Incollect Magazine - Issue 6

88 www.incollect.com Hunt Slonem working in his Manhattan studio. Photo by Allison Dayka. “I do installations with furniture in my houses,” says Slonem, who is an obsessive collector of furniture and decorative arts. Fifty trucks were required to move his furniture alone into Searles Castle in 2021. He has a lot of 18th-century American furniture, he says, but it’s mostly 19th-century furniture. “Many pieces are from the English Regency (1811–1830) period, others more mid- 19th century, dark, heavy and Victorian, classical revival referring back to earlier styles.” Gothic Revival is one of the styles he likes the most. “I have hundreds of Gothic chairs and sofas and other things. I like mixing my work with all of this stuff and the frames on the bunny painting help that happen.” Slonem has a new book coming out in September called The Spirited Homes of Hunt Slonem published by Gibbs Smith with a foreword by his friend and collector Whoopi Goldberg. “My decorating style is called maximalism, I am told,” he says, laughing. He loves patina and prefers to keep antiques in the original condition in which he finds them, but re-covers them with his own fabric designs. “I don’t want things to be perfect. I like a little character, and the history that comes with that.” The same goes for his houses. “I don’t repaint very often. I like to show that the houses have age. My bedroom in my home in Louisiana hasn’t been painted for 125 years.”