then you go to a seminar about, you know, tufting and you realize, I don't know how this is really.

25:43I mean, sincerely, though, it is really fun to sort of get into the weeds and understand and appreciate like the level of craftsmanship that goes into the stuff. So that was a big takeaway just for me personally. But, you know, it was interesting. You know, there were a couple of talks that I attended. And, you know, one thing a lot of people talked about was the dominance of the shade store, you know, and we've talked about the shade store a little bit here and there. But they really have, you know, clearly sort of defined the marketplace for, you know, custom drapery. They've rapidly grown over the past few years.

26:11And a lot of the people that they're competing with are these small sort of local workrooms. And so one person said from the stage, you know, that, you know, your competition is the shade store. You need to figure out how to do something that they don't do. So it was really interesting just to sort of see the other side of the coin. And we've talked about their growth a lot, but it's interesting to see who they're competing with. So that was interesting. Another component that I thought was kind of intriguing was that, you know, they, like a lot of brands we were talking about just a minute ago, sometimes struggle to like connect directly with designers.

26:37You know, you have these custom workrooms, but they don't always know how to reach out to designers, how designers can find them. A lot of the talks seem to sort of be around identifying like how you can make your business work for designers. So I thought that was just so interesting. out. It's like you have these people who are so perfectly set up to work for designers, but they struggle sometimes to connect with them directly. So I don't know. Another example of industry fragmentation. No, I agree. And it's so interesting how many designers have talked recently in this broad conversation about why things are taking so long.

27:09And they all tell you, listen, the best workrooms are just so backed up and busy. Of course, it's going to take a long time. You can't just walk into a workroom these days, a good one, and say, hey, I want to order a sofa and turn it around in a few weeks. Get in line, pal. So it's interesting to hear that some of these workrooms can't reach the designers or easily get in front of some new customers because so many designers are constantly reaching out and asking, oh, do you have a good workroom in this market or this market? And I think there ought to be a better way to connect them all because there are plenty of workrooms that would like some more work.

27:45No, that's exactly right. There was a woman there named Julie Tome who has a really successful drapery business in Connecticut. She works with Heidi Callier, a lot of very high-end designers. And she was talking about how at this point, I'm only taking on work that I want to. And it's hard to get younger people into the industry. That was another thing people talked about. It was not all of their sons and daughters were following them into the profession. So, you know, there is a demand for it, but there's not always, you know, the workforce there to meet the demand and it's hard to connect the supply with the demand.

28:13So, you know, I don't I don't have any answers for all of that, but it was an interesting insight into sort of the nuts and bolts of how that fits together. they also all talked a lot about social media and how Instagram is like their primary way that they can connect with people but how you know the changes to the algorithm have made that difficult recently so I proposed that they should all join TikTok they all laughed at me and thought that was crazy so I don't know maybe maybe that'll be the next year's conference but it was just a really lovely event and really really fun to attend and I'm you know hopeful I'll be able to make it to one in the near future well I'm so glad you got to go I I want to tag along next time that you head out there.

28:48They'll be swarming you, Dennis. They'll be mobbing you. There are a lot of podcast listeners there. Well, that's very nice. Finally, I wanted to highlight a small item from BOH's summer print issue. Dina Bandman Goldstone shared why she began implementing a design stipend for her employees. The program allows members of her team to tap into funds to attend industry events and then bring back what they learned to the firm. And I thought this was a really interesting benefit that she created at the company and allowing the staff to go to events. Some people sound like they went to different shows.

29:24Perhaps they even got to go to Paris and just bring back what they learned and also just perhaps had a great team experience together. What did you think? Yeah, I thought this was just so cool. I mean, this isn't really a news story, but it's just a really interesting practice that I've seen a few designers and, you know, even workshops do with their employees. I remember Lindsay Edelman was talking about how she does of some of our employees. I'm not sure how often she does it, but she'll fund employees to go do a creative workshop or on a trip that helps them inform their craft. I just think it's just such a fresh approach to giving employees something a little bit more special than, hey, here's a hundred bucks and a gift certificate to a restaurant.

30:04Not that you shouldn't do that too. I mean, that's a nice thing to do, but I think giving them the gift of being able to grow and travel and improve themselves is also going to improve the firm. It's kind of good for everybody. So I just think it's a really heartening trend. And I hope that more people will do it because it just seems like a win-win-win. Yeah, I agree. I'm all for giving people some money to go out and meet other people and then bring back interesting stories. Yes, maybe this is a hint for our boss. Just give us some money. Exactly. A stipend. I like the idea. All right. That's it for the news, but there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com, including October's can't-miss design events and Sean Lowe's advice for getting started in the design industry.

