Interior designer Anthony Baratta’s new office in NoMad is located inside a 1915 building on Fifth Avenue. He moved here last summer, after realizing that his firm’s workspace in Chelsea wasn’t cutting it anymore, thanks to a choppy layout and poor lighting conditions. “It wasn’t conducive to designing or seeing color,” says Baratta, “whereas this spot has big, beautiful windows.” A Saarinen table, surrounded by a tufted leather chair and a set of vintage barbershop chairs upholstered in a tartan plaid, anchors the 1,200-square-foot space, where a pin board is used to mock up design schemes. Baratta reports that he “sat at this desk for 30 years” with his late partner, decorator Bill Diamond. “It’s my lucky table.”
A custom cabinet with colored panels holds a career’s worth of magazine features, as well as odds and ends. “I’m not willing to part with the hundreds of publications we’ve appeared in,” says Baratta. “I don’t like to throw away things that are significant to me.”
Fabric samples, paint chips, rug braids, and other tools of the trade are neatly organized in binders and bins.
A wooden clock hangs above a sculptural antique settee; the canoe is a score from 1stdibs.com. The floor lamp is one of a set of 12 that Baratta and Diamond designed for their 1997 revamp of the Eden Roc hotel in Miami Beach. “It ended up in the home of a client, who gifted it to me upon moving out of the city.”
Textile samples for a project Baratta’s firm is currently working on in Palm Beach.
