Introspective Magazine: Hudson River Estate

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With This Handsome Hudson River Estate, Glenn Gissler Redefines Gracious Living

by Fred A. Bernstein
Photography by Peter Murdock

In Nyack, New York — not even an hour’s drive from Manhattan — the interior designer created a home that makes its owners feel as if they’d been transported to a faraway resort.

It takes GLENN GISSLER almost two hours to drive from his apartment in Brooklyn Heights to his weekend house in northwestern Connecticut. So, he might envy his clients — an investment banker, his wife and their young daughter — who live in a Lower Manhattan loft. Getting to their weekend house, in Nyack, New York, takes all of 45 minutes. And that includes crossing the Hudson River, which the city apartment and the country house overlook from opposite sides.

Nine years ago, when they bought the Manhattan apartment, the couple hired Gissler to design its interiors, a job that included helping them assemble a collection of ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST ART. Then, three years ago, when they started looking for a weekend house, they turned to Gissler for advice. After a few false starts, the couple found a newly constructed COLONIAL REVIVAL/shingle-style home that fronts the river at its widest point. Architect David Neff had given the 5,200-square-foot home traditional details while keeping the interiors open and light.

“The rooms are well proportioned, not too grandiose,” Gissler says. And the setting couldn’t be better. The house, he says, is set high enough to offer spectacular Hudson River views and low enough to feel close to the water.

The couple bought it, and Gissler proceeded to outfit the interiors with a smart mix of new and old furniture, much of it European. “The house is very much American, but it’s not AMERICANA,” says the designer, who studied architecture and fine arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, then worked for an architect (Rafael Viñoly) and an interior designer (JUAN MONTOYA) before founding his own practice, in 1987.

Here, Gissler leads Introspective on a tour of the house, on which he collaborated with his senior designer, Craig Strulovitz, also a RISD graduate.

 

Read the full Article on 1stdibs.com

 

Book and Room

BOOK AND ROOM

JANUARY 2020

Decorative arts historian Lisa Zeiger wrote an interesting article entitled VOTIVE OFFERINGS: GLENN GISSLER AT RISD about my relationship with my alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design, and more specifically with the RISD Museum, on her blog BOOK AND ROOM.

As a RISD alum, former board member, and devoted museum donor, it’s been my goal to help give students and visitors the opportunity to experience and draw inspiration from the museum’s collection. Lisa’s post chronicles my decades-long quest to donate notable fine art, industrial design and decorative objects to the RISD Museum, with a personal goal of bequeathing 1000 objects in total. You can read the post by following this link

I lived with many of these items in my NYC apartment before they found a new home at the RISD Museum, including a partners desk with two chairs by Donald Judd, and works on paper by Kiki SmithSol LewittLeon Golub, and Vija Celmins. I also have passed along objects by the 19th century industrial designer Christopher Dresser, and 20th century objects by Josef HoffmannEttore Sottsass, Joe Columbo and Russel Wright.

You’ll find just a selection of my notable donations to the museum below, and if you’re so inclined, you can follow this link to the museum’s website, which shows many more with descriptions and details.

This essay is about a plentiful cache of the most rarefied—and sometimes recondite—decorative art objects produced in the last two centuries contained in architect-designer Glenn Gissler’s applied arts trove. Since 1984, Glenn has been gifting these objets to the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art in an effort to augment the RISD Museum’s modern design collection. Glenn himself holds degrees in both Fine Art and Architecture from RISD, and the 200 or so smaller objects he has donated to the RISD Museum reflect an architect’s discipline; a connoisseur’s delectation.

Visit the full article at bookandroom.com