30:50We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break.

30:58If you're coming to High Point Market this fall, I hope you'll join me in the Chelsea House showroom when I host a lively conversation with three exceptional founders. Naz Nazawa of Naz Design, Stephanie Sabi of Sabi Interior Design, and Rebecca Zabaloff of Kitchen Lab Interiors. All three are bold entrepreneurs who have built successful design firms and brands that are recognized far beyond their local communities. They'll share what they've learned along the way. Join us at 1 p.m. on Sunday, October 27th at Chelsea House at 200 North Hamilton Street. Lunch will be served beginning at noon. We'll see you then.

32:05hand-woven in editions of one. Each product is supported by unmatched personalized service. To explore the possibilities and register for your trade account, visit HartmanForbes.com.

32:24And we're back. Today, I have the pleasure of being joined by both author and interior designer, David Netto. David, welcome back to the show. Nice to see you. A pleasure. And additionally, we are joined, we have the privilege of being joined by Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger. Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you, Dennis. Good to be here. Well, I'm delighted to speak to you both. And I've been spending a great deal of time with your new book about Rosario Candela, The New York Apartment. And I'm eager to discuss it with both of you. David, it sounds as if you've been carrying Rosario Candela along with you since you were a little boy making your way to Buckley every morning.

33:12Tell us about that. when you're in third grade, you're supposed to be interested in soccer. You've got a backpack. You're going to run around and cause mayhem. But I didn't want to do any of that. I wanted to look up the whole way I was walking at school and figure out what was going on behind these incredible, what appeared to be Italian hillside towns in the sky that culminated in these extremely romantic water towers. And the way to have a better relationship with my father seemed to also cultivate that interest because he was very interested in moving into such an apartment. So those are two emotional roots, vectors, by which I entered the subject.

33:52You know, as they say, when spoken, the shame dies. And so I titled that first section of my essay, Nerds, to get off my chest that I knew that's what I was at that age. And then I go into the discussion of the architecture itself. Well, I appreciate that very much. And before we delve into who exactly was this remarkable architect, Paul, you wrote that he wasn't widely written about when you were working as an architectural critic at the New York Times, and you wanted to learn more about him yourself. Yes, that's exactly right, Dennis. I was not fortunate enough to have my third grade trauma relieved by Rosario.

34:41I had to wait until adulthood for that. You know, I grew up actually, if the truth be told, in the suburbs, wishing I were in the city, probably wishing I had the upbringing David did. And when I actually came to the city and my career began, I ended up, in fact, writing about architecture, loving it, and particularly finding myself attracted to these great buildings that were built between the wars in New York. And I learned that not all, but a great many of the best of them were designed by this architect who I had never heard of. And to the best of my knowledge, not a lot of other people had heard of either and had barely ever been written about named Rosario Candela.

35:32So I began to write about him in the New York Times. There wasn't terribly much to be said, but I found a couple of things. And at some point very early in my career, I wrote an architectural guide to New York called The City Observed. And there I could sort of finally kind of indulge my fondness for these buildings and wrote a great deal about several of the Candela buildings. And David approached both me and Peter Pernoyer, who's an architect and a friend of both of us, and said it was time to do a real book on Candela and the three of us should collaborate on it. And I eventually ran out of excuses to say no.

36:18So I said yes, and the result is what you are holding in your hand. Indeed. And I'm so glad that it came together. I'm curious, Paul, what was your sense of why when you first delved into Rosario Candela, there hadn't been more written about him? Because the people today that talk about him, David obviously among them, are so passionate and seemingly all consumed by this master. Why wasn't there an appreciation for him until you started delve in? Well, there was certainly an appreciation for the buildings. They were widely respected, both by connoisseurs and by the marketplace, both. But they were treated as if they had just somehow willed themselves into existence.

37:12It was well known they were not by prominent architects of the period, although in fact, one of the other things the book explores, and that we talked about a certain amount is the way Candela often collaborated with somewhat more established firms. And possibly that was, we think in fact, that was likely to have been something done by the real estate developers who were concerned that maybe the prestige of an Italian immigrant architect was not quite enough. He was not flashy. He was quiet, thoughtful, hardworking, talented. But he did not travel in the sort of high WASP circles of New York society.

