Archive for category In the news
Dining by (Artistic Tile) Design
Posted by Vicente in Events, In the news on March 6, 2010
Artistic Tile has asked me to design their table for DIFFA’s Dining by Design – an event that I’ve been involved in for the last 12 years. It’s always an extraordinary evening.
I’ve agreed to help them with this project as I love Artistic Tile’s sense of humor and the way in which they portray themselves through advertising – almost a little extravagant.
Dining by Design opens in two weeks and we’ve been working on our table design for the last couple of days. We’ve gone from creating an extravaganza to a now much more simplified setting. Still I think it’s going to be very dramatic. We are using a glass gold-backed tile on the floor and furniture and I opted for a free-standing booth so we don’t have to deal with walls. The shimmer of the gold will carry the evening through!
If you are going to be in the New York area between March 18 – 22nd, be sure to put this on your schedule – it is always an extravaganza not to be missed.
Design-Milk's Friday Five
Posted by Vicente in In the news, Random on December 18, 2009
I’m excited to share my five (current) favorite things with you today via Design-Milk’s ‘Friday Five with Vicente Wolf’ feature.
Happy Friday everyone!
Living With Wine
Posted by Vicente in Books, In the news on November 13, 2009
I have had clients come to me and say that they’re doing a wine cellar, how should they do it. And it’s always the usual approach – having it be very utilitarian. This all changes with Samantha Nestor’s new book, Living With Wine, which really opens up the possibilities of what wine rooms can look like.
I’m very lucky to have one of my designs included with my restaurant, Alto, which has walls of wine rack from the back of the banquets to the ceiling. This design was inspired by Damien Hirst’s medicine cabinets and photographer Andrew French did a great job of capturing the space. It is so nice to see my work in the book’s large scale.
Highly recommended for all wine aficionados!
Magazines
Posted by Vicente in In the news, Interior Design Business on November 11, 2009
My first project 36 years ago was published in House Beautiful and I have had the privilege since then to work with most of the top interior design magazines and their editors. Some of these publications still exist, others have come and gone, but the one thing that has been a constant amongst all the successful ones is their integrity and how they manage to stay true to their brand. What many of you may not know is that there is a split between editorial and advertising that is similar to the split between church and state. Editorial will never be influenced by advertising as that would seriously hamper the integrity of the magazine and maintaining a high integrity is the holy grail to all editors-in-chief.
In my post yesterday I wanted to express my sadness at the demise of another publication with such integrity. I also feel frustrated at the amount of publications that are still around. Every single designer out there dreams of being published in a magazine, but very few of us are lucky enough to have that opportunity. When the number of high quality outlets dwindle down to only five, even fewer of the really talented designers have the chance of being featured, because, let’s face it, there are only so many pages per magazine.
I agree with those readers who have commented on the post below about how the richness of picking up a magazine and leafing through the pages will never disappear. How it looks and how you can pass it around the room and show to different people cannot happen on a computer screen. All the pages, whether modern or mid-range or traditional have a richness because of paper, printing and it makes a designer’s work really shine.
While I cling to my love for magazines and the experience of reading one, I hope that there is an opportunity in our future that will allow all designers to have the exposure they need in order to get new business and build up a hefty ‘look book’ to showcase their work.
Editorial Comment
Posted by Vicente in In the news, Interior Design Business on November 10, 2009

