Keeping It Simple on Lower Fifth

Jack Ceglic and Manuel Fernandez-Casteleiro's apartment is full of stories but not distractions.

- WENDY GOODMAN

JACK CEGLIC HAS a theory about interiors, which makes sense, given that the pareddown industrial design-the butcher-block counters, the kitchen-supply shelving-he came up with for the late great Soho culinary institution Dean & DeLuca in 1977 ended up being so influential. "It's about what you need, and what you love, and the placement of the air around a piece. It's not about decorating," he says. "I do love decoration, but it's about what you need."

Ceglic is a first-generation New Yorker of Polish descent who grew up on Lincoln Place in Brooklyn. His father worked in the Garment District, and his mother owned a grocery store two blocks from the house they shared with another family. The store had a sawdust floor and a marble-topped counter with a refrigerator behind it on which a big block of butter was cut with a wire for customers; he recalls "all these pyramids of food made an impression on me." His grandmother lived with them, and every Friday Ceglic would go with her to buy fish, "and she would have me carry the live fish home, and it would go in the bathtub, and before she cooked it, she would take it out and club it. I still have the knife that she clubbed that fish with!" he says, laughing.