Hamptons Real Escape

Designer Vicente Wolf transformed an unsurprising shingle-style house on Long Island into a singular home for a finance man in search of serenity

Written by Fred A. Bernstein • Photographed by Vicente Wolf
Produced By Linda O’Keeffe

A pair of computer screens in this home's study is a giveaway: The man who lives here follows the world's financial markets. And his workweek often continues into Saturdays and Sundays, which he tries to spend here, on the East End of Long Island. "One minute he's talking to Europe; the next minute, to Asia," says Vicente Wolf, the veteran designer who was brought on board when the house was already under construction.

Those phone calls gave Wolf the first clue to how he would fill the rooms: "The owner's perspective is very international, and I wanted the house to reflect that," Wolf says. As a result, he chose items like the unexpectedly modern Chinese lantern above the round dining table and Thai architectural fragments mounted on steel rods as accent pieces in the den.

But the house isn't an ethnographic museum. Wolf, a meticulous curator whose own travels have made the world his design oyster, used decorative objects sparingly. He mixed them with comfortable upholstered pieces—many from his own furniture line—as well as modernist mainstays, including Management chairs by Charles and Ray Eames, which he alternated at the dining table with more traditional, ebonized Williams Switzer armchairs.

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