My work on the Met Home cover, December 2008
It is sad that in our industry, where publications are the inspiration and the platform from which we can show our work and worth, top quality magazines keep closing. To me the closing of Met Home feels like a personal loss. Editor-in-Chief Donna Warner is a great friend and a really special lady and Linda O’Keeffe, the editor that I most worked with at the publication, is somebody who is great fun to work with as a photographer and an editor who really allowed my work to shine.
You know, we think that the economy only affects us in our work and in our capability of getting clients, but here is one more affect of how it keeps eroding our capabilities to expand our exposure and expand our possibilities of getting work. We’re basically left with five national magazines in which to showcase our work and it is a sad state of affairs, which creates a situation where more demands are made on us of what these magazines want to show, which affects how we choose to design spaces, which affects the working relationship where magazines can become demanding and force us to go through the eye of the needle to be able to appear on their pages.
The conditions that we as designers have to adhere to in order to appear in their pages, gives us no recourse but to succumb and adjust, in some cases our design and in other how we choose to represent our work, and in turn affect how people view the work, the trends that they see coming down the pipe and the sense of what is the state of design. (If more magazines are traditional, more traditional work will appear which will give the impression that traditional is the direction of design.) Nationally, only Elle Décor is left out on the marketplace, to show contemporary work that speaks of clean, simple design. We’re lucky in a city like New York where magazines like NY Spaces give us another venue of exposure.
The closing of Met Home is a great loss to our industry.
In A Cab!
Posted by Vicente in In the news, Video on November 3, 2009
In the back of the New York cabs they have small TV screens with news, weather and some decorative fluff on. Yesterday I was in a yellow taxi heading downtown and I was talking on my cellphone (such a New Yorker) and as I was talking, out of my peripheral vision I see a shelf with photographs on it. I thought to myself “There it is, someone copying my picture ledges!” until I realized that it was my apartment, with me walking through the space!
The segment had originally been shown on LXTV’s Open House and has now been placed on the cab circuit. So if you’re in New York, be sure to take cabs everywhere and you’re bound to see me in one sooner or later!
Ahead of the Curve – here's the video!
Posted by Vicente in Events, In the news, Video on October 22, 2009
As most of you know, I was part of the Ahead of the Curve panel discussion at the Las Vegas Market in September 2009. For those who were not able to attend (in person or via the web), here’s the video where I presented my key trend-findings and we discussed it with the panel. Be sure to watch the other parts of the panel discussion too.
LXTV's OpenHouse
Posted by Vicente in At home, In the news on October 19, 2009
Thank you for all of your concerns and good wishes. Happy to say I’m home and on the way back to living a normal life, a little paler than I was two weeks ago, but in good spirits.
I got released from hospital on Saturday and spent most of the weekend in bed, gaining my strength back. As one does when the energy to do much else than lie in bed is missing, I was flicking through the TV channels when I stopped on NBC’s OpenHouse show on LXTV. They had filmed my apartment a while back and I knew it was bound to be aired at some or other point this month, and there it was!
What a great boost to see my apartment on such a popular show. If you missed it, you can watch it via their website here.
On The Skirted Roundtable
Posted by Vicente in In the news, Interior Design Business on August 26, 2009
Yesterday I had a roundtable discussion with Megan and Linda from The Skirted Roundtable. I thought I’d share the clip with you here, but be sure to head on over to their website to participate in the conversation.
Liberty National Golf Club House
Posted by Vicente in In the news, Projects on August 25, 2009

This weekend is The Barclays pro golfing tournament at Liberty National, where Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh (among others) will be playing and I’m very excited to say that I designed all the interiors of the country club. Though I don’t understand golf much, I do understand the drama that interior design can bring to a space, which after working on the space for two years – with a lot of drama and a lot of design – I am very proud of.
This pas weekend there was an hour-long special segment on national TV featuring the golf clubhouse and interviews with the owners and prominent suppliers. My firm did not receive any credit.
Now, God knows I cannot complain about lack of exposure, and you are all probably thinking ‘But he appears here and he appears there, he’s so exposed’, but there are certain projects that, when they get done, you feel that this could be a benchmark in bringing my work to a different place. As a business person, you want your work to bring different types of jobs, not just residential, but a broader spectrum of creative design.
So when a job that you have worked on for two years gets the chance to have its exposure on prime time television (with credits) and you’re not included in those credits, it’s disheartening because we all want to hear the applause for our performance, whether you’ve just started in business or have been for 35 years. And that is part of why we do what we do, because we want that pat on the back. Plus, the possibilities of getting new leads from beautiful projects. For myself, I’m always trying to break out of the mold of being just a residential designer – hence I do photography, product design and jobs like this that says to the public I don’t just focus on one thing and that I can be considered for different types of projects.
Especially in times like these it is so important for us to cast the widest net.
So, though now appearing in a small blog, here is the design that Vicente Wolf Associates did for Liberty National.
(As a side bar, for you out there who put out a contract – which you all should be doing – in mine it states that I have the right to publish pictures of my work. You should all include this clause in your contract as you then never have to ask permission to publish a job you’re proud of. You have it in your contract from the beginning and it is your right to be credited for your work – whether the client wants his name put on the piece or not is theirs.)

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