Shax Riegler

About ten years ago this family decided they wanted a place of their own in Kona, after traveling to the Four Seasons resort there for years. “They kept sending me pictures and saying, ‘But we don’t really like the houses,’ ” says Primack, who was in the middle of designing the clients’ New York City apartment. “And I was like, ‘Of course you don’t, because they’re terrible.’ ” Pastiches of clichéd Hawaiian style, none felt special. And after a summer of disappointed searching, Primack suggested…

Like a character in a fairy tale, during a 2000 trip artist Rachel Feinstein fell under the spell of Bavaria’s picturesque towns, sublime landscapes, fantastical castles, and rococo churches. Further enchantment ensued in Munich at Nymphenburg, the legendary porcelain factory on the grounds of the royal family’s once- upon-a-time summer palace. There she succumbed to her own maladie de porcelaine, the fabled “porcelain sickness” that possessed so many aesthetes in the 18th century. Feinstein, wh…

In its October 16, 1995, issue, the The New Yorker published a photo portfolio that offered tantalizing glimpses into the living rooms of celebrated Gothamites like the Reverend Al Sharpton, writer Susan Sontag, artist Louise Bourgeois, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, decorator Mario Buatta, porn star Robyn Byrd, and a dozen others. None of the boldface homeowners were shown, and the photos—spread across three pages, six to a page—didn’t run large, but the peephole quality was irresistib…

Hiking, canoeing, campfire sing-alongs—generations of Boy Scouts visited these 25 wooded acres on a glacial lake in Wisconsin. But one day in the 1980s Camp Delavan, named for the lake on which it sits, closed, then was divvied up and sold off. Besides a few moldering buildings and a landscape slowly being overgrown, all that was left were the memories of the boys who had spent time there. Until 2005, that is, when Jennifer Litowitz happened upon a real estate ad. She and her husband, Alec, the…

Designer Markham Roberts’s neighbors were very curious when he started renovating the carriage house that sits across the road from his weekend retreat in upstate New York. “It’s a small town,” says the ebullient AD100 talent of his Dutchess County hamlet. “So, you know, when you start something, everyone wants to know what you’re doing.” Even so, this level of interest was greater than anything Roberts had experienced in the seven years since the Manhattan-based designer and his partner, art-an…

Edmund de Waal made his first pot at age five. Now 54, the ceramic artist (and best-selling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes) estimates that he has turned out tens of thousands, along the way achieving renown for his large-scale installations at historic houses and museums around the world. In de Waal’s latest intervention, “Elective Affinities,” at New York’s Frick Collection, nine hauntingly subtle site-specific pieces temporarily displace Renaissance bronzes and French porcelains. The elega…

“I’m fascinated by their design and history, but I also like cars that I can actually drive,” says real estate developer Rick Caruso, who has built up a portfolio of upscale shopping, residential, and office complexes around Southern California over the past few decades. Caruso’s drivable works of art include a 1930 Packard convertible (the first car in his collection), a 1955 Lancia Aurelia Spider America, a 1964 Shelby Cobra 289, and other gems that he enjoys taking out for a spin. One highlig…