Mike Rupp, his client and one of her two daughters took a seat together. They did so not to discuss his latest furnishing finds for the rooms of their East Hampton home he was working on, but rather just to sit—maybe even bounce up and down a bit. Rupp had taken the two women to his favorite Manhattan upholsterer for a reason.
“I like to have fun with clients,” he says, “get their hands a little bit dirty.” For two custom-designed sectionals in the living room and den, he wanted to make sure that the right cushions, with the right density of filling, would be chosen. “We sat on cushion after cushion,” he recalls, “and I was asking them, ‘What do you like about this one, and what do you think about that one?’ When you really involve a client like this, it makes the experience of their homes more personalized. It creates stories for them to tell. It gives them a deeper connection to important pieces in their home.”
The homeowner, too, remembers the outing well. “We went from sitting on soft cushions to medium cushions, to ones with a hard back and others with a soft back.” Different degrees of firmness were ultimately chosen for each room. “That experience was an example of the best thing about working with Mike,” she says. “Some people just listen to you. Mike hears you.”
Rupp already had a firm metaphorical seating arrangement with the clients, having earlier made design changes in the family’s Upper East Side apartment. While refreshing one of the daughters’ bedrooms, updating it as she had grown up, Rupp and the clients forged a strong working and friendship relationship. “Unbeknownst to me those many years ago, that job would lead me to this dream job of designing all the rooms of their new house,” he says of the structure designed by Modern Shelter | Architecture.
Natural light creates unique shadows on the staircase.
In the living room, vintage armchairs by Ueli Berger are covered in a wool from Holland & Sherry. The globe chandelier is by Lumfardo.
In the kitchen, bar stools covered in a Holly Hunt fabric are in alignment at a custom island designed by Modern Shelter | Architecture.
An edited mix of accessories rest atop a vintage cabinet that was sourced from 1stDibs.
Captivating artwork by Jens Nagels overlooks a custom sectional that is covered in a Cowtan & Tout fabric. The family room’s coffee tables, with cushions, are custom by Rupp Studio.
In the daughter’s bedrom, a vibrant throw from ABC Carpet & Home is the ideal juxaposition to the Candle White paint color by Benjamin Moore. The Finn Juhl chair is covered in plush pink velvet.
Beitel Landscape Associates designed the landsacpe. The outdoor sofa is from RH, and the swivel chairs are from Room & Board.
The house appears at first glance as two separate dwellings—but linked. The public living areas are contained within a structure that assumes an elegant mid-century profile on the wooded site, with its angled roof and generous expanses of clerestory windows. Meanwhile, the two-story bedroom wing appears as a shingled rectangular element off to the side, with an upward sweeping roof, appearing to take flight over the yard and pool. Despite the two somewhat differing architectural elements, everything within harmonizes. The homeowner’s stated desire for “soothing, calm rooms with subtle pops of color” was answered. “I didn’t want bland. We wanted to be able to walk in and feel relaxed, not jarred.”
Well aware of the angular architectural geometries of the contemporary house, Rupp responded with decidedly softer furnishings, many with rounded edges and sinuous undulations. “I like to blur the lines between what might be considered masculine and feminine,” he says. In the primary bedroom, for instance, he brought in a sculptural Roman Thomas chair defined by “flowing curves.” While he points out that its Holland and Sherry fabric is a masculine-feeling wool, he emphasizes that the shape of the chair is “feminine and sumptuous.” Elsewhere, he designed the large sectional in the family room with flat cushion-like arm pads. “I wanted the sofa to be a destination where you could put your head down and take a nap without a pillow.”
One of Rupp’s cleverest and most subtle design approaches is to use an array of colors for rooms, while reversing the color schemes from one room to the next. In the daughters’ bedrooms, for instance, the chairs and beds, while identical, are of different hues, but the colors used in one bedroom appear reversed in the other. “One thing I’ve learned from Mike,” says the homeowner, “is that every room speaks to another room in the house.” In choosing the many varieties of blues and grays, lavenders and greens, or what Rupp says are “tumbled beach-glass shades,” he fulfilled the homeowner’s wish for serenity.
After a couple of years in the house, the homeowner talks about the longest part of the drive from Manhattan to East Hampton, which occurs on a stretch of Main Street in town. “The moment I make the left turn onto the street, I can’t wait to reach the house,” she says. “My husband and I and my children love walking into this home. The experience gets better and better every time.”
