CELERIE KEMBLE is a principal in Kemble Interiors, a design firm co-founded by her mother, Mimi McMakin. Celerie has been featured in every major design magazine and has been listed for more than ten years in House Beautiful’s annual “Top Designers” list. “I design more to a subconscious sense and by feeling first, then I try to add the unique and beautiful elements that make a room memorable.”
Celerie Kemble, Taylor-King and Woodbridge Furniture Designer
Kemble Interiors has a legendary reputation in the design community. You and your talented mother, Mimi, have produced inspired designs for decades and have carefully balanced whimsy and elegance for your discerning design clients. Can you give our readers some insight into how your mother’s influence drew you to interior design, and what continues to drive your passion for the craft today?
As a child I lived in a carefully crafted, but fuss-free home, full of quirk, sentiment, and garden-inspired design. My mother had incorporated her treasures and finds for us while doing decades of interior design work for others. She mixed in family heirlooms (only important because of the personal history they held, not of any financial value). She recovered, repainted, and repurposed so much, but placed it over handpainted Portuguese tiles she designed and laid herself. The alchemy of her creativity, constant shopping, and access to the top fabric houses, artisans, and craftsmen made our home, a 19th century church, a magical place filled with chintzes, pastels, wicker, and freshly painted Victorian furniture. It was hard to tell the indoors from the outdoors as our home consisted almost entirely of porches and gazebos. To grow up inside such beauty while being taught the fun of the hunt in antiques stores, auction houses, and being brought along to field trips to meet furniture craftsman; I don’t think I had a chance at any other career. It is still the transformation from before to after that holds me to this business. I love nothing more than discovering or discerning what I think is special in a piece of furniture or a textile and then finding a home for it, as well as placing supporting characters on the stage to let it shine. A long time ago, I thought I would be a writer, but instead of words as my medium I’ve found I’m better at composing stories of elements and objects.
When you take on a design project with a client, what are the questions that you feel must be asked and answered first?
The first questions I ask a client beyond their timeline and budget (those are never the fun questions!), is what they want their home to feel like. It is very unusual to have a client who can describe design in any sort of accurate nuance, but they can tell me if they want the house to feel lively, different, cozy, warm, cool, striking, calm, layered, clean, orderly, colorful, restful, etc... I ask them how many people are expected to be in one room at a time, what the tone of conversation is - how dressed or undressed is each experience? This sounds silly, but knowing if it is a barefoot experience, or if others have dressed up to be there, tells me a lot about what the expectations are, and what will make the most of the room. I design more to a subconscious sense and by feeling first, then I try to add the unique and beautiful elements that make a room memorable.
“Successful rooms come from balancing color, tone and saturation...” Celerie Kemble
Your use of beautiful color palettes in your projects is so thoughtful and invoking. Can you give our readers an understanding of how you approach color and tone in your projects?
I often start a project by finding a textile or art piece that has many colors in it, but has a composure and overall sense that is appealing to my client. From there, I will tease out colors that might dominate the room and others that juxtapose the larger consistent colors. There isn’t a color I don’t like, but successful rooms come from balancing color, tone and saturation, so I often think more of what complements each other and how using different strength of those colors helps to place some things in the foreground and some things in the background. It isn’t a science of any kind, so I’m struggling even with how to explain it - it is again, back to how it all FEELS together. I think anything can be made to work as long as it is partnered with complementary elements. You should see me on the dance floor. . . I’m an absolute disaster! But, if you give me a partner who can lead and has great rhythm, I’m magically moving as if I knew what to do; colors are the same.
Kemble Interiors has offices in NY, Palm Beach and London, and each of these locations is inspiring and enticing in their own right; but where else do you like to travel to for great design inspiration?
I shop wherever I travel - flea markets, auctions, antique stores, thrift stores. It is often in the jumble of good merchandising that I can see something in an exciting light. I love to travel and be a house guest, or a luncheon or dinner guest, so I learn what home feels like in different places. My favorite homes tend to be family vacation homes that have a few generations of use. I was just in the countryside in England, and I am amazed each time I go at the warmth of the old houses and myriad of collections inside.
Your projects always use ceiling space in such exciting and creative ways; whether through beautiful light fixtures, or ceiling décor and trim. Can you speak to our readers about how you like to incorporate ceilings into your room designs?
My boyfriend might tell you that the favorite part of every room in our house is the ceiling. That’s probably because I can’t really accessorize it more and it is the clearest surface, but I do always give it a special finish since it is the broadest uncovered surface in every room. It should be deliberately shiny, flat-finished, clad in paper, or adorned with a molding that confines it with flair. I also hunt for ceiling lights that cast off magnificent shadows and bear some important aspects of the room’s design soul strongly enough that up there and alone they still define the character of the room.
Your product lines with Taylor King and Woodbridge are exquisite, and your use of fabric colors, textures, and trims correlate so beautifully with the luxurious wood finishes. Our readers would love to know how you approach product design. With an upholstered item, do you start with a great design in mind and try to build comfort around that design, or vice versa?
When I am designing products for one of my furniture lines, I approach it as an opportunity to create something I can’t find in the marketplace. Usually, I am inspired by something I once admired as an antique or vintage piece. As an interior designer, to know where you can find multiples of something, or reliably-scaled furniture again and again, is a most precious tool. I think of my licensed furniture lines as a way to provide myself and other designers personality-filled furniture in exciting finishes, useful scale, or very comfortable upholstery with distinctive lines. I have decades worth of deep files of images from antique stores, auction catalogs, and sketches or photos of things that strike me; whether I can use them on a project or not. Later, the hardware, legs, or the apron may become the start of a new coffee table or bedside table scaled for today’s use. Much of my Taylor King upholstery has been inspired by the Napoleon III era because I love the small scale and handsome tailoring of the time. We worked through many revisions to bring the tight seats and backs to the comfort level I refer to as, “fall asleep watching TV in”, or at least to the level below that which I call, “happy to have a long, long conversation with a glass of wine in hand”. If I can’t look forward to sitting in something for an hour or two, I don’t want it! Luckily, both Taylor King and Woodbridge have engineers and furniture makers who are game to indulge me, while also knowing how to interpret my complex fantasies to craft them into beautiful, comfortable, well-made pieces that will last!