Diamond Baratta Design, the New York firm known for its chic, knowledgeable, sometimes irreverent decorating and its bold use of color, is also famous for putting a contemporary spin on traditional crafts like cabinetmaking, quilting, rug braiding, and upholstery. William Diamond and Anthony Baratta, the firm's principals, have built lasting relationships with established artisans, and they're always on the lookout for talented newcomers, but they challenge all their collaborators to push their work in new directions.
For more than two decades, the designers have been working with Jan and Wayne Jurta of Country Braid House in Tilton, N. H., a maker of braided rugs that was founded in 1968 by Wayne's parents, Marion and George Jurta. While traditional braided rugs tend toward a fairly subdued color palette, Country Braid House has made bold rugs for Diamond Baratta, like the modern, graphic black-and-white-striped stair runner, shown here, for Diamond's house on Long Island, or richly colored, large-scale rugs that combine braided and hooked sections (the latter are made elsewhere), a technique that Jan Jurta said had its origins in Shaker design. "Bill and Tony really took the technique and ran with it, bringing it into the 21st century," she added, referring to Baratta's use of pictorial hooked-rug medallions that depict things like farm scenes and blue-and-white Delft motifs. The designers returned the compliment by saying that Jurta "never says no to a new concept."
The cabinetmaker Paul Flammang is another longtime collaborator. From his workshop in Old Saybrook, Conn., Flammang, a seventh-generation woodworker who presses his family (including one daughter who is doctor and another who is a post-doctoral student at Harvard) into service on big jobs, has produced fanciful things for Diamond Baratta's projects, like a newel post in the shape of a lighthouse (with tiny brass railings and an interior light) for a Cape Cod residence, or a 9-foot-tall media cabinet, inspired by New York cast-iron architecture, for Baratta's Manhattan apartment. Rather than present him with finished blueprints, Flammang said, the designers start with a sketch, allowing him a fair amount of input into the finished product. "They have such respect for tradespeople," he continued. "You don't feel like you're working for them; you feel like you're working with them."
Quilting is another craft on which Diamond Baratta has put a very contemporary stamp, devising bold patterns for upholstery and even wall coverings. Erin Wilson, a dancer-turned-quilter and textile artist who is based in Brooklyn, is one of the designers' newer collaborators; she introduced herself to them "in a good old cold call," she recalled. Diamond and Baratta admire "the intricacy of her needlework and her ability to create patterns of complex curved hand-appliqués," as in the pale blue and white Hawaiian-inspired pattern on an antique bench in a Connecticut house. It's extremely time-consuming work, but Wilson, whose own work tends to be abstract, relishes the opportunity to get re-acquainted with traditional quilt-making techniques, especially when given Diamond Baratta's modern twists. "If you take away the notion of something being old-timey," she said, "it becomes just a graphic design."
Rightly insisting that "a decorator is only as good as his upholsterer," Diamond and Baratta are big fans of Kenneth DeAngelis, the owner of Guido DeAngelis Inc., the New York company named for his father, who founded it in 1954. The designers admire De Angelis for realizing "our crazy ideas," like the headboard in Baratta's Miami Beach apartment. Inspired by a mid-20th century furniture classic — George Nelson's Marshmallow sofa — the headboard consists of five rows of upholstered circular pieces that seem to hover effortlessly on the wall. (In fact, they are bolted together in back.) It isn't DeAngelis's usual fare, but then little of his work with Diamond Baratta is. The designers come up with special shapes and legs, custom trimmings, and deconstruct patterned fabrics in ways complex enough to stump even the most seasoned upholsterer. But his biggest challenge, De Angelis said, presented itself when — at Diamond's suggestion— Baratta decided to turn two Victorian sofas into a bed (one for the headboard, one for the footboard) for his New York apartment. De Angelis had to figure out how to join the sofas in a way that looked seamless. So early one Saturday morning, he assembled his team in the shop, and they devised side rails that looked like the sofas' (soon to be unneeded) front rails. The finished product is one of Diamond Baratta's more spectacular designs. But as DeAngelis said, "They're original, that's for sure."
Paul Flammang: 23 Shepard St, Old Saybrook, Conn., (860) 767-7786. Guido DeAngelis Inc.: 312 E 95th Street, (212) 348-8225.
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