Design Hunting – Circular Economy

Russell Piccione’s eclectic brownstone in Murray Hill is full of the orphaned and particular.

- By Wendy Goodman

INTERIOR DESIGNER RUSSELL PICCIONE has a scavenger’s eye. Six years ago, he spied a massive concave mirror in the window of the Chloé boutique on Madison Avenue—an Olafur Eliasson–esque prop, then facing the end of its shopper-beguiling life. Now it’s the unavoidable glittery thing in the sitting room of the Murray Hill brownstone he rents with his partner, Antonio Haslauer. The 14-foot ceilings of his parlor floor dwarfed even his painting from the studio of Veronese, but this would surely pack a punch when juxtaposed with the settee upholstered in sapphire-blue mohair velvet, which he’d bought at auction because it was, he thought, “such a strong example of the period and the idea of furniture as ‘fantasy architecture.’ ”