WHEN ROBERT CLEPPER DECIDED TO MOVE from a spacious midtown Manhattan apartment to a 350-square-foot French Quarter garçonnière in New Orleans, he only vaguely imagined the challenges. His grandmother and great aunt had been inveterate accumulators, collecting everything from prehistoric fossils to fine porcelain. Clepper, himself an artist, has carried on the tradition, building many kinds of collections that include a fine selection of 20th-century American art. Fortunately, New York designer Thomas Jayne, who has hung Clepper's collages in several of his projects, was certain he could help his friend and client.
"I realized that white Robert, as an artist, might create small0scale work, as a collector he has produced a vast living one," says Jayne. "Our job was to frame this every-changing collage, maybe even tame it a little." For this task, the project needed as much organization as is usual from schemes many times the size. Jayne, whose early training was at Winterthur, is sure-footed with historical references but his first and fundamental decision was not to attempt a strictly period interpretation. "I imagined it should reflect a Creole sensibility," he says, "but that it should also feel like those wonderful bohemian New Orleans apartments from the early 20th century." |
