SHELTER ISLAND, NY
A Designer’s Farmhouse on Shelter Island
“There are two things that I think are vital to understand Shelter Island,” Stephen Harvey explains. “One: there are no traffic lights at all, just stop signs. And two: we’re on an island with no bridges to the mainland so you have to take a ferry. The ferry ride is short but you don’t come here unless you want to come here. You don’t drive through it accidentally”
You get the sense that Harvey and his interior designer partner, Perry Sayles, enjoy the relative seclusion after several years trotting the globe for work. Sayles was a successful lawyer at Freshfields, and the pair lived in Hong Kong and London before returning to New York, collecting furniture and objects as they racked up air miles. “We’ve always liked travelling and collecting things as we travelled,” confirms Sayles. “We accumulated lots of stuff over many years.”
“We’ve always liked travelling and collecting things as we travelled,” confirms Sayles. “We accumulated lots of stuff over many years.”
When they arrived back in the US, Sayles decided it was time for a career change. “I enjoyed being a lawyer. I liked the challenge of it,” he says. “It was great but I was a partner in a big firm and your career path becomes narrower and narrower. We came back to the US and I decided I was not that interested in practicing law anymore. I felt it was time for a shift.” He had long harboured ambitions to be an architect but the length of the course was off-putting for someone embarking on a second career. Instead, he enrolled on a two-year interior design course at Parsons School of Design in NYC.
Harvey, meanwhile, mapped his career path out after seeing an exhibition on Tutankhamun in Chicago at 10 years old. “I decided I was going to be an Egyptologist and I doggedly stuck with it through university at Yale, where I met Perry.” When they moved to London he did not have a university position yet, so Sayles created an office for him at the top of their five-storey Battersea townhouse, which was designed with USM Haller shelving.
Currently, the pair both work out of their eighteenth century, farmhouse on Shelter Island. The property was initially renovated by a previous owner in 1999 but Sayles has put in a new kitchen, as well as adding air conditioning and a swimming pool. He also stripped back some of the ceilings to expose the original beams. And when it comes to furniture and accessories he likes to mix-and-match, juxtaposing contemporary and heritage pieces.
“One of the things I like about USM is the variety of options,” he says. “You can choose strong colors.”
Importantly too, their USM shelving was brought across the Atlantic. They had the old pieces reconfigured and combined for their new home, storing some of their books as well as displaying their collection of native American pottery and other pieces they havegathered over the years. To this they added a bar cart that Sayles designed with USM’s in-house team and a pair of bedside tables. “One of the things I like about USM is the variety of options,” he says. “You can choose strong colors.”
I would never have thought of taking a modern, blue metal furniture piece and putting it in our dining room here in the US, which has these wooden beams and an old farmhouse feel. This furniture can be reconfigured and now it looks so wonderful in another home.”
The fact that the shelving is a comfortable fit in very different environments came as a pleasant surprise to Harvey. “In London, the owners of our house had made things nice and spare and clean inside. USM fitted in there and I loved that office space. I would never have thought of taking a modern, blue metal furniture piece and putting it in our dining room here in the US, which has these wooden beams and an old farmhouse feel. This furniture can be reconfigured and now it looks so wonderful in another home.”
Discover more: www.perrysayles.com @perrysayles
USM Sales Partner: USM Showroom New York
Photographer: @chrismottalini, mottalini.com
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