Mieke ten Have featuring the Atlanta sofa

I met my husband, Tyler Graham, on Saint Patrick’s Day at a champagne and hot dog pairing dinner.

I was born and raised in Manhattan, and my mother was really into the arts, so we went to museums almost every weekend. Growing up with the Met, the Frick and MoMA in my backyard had a tremendous impact on me.

My father is from Amsterdam, which I think is so old, quaint and approachable. There’s nothing very tall there, so the scale of it feels humane. I like that you can always see water and stone and sky.

I spent my summers in Maine so colonial vernacular architecture of Maine really still resonates with me. I’m like an old lady, I die for that kind of thing. I like looking at architecture in decline and a lot of houses in Maine are like that – there’s a tension between their former grandeur and the way they have aged.

I also lived in Paris after college, working for a literary agent. The entire French interior design sensibility is something I very much relate to, especially the fabric. I have a love affair with French fabric, and their determined and irreverent use of color.

I have a Louis XVI settee and bergère that were both in my grandmother’s library. I upholstered the chair in a Le Manach floral fabric, it is really Grandmere and I love it; the sofa is in a red damask that I upholstered on the reverse. The colors really don’t go together but I like them together. They live in the great room in our barn, by the fireplace, and next to our Orior sofa.

That is generally what I respond to – the imperfections of the hand that are very obvious in a piece so carefully made. That’s why I am not so much of a modernist, I like to feel that there’s a hand that made the thing I’m touching or sitting on. The barn we have upstate was handmade sometime in the 18^th century, deconstructed, stored, moved and put back into place. There are roman numerals on all the beams – they were the guideposts in putting it back together.

Do flower arrangements count? Creating florals is a big part of what I do, and that is by hand, and each is different from the last.

Reading–I don’t do nearly as much as I used to. I drive so much to go to locations for shoots so a lot of the reading has been supplanted by listening to podcasts. Also, gardening. I wish I had a green thumb. It’s currently a work in progress, but it’s a skill I would like to learn.

I chose the Atlanta sofa for the shape, the fringe. I love fringe. The proportion and scale is beautiful, it’s incredibly comfortable and ha attitude with that fringe. This is a forever sofa, I’m never going to get tired of it.

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It is in the living room in our upstate house, with the sofa and chair from my grandmother, by the fireplace.

The cats are obsessed with the fringe, so they are often under the sofa batting at it. Every now and then I’ll be sitting there and feel a cat arm graze my feet.

A table candelabra, because I think any kind of festive, dinner party accessory that lights up the space would be a good thing to be.