38:05And so while Candela may have been a little more off the radar than most people, no architect was really that much on the radar either, in fact. I would suspect that if you looked at any building on Park Avenue back in those days, very few brokers, real estate brokers actually knew who designed the buildings that they were actively selling in. And you would never see an architect's name in an ad, for example, or a listing for an apartment. It was, design was just thought of as kind of this thing that had somehow kind of risen up and happened, but not as an actual, important, meaningful, creative act by somebody, not only with talent, but with a very particular and specific talent.

39:00I think everything Paul's saying is exactly right. Also, Candela himself had sought no personal recognition to speak of. And if you want to make a comparison of how weirdly that can happen in connection with an extremely theatrical, prominent in everyone's imagination building, think of San Simeon. And the fact that no one knew Julia Morgan's name, who was giving the tour guides at San Simeon until the mid-80s or something like that, which was the impetus for the recent book about her. And Candela and Julia Morgan, there's a connection in terms of temperament there. Well, and David, Paul mentioned earlier Candela came to America as an Italian immigrant.

39:47From what we know, he didn't even speak very much English when he arrived and yet remarkably ends up going to Columbia School of Architecture. and he obviously was quite brilliant and later, and we can talk about cryptography and his other interests perhaps later on, but clearly he was able to teach himself very quickly and seemed to go very deep into things. Yes? A lot of the folklore about Candela at Columbia, including the oft-repeated trope, which may or may not be true, that he had a velvet theater rope around his drafting table to stop other people from copying. I don't actually know where that story got started.

40:34I probably first heard it from Christopher Gray. When I entered the Candela business, so to speak, in 1987, I started looking at his work for a research paper at Sarah Lawrence. The first person I called after Andrew Alpern was Paul being then completely inaccessible. It was like calling Marlon Brando or something. You couldn't get at him. But I got to Christopher Gray, who was an architectural historian of a very specific New York immersive, obsessive bent, and also a great writer and storyteller. He knew things that nobody else knew, and he made them palatable to someone that didn't even think they cared about this stuff.

41:18So to honor Chris Gray in the telling of Candela's story is important because whatever I knew about it, I learned very quickly probably from him first. But there are things about Candela's access to Columbia and who actually set him up in architecture school that we don't know. We don't know specifically. specifically. There is an assumption on my part, at least, and Paul, you please correct me if this is too speculative, that he came to America from Sicily with friends, with introductions, and a certain amount of mentorship in the form of these Italian and Sicilian developers who were handed the young man, recognized his talent, and then directed him to Columbia and sort of took on his apprenticeship and career afterwards?

42:08While we don't have documentation that proves it, everything we know suggests that that's kind of a logical way that it would have played out. We also know that he began his career working under Gaetano Aiello. I don't know if he was a full generation older, but definitely a somewhat older, also Italian immigrant architect who had been working in New York for some Italian developers. Aiello, who in fact was Christopher Gray's favorite discovery. I would say, and I too, Christopher Gray was also very important for me in those years and helped me with research for The City Observed and was continually urging me to pay more attention to Aiello, who was his personal favorite.

43:03I think what David says makes sense. We know that he worked with Aiello and was Aiello's kind of apprentice and associate for a while and then went off on his own. We know that there was a network of Italian-born developers in New York who were building first middle class and then somewhat more expensive upmarket apartments. And in fact, it's an interesting paradox that in the days of a far more firmly defined and narrowly defined social and economic establishment in Manhattan, a great many of the most exclusive buildings were done by these Italian developers with Candela as the architect. And it's quite likely that neither the developers nor the architect would have been welcome as residents in these buildings, in fact.

44:10And that's not an unimportant point. I wonder, let's talk about what made these spaces so remarkable, both the exterior and the interior, David. As Paul was saying earlier, these addresses over time became shorthand in New York real estate circles. If you said 1040 or if you referred to 740, everyone knew what you were talking about and in part because of who we knew lived there over the years, but just also the grandeur and drama of these buildings. We have to remember that timing also has a lot to do with this story. The moment that Candela comes into himself as an apartment designer is also the moment that the entire solid wall, miles long of turn-of-the-century robber baron mansions on Fifth Avenue, less so on Park, but there were many houses on Park, are being demolished because the economics of maintaining those houses completely collapsed after World War I.

45:25So if you built a big stone half-block wide house on Fifth Avenue in 1903, and it had 30, the census recorded 30 servants living in it, you know, and two principals. That was made possible by the fact that there was no income tax in the U.S. until 1913. And then there was also no regulation of immigration from Europe until after World War I. And so the obsolescence of those houses is something that had to be replaced by something. And the first tentative proposal of a block of flats that is actually something that a Guggenheim can move into is by McKinmead and White, 998 Fifth Avenue. I mean, there had been a gradual movement toward more larger and elaborate multiple dwellings.

