Calculated Risk

In upstate New York's horse country, designer David Netto puts historicism on a knife-edge

- Nancy Hass

The Los Angeles-based, Manhattan-bred designer David Netto has never been afraid to push, cajole, or beguile his clients into taking chances. An adventurer himself, he likes to nudge others to test their limits. Raised on the Upper East Side in the 1980s, he dropped out of Harvard's graduate architecture program, launched what might have been the first upscale midcentury children's furniture line, and, after buying Richard Neutra's famed Ohana House in Los Angeles, began a crosscountry residential design studio. No one can ever accuse him of failing to practice the sort of audacity he preaches.

The New York couple who asked him to reimagine their weekend house in Millbrook, a horsey enclave two hours north of New York City, has long been on board with Netto's rakish élan. When he designed their Manhattan apartment in 2015, Netto persuaded them, after some hesitation, to hang a huge 1975 Alexander Calder tapestry, Floating Circles, above a mantel. Since then, Calder tapestries have become something of a signature for the designer.