Design

Here's How You Can Shop Interior Designer Robert Stilin's Personal Curation of Furniture, Artwork, and More

robert-stilin-design-shop
All images courtesy of Robert Stilin Shop.

Robert Stilin really loves to shop. It was a frustrated search through Bloomingdale's, Ethan Allen, Crate & Barrel, and the like as a Floridian newlywed that led him to open his own eponymous lifestyle store in 1989. The following iteration was an art and design dealership and interiors studio (fostered by shop clients who sought out his eye for decor), still flourishing and sought out by the likes of the Carters. Robert Stilin 3.0, just launched this week out of his current New York home base, is an online marketplace filled with covetable objects, many of which the designer himself found scouring the web, Instagram, and sales around the globe. 

"Most people, if they're spending any considerable amount of money, they want more information, they want connection. Part of it's the romance and the chase and the experience," he explains of his newly minted site, designed with both interior designers and standalone shoppers in mind. "We're accessible to people. They can contact us directly, and we can explain where we got it, the history, the provenance." Indeed, each item on the site comes with a ready-made tearsheet, the kind a designer might print out and bring along to a client meeting.

robert-stilin-design-shop

Stilin’s platform—spanning design objects, artwork, and home accessories—embraces the digital age, offering more than a simple furniture catalog. The site allows users to see items in situ, as Stilin might place them. “We’re not just showing five pictures of a chair,” he emphasizes. Instead, the shop imagines how the piece lives in a space, and how the buyers can “dream” with it.

“I’ve sat in every chair, tested every sofa,” says Stilin. "I'm an instinctual collector." The platform, freshly staffed, is an evolution of the 750-square-foot office space in New York where Stilin would store and sell items, regularly pulling pieces for his clientele's homes, should they be a fit. Online, new stock moves at a more rapid pace, updated weekly as soon as items finish their journey through the restoration process. 

robert-stilin-design-shop

"The site, and the shop, the gallery business, and all that, it's a personal passion of mine. It's something that I can't stop myself from doing," says Stilin. "I'm just trying to share with the world little pieces of what I do, what I create, what you see in my books, in magazines." The next step? Pieces designed by Stilin himself, interwoven in the shop with his antique finds. "Historically, we basically only do custom or new furniture for clients, and we don't really sell it, but that'll be unfolding over the next year or two." On the docket are custom upholstery, side tables, coffee tables, consoles, and, as Stilin remarks, "The sky's the limit." 

Before we get to any of that, however, the designer selected his 13 favorite pieces currently available in the Robert Stilin shop for CULTURED readers' exclusive perusal. Move quick, before they end up in a client's home instead!

Robert Stilin's Shopping Favorites:

francis-jourdain-lounge-chair

Francis Joudain lounge chair
$25,000
France, c. 1940

robert-stilin-shop-rare-lounge-chair

B.B.P.R. Rare Lounge Chair
Italy, c. 1950
$28,000

robert-stilin-shop-rare-lounge-chair

Guillerme et Chambron Armchair
France, c. 1960
$12,000

robert-stilin-table

Pietrre Chapo Table T22C L'oeil
France, 1972
$42,000

robert-stilin-side-table

Side Table Polished Brass, Shagreen
Italy, 20th C
$14,000

robert-stilin-shop-desk

Pierre Paulin Executive Desk
France
$18,500.00

robert-stilin-console

Work Table/Console
France, 19th C
$12,800.00

robert-stilin-chandelier-shop

Guillerme et Chambron Chandelier
France, c. 1960
$5,600.00

robert-stilin-shop-amphora-lamp

Amphora Shaped Table Lamp
$6,800.00

robert-stilin-shop-lamp

Iron Floor Lamp with Bird Decorations
France, c. 1940
$10,800.00

Robert-stilin-shop-sconce

Maria Pergay Totem Sconce
France, c. 1950
$32,000

Robert-Stilin-shop-horsebit-box

Hermes Horsebit Box
France, c. 1970
$2,400.00

Robert-Stilin-shop-bitossi-vase

Bitossi Red Vase with a Black Matte Exterior Finish
$1,850.00

Create your Subscription