Under One Roof

Inside an unassuming building on East Hampton’s Gingerbread Lane is a bustling hive of activity. In the front is a chic store purveying a dazzling selection of home furnishings and art. In the back is a studio where half a dozen artisans toil to design and hand paint wallpaper. In a buzzing warren of offices upstairs is where the interior design and staging projects take shape.

The lively enterprise is the brainchild of Elizabeth Dow, a creative dynamo whose career began in fine art – some of her works hang in the shop – and has grown to encompass seemingly the entire home design world. Dow moved her headquarters from Amagansett, where she was director of the Amagansett Applied Arts school, to the expansive village digs two years ago. Her support staff numbers circa 15.

Before embarking to the South Fork, Dow ran a business in the city for 25 years – this after studying painting and set design and restoring decorative painting in important buildings such as the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen. She was mentored by pioneering Detroit art collector Florence Barron, whose “walls were covered by Cy Twombley, Warhol and Stella, and who had the most exquisite taste. She introduced me to interiors, textiles and beautifully designed furniture,” Dow says. “She fine tuned my aesthetic.”

Dow’s decorative painting background was the inspiration for her modern wall coverings, which sell in 13 showrooms worldwide. Her wide-stripe paper hangs in the Oval Office. “When Lady Gaga did a video in a fake oval office she included the paper.” The Estee Lauder brand is rolling out stand-alone stores in which her paper will hang. Her huge portfolio of coverings run the gamut from such materials as grass cloth, silk and sumptuous silver and gold hand-leaf.  A handsome new faux shagreen paper was designed by Hana Geery of Montauk, and another is based on one of Dow’s abstract paintings of a Turkish patchwork rug.

Speaking of patchwork rugs, Dow offers an assortment of these – squares of vintage carpets hand-stitched together in Istanbul. “It all connects,” she says. Her own collection of beautifully textured and hued textiles is sold along with those of other high-end houses. Her shop, which doubles as a showroom to the trade – she works with the Hamptons top interior designers – also showcases such reputable brands as Schumacher and Kravet. The shop, arranged in an assortment of chic salons, features many midcentury relics such as a refurbished Baker chair and upholstery pieces of her own design such as her curved-back Madison Avenue Sofa.

“I’m a frustrated architect,” Dow says of her interior design venture.  She has just finished a project on Clamshell Avenue in Northwest and is working on another in the Grace Estate, where she ripped the roof off the house.

Of her latest business incarnation, she says: “The cool thing is everything can happen under one roof.”