I first walked into my future employer’s home at age fifteen. She was a retired painter and art educator; her late husband, a Merchant Marine chief engineer, had spent years bringing home shipping containers of objects—gifts for her—from around the world.

Their 1880s, thirty-plus-room mansion was overflowing with glass, porcelain, sculpture, and textiles like I had never seen, before. I was lucky to spend four days a week there for the next three years.

By the time I began selling art and antiques in the early 2000s, I was already a working graphic designer. Design school had taught me to see and appreciate how form, color, texture, and craftsmanship—even small deviations within them—can trigger or shape emotional responses.

Over time, I realized I’m most drawn to objects that embody a design sensibility, leverage the nuancical qualities mentioned above, yet sit just outside the conventional—the “other.” When those characteristics or concepts overlap and compound, the result can be magical—something felt instantaneously through the hair on your arm.

I’m grateful for the collectors, scholars, and fellow dealers who’ve supported and mentored me in the schools of material culture, and proud of what this practice has become: sometimes great, sometimes weird, always and forever rooted in that magical overlap.