46:23But there was still a sense if you were a seriously rich or even haute bourgeoisie person, you lived in a house. And that multiple dwellings were associated with tenements. That's where poor people shared their roof with other people. So it's not so much that apartments didn't exist. It's that they, during this period, they began to evolve or expand into a larger and larger segment of the economic hierarchy of New York. And it became gradually, very gradually, acceptable to live in an apartment rather than a house, even if you were part of what we might call the gentry of the city. One of the other things, if I can make a very general point here, that made this book so much fun is that it underscores the extent to which architectural history is so completely bound into social history, most of all, but also political history, economic history, and so forth.

47:44You can't separate those things. And Candela is kind of right at the nexus where a lot of these forces come together. And he came at exactly, or his career rose at exactly the right time. And in part for these reasons, suddenly as the houses began to go, as David pointed out, they were less and less sustainable economically. But also at the same time, it became more and more acceptable to live in an apartment. And so developers, suddenly there was a desire on the part of real estate developers to provide apartments that would have a great many, if not all, of the comforts of a great mansion. And so they got bigger, they got more elaborate, they got more complicated.

48:37And Candela was a master of the intricate floor plan. I think that's one of the other things that made this book so much fun. So when the houses went away, there needed to be an architect who could sell whatever replaced them to the people that were being induced to leave those houses. I think that Candela undoubtedly is obviously the person that did that the most effectively. But those developers that were his sponsors that we talked about, Anthony Campagna and Michael Paterno principally, they were the ones who identified the potential for apartment house luxury living in a more refined vocabulary than had existed before.

49:27With these couple of buildings that we referred to before being the only examples. And they were the ones who bought the houses. They actually aggressively, there's newspaper stories of how newsworthy this was, that so-and-so's mansion, you know, was bought by Anthony Campagna, who connected it with three other lots on Fifth Avenue and is building, you know,$7 million multiple dwelling, which when you see the receipt for 834 Fifth Building Permit at the Buildings Department, it says multiple tenement dwelling. You know, it's for the most hellatial of all the Candela buildings. At that point, the buildings department had only a couple of categories.

50:13There was private house and tenement. Tenement meant multiple dwellings. So that, of course, changed. So here's what Candela did that matters to me the most in this category of what we're discussing. These luxury buildings, the 907 fifths, 998 fifths, that were kind of Edwardian experiments in apartment house architecture for properly A-list clientele. They all stopped at the 10th or 12th floor and they had a big cornice and a flat roof that was used for servants rooms and laundries and things like that, storage. So nobody could conceive of how to go further vertically because that required setting back.

51:04There was something called the 1916 Zoning Law, which was passed after a huge, the equitable building down in the financial district was sheer 20-something stories tall and cast the entire surrounding neighborhood in shadow. And so they immediately passed this law that a building had to set back above two and a half times the width of the street that it faced. But nobody took that on in apartment house design until Rosario Candela. And I think in conversation with Campania and Paterno saying, we want to go taller, we want to sell more apartments. Why do we have to stop? Why does this have to look like an extruded Renaissance palazzo with a flat top?

51:43You know, and Candela said, well, I can help you with that. I mean, you know, this is a reckless reenactment of such a conversation because he was, I am confident, looking at the commercial skyscrapers of downtown of the financial district and their setbacks, which is the first time that form appears in New York. And so Candela, with his cryptographer brain, was able to erode the form of the building at the lot line above the 10th floor, the 12th floor, and create an even more desirable sequence of about eight to 10 floors high that have terraces. The time of all of this construction is basically less than six years, 1925 to 1931.

52:29We talked earlier about the floor plans. And as you've pointed out, there are all these wonderful floor plans that really help you to understand the full scale and scope. Specifically, I'm looking right now at 740 Park and just the vast number of servants' quarters and main rooms. And I wonder if, David, you could talk to what was so extraordinary about these floor plans and how this transition from mansions on the street to basically mansions in the sky, it seems. Well, the floor plans are successful because of how they're organized hierarchically. The inventor of that organizational system in apartment floor plans was James E.R.

