This South End Home Is a Vintage Curator’s Dream
The design scheme of a Boston duplex living space takes cues from its world-traveler owner's collections.
The living area features a Bamse Kragh-Jacobsen lithograph; Community Manufacturing sofas upholstered in a washable Romo fabric with a soft, peach-fuzz feel; and a custom faux-plaster coffee table made by New England Artisan Restoration.
This article is from the fall 2025 issue of Boston Home. Sign up here to receive a subscription.
Jill Goldberg describes the owner of this South End home—a single woman in her 40s living in a duplex built in 1890—as a curator’s dream. “She is a world traveler who shops abroad every year and loves buying vintage,” says Goldberg, principal of Hudson Interior Designs. In addition to a robust assortment of artwork, the homeowner’s treasures include a pair of turquoise vases plucked from a stall at Paris’s Clignancourt flea market, romantic mirror-back sconces she stumbled upon in Bologna, and trinkets discovered in the basement of a dusty antique shop in Jodhpur. “We wanted to give her beautiful furniture that complemented her collection,” Goldberg says.
Plush cerulean-blue sofas anchor the seating area in the open-concept living space, which is replete with ornate, original plaster moldings that wouldn’t look out of place on a wedding cake. “Most clients aren’t willing to go bold with sofas, but she asked for this color,” Goldberg shares. That blue, along with the owner’s vintage, multicolor floor lamp, informed the Stilnovo sputnik chandeliers in primary colors that Goldberg hung from the curlicue ceiling medallions on either end of the unit.
Sculptures by Jonathan White (left) and Don Williams (right), from Corey Daniels Gallery in Wells, Maine, sit on the built-in console in the dining room, where designer Jill Goldberg mounted a mod sconce by Flos. / Photo by Jared Kuzia
Otherwise, the designer stuck to neutrals: a jute rug; a custom faux-plaster coffee table; Roman shades with spare, offbeat shapes by artist Caroline Z. Hurley for Schumacher; and two ivory bouclé swivel chairs by Goop for CB2. “The client loves playing with high/low, but really, these chairs were just the right scale, so why look any further?” Goldberg reasons.
A seriously solid charcoal marble dining table—it took four men to lift it when installing the rug—sits between the double fireplaces. A formidable piece was essential for defining this zone. “A dinky round table would be lost here,” Goldberg says. Classic Hoffman chairs have curved bentwood frames that echo the table’s soft corners and airy caned seats and backs that add texture without feeling heavy. A custom console nestles into the niche, providing storage and a landing spot for books and objets d’art. Goldberg pulled pieces from the homeowner’s collection for the gallery wall, taking care to mix mediums, colors, styles, and subject matter. Playful abstracts by Piero Dorazio hold opposite corners; from there, Goldberg filled in landscapes, portraits, text art, and more. “The client didn’t give us constraints,” Goldberg says. “She loves everything she owns, so she told us to use whatever works best.”
Art Installer Christopher Valle Installations
Builder Roberts Design & Construction
Interior Designer Hudson Interior Designs
First published in the print edition of Boston Home’s Fall 2025 issue, with the headline “Work of Art.”
