“We display everything because we’re not disciplined enough to put things away,” jokes Chris Mitchell of the homes he shares with his wife, Pilar Guzmán, and their two sons. Perhaps, but the couple has mastered the art of display. Be it the glass shelving for china that turns their kitchens into museums, or a bedside arrangement of old-fashioned haberdashery items in brass and leather, they’ve developed such a knack for filling their spaces with just the right mix of objects (and, of course, furniture) that last fall they published the how-to book Patina Modern: A Guide to Designing Warm Timeless Interiors.
“We believe no surface should be empty, but we don’t think it should look like Ms. Havisham,” says Mitchell, who left the top ranks of magazine publishing (Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ) to renovate and sell cottages in the Hamptons. Guzmán, who comes to her current role as the editor of O magazine via Condé Nast Traveler, Martha Stewart Living, and Cookie, describes their groupings as a mix of utility and folly underscored by logic—be it a similar material or meaning.