Mrs. Gutfreund once said, “A room by Henri Samuel is like a haute couture little black dress. You add the accessories and make it personal. But the black dress has to be perfect: curtains and upholstery perfectly made, paint perfectly done, boiseries perfectly installed, so if the room were empty, you’d see the perfect detailing.” For the Gutfreunds and his other clients who were collectors par excellence, Samuel designed rooms to not only set off their existing works of art, but to serve as a foundation to add on to over time, like a fine bronze deepening with patina.

The Winter Garden, inspired by a set of chinoiserie panels the Gutfreunds purchased years before, has haunted me long before I had ever heard of its creator Henri Samuel and it was one of the reasons I wrote the 2018 monograph Henri Samuel: Master of the French Interior. The day Mrs. Gutfreund kindly invited me over for tea to discuss Samuel and to see the apartment first-hand was pulse-quickening. So many times reality doesn’t live up to the pictures – not so here. But interiors are amongst the most ephemeral creations and this room and the rest of the apartment, now disassembled, live on in its parts of the sum and will soon find new little black dresses to adorn.

A few of my favorite pieces from the recent Stair Galleries sale of the last pieces of the Gutfreund New York apartment: