From House to Home: Four Brooklyn Design Stores Pick Their Favorite Items For The Home
Collyer’s Mansion
368 Stratford Road, Ditmas Park
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
Sari Mat, $35; Dauville Gold Glazed Ceramic Coasters, $36; Hemingway Nesting Trays, $68-80; Ines Wool Throw, $135; Burl Wood Tables, low and tall, $155 each
What distinguishes Collyer’s from other Brooklyn home-goods stores?
Collyer’s Mansion has been very fortunate to develop wonderful relationships with specific artists, craftspeople and jewelers in order to be able to sell one-of-a-kind pieces that you cannot find anywhere else! One of our favorite parts of the home goods retail business is that we are able to curate our store and website (shopthemansion.com) with the special, practical and beautiful objects that we have found on our travels around Brooklyn, the country and the world. This includes blankets from Sweden, Dutch clocks, jewelry from Williamsburg, Chicago, Los Angeles and India as well as furniture from Toronto and beard brushes from Germany.
What trends are you seeing for home design in Brooklyn?
It is an interesting time in Brooklyn design right now, I think that we came out of the industrial and reclaimed rustic wood look recently and customers are now looking for much cleaner, simpler, warmer, softer textures and colors. Also keeping practicality and functionality a high priority. I think that with the slow food, localvore movement in the restaurants, this idea of being conscious about what we are eating and where it comes from has translated into a higher awareness of how we are living and what kinds of objects we are surrounding ourselves with in our homes. And so we get a lot of questions about the manufacturing process and materials used in all of our products.
Describe a Collyer’s customer.
Like Brooklyn itself, it seems like all of our customers are unique characters with specific tastes and opinions that they are very wiling to share. We love meeting our customers and hearing about their style and what fits or does not fit in their homes. Its the people and our direct customer interaction that makes owning an actual storefront so much better and more fun than just having an online shop. Whenever we find a new product, we always have specific customers that come to mind. We also keep customer requests in mind while we’re shopping, traveling, and buying!