Designer Danny Kaplan’s Manhattan showroom is also his apartment: the live-work space reimagined

Manhattan has a great tradition of live-work arrangements, from the downtown artist lofts of the 1960s and 1970s (such as Donald Judd’s home and studio) to the shopkeeper’s apartment above a storefront. Part of this arrangement, of course, is a necessity due to competitive real estate, but it also impacts the artists’ creative output. To wit: Coenties Slip – a former maritime area in what is now the island’s Financial District – was essentially a supply shop to figures like Agnes Martin and Robert Indiana, artists who scavenged the neighbourhood for materials and enjoyed large spaces where they could create proportionally scaled paintings and sculpture. Today, those spaces have mostly been converted into condos; artists who want a similar situation have been pushed to the fringes of New York City’s outer boroughs. However, there has been a recent revival of the live-work space, but instead of an apartment-meets-studio it’s apartment-meets-gallery.

Inside Danny Kaplan’s Manhattan apartment and showroom

The designer Danny Kaplan – who makes ceramic lighting (see his collaboration with Brooklyn's In Common With), sculptural furniture, and tiles – recently uprooted his showroom from Bushwick, where it was located above his studio, and landed in NoHo, right between the storied Public Theater and scene-y restaurant and nightclub Jean’s. The space occupies a full floor and transitions from the more public gallery up front to Kaplan’s private quarters in the back. ‘It’s from another era,’ Kaplan says of the space. ‘These spaces come along very rarely, and when they do they're often attached to buildings that have kind of wacky landlords.’

Kaplan built a few walls to make the space, which was formerly an art gallery, feel more residential. Furniture is meant to be lived with and so the vignettes are arranged into rooms that show the work in situ. ‘I want to see how things wear,’ Kaplan says. ‘It's nice knowing that things have had a life.’

In the showroom’s ‘bedroom’, there’s a wood headboard adorned with ceramic tiles, which he designed with Vince Patti of Lesser Miracle and is loosely based on a Jean-Michel Frank screen; a prototype of a stainless-steel chair with a tubular maroon frame; and Kaplan’s ‘Triad’ café table. The built-in shelves are furnished with artwork that he has collected from friends, including a pair of bookends by Shane Gabier and small sculptures by Elisabeth Kley, alongside one of the very first ceramic lamps Kaplan made. In the powder room, there’s a playful resin mirror designed in collaboration with Joseph Algieri, as well as chairs by Thomas Barger scattered around.

While such a personal curation of objects helps Kaplan communicate with clients, there’s also a bit of selfishness in the equation. ‘It's also how I want to live,’ he says. ‘I want to be around these things that I love and covet.’

The new space has already informed Kaplan’s work. He’s been able to fine-tune the precise colour temperature of his lighting by living in such close proximity to so many of the lamps and sconces, which he didn’t do in his previous apartment. ‘I would see all the work all day at the studio and so at home I wanted to keep my mind clear,’ Kaplan says.

He’s also created a site-specific architectural lighting element called ‘Foxglove’, which his friend Kassandra Thatcher plastered over after it was installed, and built a 12ft-long metal-framed dining table for when he hosts dinner parties. Kaplan is currently experimenting with upholstered furniture and has a pair of corduroy armchairs in a conversation-pit-like space that he’s wear testing. (So far, he’s decided that the cushions need to be softer.)

Visitors to the showroom will be able to see all of these pieces (and more) but one area that’s off-limits is Kaplan’s own bedroom, which is on the far end of the space. ‘It’s not quite resolved,’ he says, though for now it is furnished with a prototype of the ‘Paravent’ bed (the same design as is in the public area), one of his dining tables surrounded by Ruemmler chairs, plus a few vintage pieces. His private bathroom shares a glass-block wall with the powder room and is done up in Zellige tiles by Clé

In the future, the space won’t look like it does today. ‘A lot of the work feels like a representation of where I am in my aesthetic development now,’ Kaplan says. And as he changes, the space will grow right alongside him.

Danny Kaplan Showroom, 417 Lafayette St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003, dannykaplanstudio.com