He Lives Upstairs From His Favorite Italian Restaurant

The Living Room: A vintage coyote bench by Mario Lopez Torres sits by a custom elm screen by David O’Brien of Hawk & Stone that hides the air conditioner. The wood sculpture with two bumps on the wall is by Alma Allen, as is the bronze spiral coffee table. The large landscape painting is by Arch Connelly. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

After living in a Soho loft — 3,000 square feet, light-flooded by 16 windows — for seven years, Ryan Lawson had to find a new place when his landlord died and the building was sold. He wanted to move to the Village, but all the apartments he saw “were like total sad caves,” he says. He walked out of one and into one of those classic restaurants that haven’t changed in decades — one that he loved. “It was 5 p.m., and I thought, You know what? I’ll just have a martini.”

What followed sounds like the opening of a Dawn Powell novel. Lawson describes sitting at the bar chatting with the owner of the restaurant and the building about his real-estate conundrum, and it turned out there was an empty apartment just upstairs. He asked to see it then and there.

“So Franco the bartender put a napkin over my martini,” says Lawson. Despite the fact that “the entire place had ­fluorescent lights and was painted the exact color of a Band-Aid,” and the refrigerator covered one of the windows, he told the owner, “I’ll take it.”

Lawson, an interior designer and collector of objects and the stories behind them, has let it evolve since. “This is me. This is home,” Lawson says of the eclectic interior, emphasizing that this is not how he would design for a client.

“Do you remember Fred Silberman Antiques?” Lawson asks, as we walk through the hallway and he gestures to an iron ­monkey on the wall. “Fred sold me this. It’s from 1904, and it’s stamped by iron master Alessandro Mazzucotelli. Look at his face. Isn’t it amazing?” There is the rare piece that Lawson doesn’t know the provenance of. He found the odd-shaped chaise that now sits in the corner of the living room in Parma; it’s draped with a cotton Hopi wedding sash he found in Santa Fe. He decided the chandelier he installed when he moved in needed something extra, so he commissioned papier-mâché artist Thomas Engelhart to make what he calls “a wrecking ball” to hang at the bottom; it looks like it could do some damage but is as light as air.

“Did you know he threw ceramics?” Lawson asks, pointing out a large vessel by Mario Bellini, better known for his marshmallowlike puffy sofas. Then there’s the button sculpture by L.A. artist Clare Graham, a former Imagineer at Disney, which hangs in one corner.

We move on to his bedroom. Over Lawson’s headboard are a series of photographs. “This is an amazing story,” he says. “There is a man called Sanlé Sory who was a photographer in Burkina Faso, and he had a portrait studio. Each subject chose their backdrops.” (Sory had an exhibition at the Art Institute of ­Chicago in 2018.) He painted the walls with colors from his own collaboration with Ressource paints.

Lawson has been collecting most of his life. He grew up in ­Arkansas, and with the encouragement of his retired art-teacher neighbor, a Mrs. Gardner, he studied both architecture and ­painting at Washington University in St. Louis before moving to New York, where he started his design firm. He’s never stopped collecting. “It’s not necessarily intentional buying in terms of where it is going to go,” he says, “but I think that the sort of ­alchemy of it is that it lands together here because it was ­filtered through the sieve of my brain. The sum is better than the parts, or I hope so.”

The Entryway: A 1940s wrought-iron–and–marble console table holds marble vessels by Angelo Mangiarotti (right) and a decorated vase by mid-century French artist Jean Derval. A pair of ’90s Venetian beaded mirrors flank the large mirror. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

The Entryway Console: “The decorated vase, one of my favorites,” Lawson says, “was thrown and painted by mid-century artist Jean Derval.” Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

The Living Room Bookshelves: The flower painting is by Mark Beldan. The asymmetrical vintage chaise was reupholstered in checkerboard Larsen fabric. The chandelier’s dangling spiked ornament is by artist Thomas Engelhart. The Hem sofa against the wall to the left is covered in deadstock linen velvet by Glant. “The fabric was sitting in the factory storage for the past 40 years, and only 30 yards existed in the whole entire world, and I bought it,” Ryan Lawson says. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

The Kitchen: “This is basically a cocktail-party kitchen,” Lawson says. “I pay no attention to it.” He replaced the refrigerator with two undercounter ones hidden by an indigo Japanese textile. The ceramic vessel, far left, is by John Gill. The red linen and woodwall sculpture is by Gérald Lajoie from Pangée Gallery in Montreal. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

The Bedroom: The bed is part of Lawson’s design for the Very Ryan ­Lawson collection. The quilt was his great grandmother’s. The Akari light is by Noguchi. The painting on the back wall is by Joe Henry Baker. The Justine Hill painting (right) is from Dimin Gallery. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

The Sanlé Sory photographs are from the Yossi Milo ­Gallery. The brown linen coverlet is from Cultiver by Colin King. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

The Bathroom: The wavy custom shelf is Lawson’s design, painted in RL-16. The ceramic mask is by Manal Kara from Stellarhighway gallery. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson

Lawson in the living room. Photo: Stephen Kent Johnson