Walking through the rooms, Gaby describes her policy of keeping and working with what she can. Two sets of Sophie’s curtains remain and much of Jocasta’s built-in cabinetry has been retained, along with some lacquer-like paintwork and Delft tiles. Poignantly, there’s also the impression of a door that once connected to the house next door, occupied by Jocasta’s partner of 30 years – the architect Richard McCormack, who in 2014 chronicled that time in a slim, self-published volume titled Two Houses in Spitalfields.
Gabby and David brought most of their existing furniture and furnishings with them. ‘The only rule was that we had to relocate the art – the painting couldn’t go from the bedroom in our previous house to this one,’ notes Gabby, adding that almost every picture is by a friend. The arrangement of the room, she says, was ‘instinctive’, and usually guided by one particular object, with her eye – honed by the possibilities of filmic transformation and the importance of mood.
She also cites the lasting influence of her late mother, Zehava Helmer – for whom Park Avenue, with its stylishly worldly lead, ‘is a thing’ – and the Mexican architect Luis Barragán, who used color as a structural element. In the dining room, eight panels of cerulean blue artwork by Gary Simmons span the return wall and inform the color of the rug, which was stitched together from colored strips of Turkish carpet. The table, topped in decidedly bright yellow Formica, reflects another service Gabby offers to customers.
