Does your dining table convert to a pool table? Will your wall mirror turn into a TV?
For those who come up short—and even those who don’t, and those who’d just like to take a look at these and other luxury home products, high-tech and otherwise—the Hamptons Contemporary Design+Decor fair will commandeer the grounds of the Elks Lodge in Southampton from Friday to Sunday, June 3 to 5.
Everyone from international brands to artisans selling limited-edition pieces—from lighting to floors to furniture to carpets to pianos to outdoor pizza ovens to glassware—will be set up, showroom-style, in a modular building.
There will be 160 exhibitors, and “every exhibitor has their own little art gallery, if you will,” said Rick Friedman, who is running the show. “It’s going to be shocking and amazing and dazzling.”
Mr. Friedman has segued into home furnishings after previously running ArtHamptons fairs. “I started to realize that it was a little myopic. The art was really the entire house … the canvas was the entire home,” he said Friday. Furniture, beds, rugs are consumable products, he said, but they’re also artistic elements. Also, “not everybody was an art buyer,” he pointed out, “but virtually everybody lives in a home.”
Mr. Friedman said he was excited to be showing sophisticated outdoor kitchens, tables set for “the most fashionably trendy summer brunch style that you could possibly see,” wares from countries like Germany and Italy, famous brands like Sub-Zero and Wolf juxtaposed against one-of-a-kind or limited-edition pieces.
“As a homeowner out here, I didn’t know these things existed,” he said of some of them.
The weekend will be peppered with events as well, from an opening night preview to benefit the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, to book signings to tours and talks to liquor tastings to a cooking demonstration by a Michelin chef—and to marshmallow roasts in the fire pits. “I wanted to make it interactive and fun,” Mr. Friedman said.
The full rundown can be found at www.hamptonscontemporary.com.
on May 27, 2016