53:18Carpenter. And so that organizing principle consisted of what Paul described as the off the foyer layout, where the entrance hall acts as a kind of fourth room in the living room dining room library suite. So with that, you have entertaining space, which is comparable to, if not in scale, you know, in comfort of a private house. Then the other thing about the floor plans that Candela is great at is being able to seal off visually the private quarters with the bedrooms and the sort of engine room back of the house stuff with the kitchen and the servants rooms. so that there is a way of clearing the drinks and cigarettes in ashtrays in the living room while people are sitting at dinner in the dining room without having to walk through the dining room.

54:11This is all very carefully thought through by Candela. But you don't make myths out of being so meticulous. The sexy part is the part that made Candela the real estate agent's dream and the billionaires' favored backdrops since you mentioned 740 Park Avenue. And that has to do with the balance of windows, the enormous size of the windows spaced in single succession, where before in most carpenter buildings they were paired, which I guess he thought admitted more light. But when Candela figured out how to make these rooms much more elegant, the ceilings tend to be a couple of feet higher than in buildings before.

54:58740 has fireplaces in every room and a reception room in addition to the library in the B-line apartments, which are the biggest. So there's this sense of decadence, which along with the efficiency of the organization is what really makes those apartments sexy. There was a level of luxury that had not really been seen in an apartment, or luxury and convenience together, as well as a kind of serene, self-confident order that you certainly didn't have in earlier floor plans. I mean, the Dakota is a very good example. I mean, you know, the Dakota is a truly wonderful, wonderful thing, and one of the great treasures of New York.

55:47but in fact, you know, the rooms are not always gracefully proportioned. They're strung out in a row. They're kind of long, narrow corridors that connect the bedrooms. They're all the same size. They tend often to be all the same size. Things don't flow naturally. All of that Candela figured out and suddenly, you know, rearranged everything so that it had an elegance and a harmony to it and a beauty of proportion. So I want people to understand how much there is to be gained for them in learning about Rosario Candela through this book. And I'd love to hear from you, David, first, how your vast knowledge and passion about this man and these buildings and his work has influenced your work over all of these years and what you think designers and decorators today can gain and learn from studying him in the way that you have.

56:53Well, he inadvertently created an encyclopedic catalog resume of decorative arts history in New York. I think the value of the book is that everybody's been talking about this guy for 40 years. because of the association with millions of dollars changing hands. He's a real estate porn name drop. And there's nothing wrong with loving fancy real estate in New York. It's part of the fun of being here. But this book will explain to you why you shouldn't feel guilty ogling and being fascinated by that because this was actually a great genius of complex design of these buildings. and that has never properly been explored or explained.

57:39Right. And, you know, as David has explained how important these buildings have been as enclosures, as environments in which other people have had opportunities to be creative and have done some of their very, very best creative work because of the spaces that Candela created for them. They've also been very influential architecturally, particularly now more than actually ever. I mean, Robert A.M. Stern, for example, who has probably studied Candela more carefully than almost any other living architect, has used all kinds of details in his buildings. I mean, there are elements of 15 Central Park West, which crib directly from 1045th Avenue, another Candela building.

58:31The idea of covering them all in limestone, which he's made now a calling card, also of trying to project a kind of elegant restraint, grandeur without kind of fussiness and frivolousness. All of that is something that I think Stern has picked up from Candela. Peter Penoyer who you know is our co-author but is also a very active and and gifted architect has also you know quite frankly you know learned a lot in his own work and demonstrates that in in in what he's done uh and I think others have too um so that the Candela buildings have become either, even when people do not use the details as literally as CERN did in 15 Central Park West, there is a tendency to just look at it as a kind of aspirational model and inspiration for a certain attitude about the city, an attitude about space, and attitude about privacy, dignity, elegance, and trying to figure out, you know, how do you do that in a way that is also suitable to our time?

59:58So, I mean, it remains sort of the gold standard, you could say that too, of New York apartment house design. Well, and Paul, to stay with that for a moment, You were talking earlier about, David was telling us about income tax and the mansions no longer being affordable for various reasons. And that had such a dramatic impact on how the landscape in New York changed. So housing and housing affordability is one of the biggest issues today. and we've had this very frozen real estate market that everyone's referred to for the past few years. And now we assume rates coming down, perhaps things are going to get easier.

1:00:47But New York seems as if it's about to go through another dramatic change in both where and how people are working and how they're living. I wonder what your sense of that is today. I don't know. Well, I mean, we are evolving as we always have. I mean, the city has always gone through change. One of the things that is as strong now as ever, and people attributed to COVID, but it was beginning before and just was accelerated by COVID, is the ability to work from home. That only makes homes more desirable and more important than they had been before. And in fact, the other key thing, the other sort of macro story that just continues and continues and will not go away is the evolution of the city from being a place of industry and manufacturing to a place of culture and leisure.

1:01:47and people are choosing to live here as they are in all kinds of cities around the world that they don't no longer that they don't absolutely have to live in as they once did and that we're going to see continuing i mean as more and more office buildings are converted to apartments as more and more old industrial buildings are converted into residential lofts and as the industrial waterfront evolves into a recreational waterfront. All of these things are part and parcel of the same thing. And I think Candela just, again, remains as a kind of model for civilized urban living. I am looking out my window right now, actually, at Two Beekman Place, which is a really lovely building with a certain nice art deco or our modern quality brick with some limestone trim um encasement windows it's a you know very fine early 30s building and that was candela too um yeah and uh it's a wonderful building and really you know distinguished handsome It sits on the street as firmly, as gracefully, with the same dignity that 740 Park does, in fact.

1:03:15So it's a fascinating range of work, too. Well, exactly. And that's what's clear from the book and from the passion with which you both speak about this work. It's a fascinating and fantastic book. It will make you want to learn so much more when you get into it. But it is extraordinary all that you have put together and your essays teach us so much. And again, they will only make us want to learn more. I'm thrilled to get to speak with both of you about it. And I hope I will have the opportunity to have this kind of conversation again somewhere in the future so we can delve even further into it.

1:03:59But I thank you both for your time. I'm thrilled to get to talk to you. Dennis, it's a total pleasure to talk to you. This has been great. Thank you, Dennis.

1:04:12And we're back. We're getting to the end of the show here. But before we go, we'd like to take a second to highlight anything going on in the industry. that might have caught our eye. Fred? Panels caught my eye this week. I went to many of them at What's New, What's Next, and I'm going to shamelessly plug Business of Homes, but they were really fun and really good shows. I'll start with yours, actually, which was a conversation with Mitchell Gold and Satya Tuari of Syria about the relaunch of Mitchell Gold, Bob Williams. Fun panel. Also, there were some people there who had some hard questions for Satya and Mitchell.

1:04:40Absolutely. It had a very lively, real energy to it, so it was great to see that. Speaking of lively and real, Caitlin's panel in the morning was a discussion about design photography and the real costs involved. And they are real and they're not cheap. And so it was great to hear Caitlin's talk and hear designers like Nalus Nzawa talk about like the reality of photography and how much it costs. And hopefully we'll see more of that. What about you? What cut your eye this week, Dennis? Just coming back to the Mitchell Gold panel for a moment, one of the things that I thought was so touching, Fred, was how many former Mitchell Gold staffers came to the panel discussion.

1:05:13It was quite moving that there were multiple people that had been there for many years. And then there was also the set decorator from CBS who came and had put Mitchell Gold in The Good Wife. And so there were a lot of people that are just rooting for Mitchell Gold's comeback. And so it created an interesting energy in the room. And I was really glad to be part of that. What caught my eye were a couple of things. One, I got an email saying that RH is reimagining the recliner. And we talk so often about how if there's one thing designers can't stand specifying, it's the recliner. But maybe with this introduction of RH motion furniture, people will start to feel differently.

1:06:04I don't know. It looks like some leather sectionals with some motion. And it caught my eye. I was surprised to see that. It's a category that people don't often like to talk about. But if you go to High Point, there are entire buildings built for motion furniture. So there's plenty to be had. And it'll be interesting to see if RH can perhaps step it up a little bit and make people reconsider how they feel about that. The other thing I wanted to just touch on was I snuck into the city last night to spend a little bit of time with Martha Stewart, who has just introduced a partnership with Chilliwitch, which seems like a perfect partnership.

1:06:43And you forget what a great salesperson Martha Stewart is, but I spent a little bit of time with her and she had me wanting to buy an awful lot of Chilliwitch placemats for my home. She's like, oh, you need this table runner, of course. And I'm like, oh, you're right. Of course I do. But it's a fun collaboration and one that makes a lot of sense. And I was really glad to get to spend a little bit of time with Her Majesty, Ms. Stewart. All hail the queen. Indeed. All right. That's all the time we have today. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to keep up with the latest news, browse job listings, or take a workshop, visit us online at businessofhome.com.

1:07:20If you want to get in touch with the show, write to us at podcast at businessofhome.com. This episode was produced by Fred Nikolaus and Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Have a great weekend and we'll be back with you on Monday.