Designer David Netto Cherishes This Wood Screen That Looks Like "a Piece of History"
The last piece you think a room needs is often the very first one you should purchase. Interior design David Netto believes so, at least. “Sometimes to get into character, you need to buy the weirdest thing that you don’t need and then defend it. Because you know there’s going to be a sofa, there’s going to be a pair of lamps—all of that will fall into place. But you get one chance to buy something unique with that sort of poetry to it. And then you’ve got to jump,” he says.
We tasked Netto and his keen eye for unique, leap-worthy furnishings to spotlight a new product that he deems heirloom-worthy—and why it's deserving of being passed down from one generation to the next. His answer? Decorative artisan Mike Diaz’s 6 Panel Pombal Linen Folding Screen from Los Angeles furniture gallery Blackman Cruz. “If you ever want to find an heirloom, that’s the best place to start," says Netto. “I also love screens because they’re not necessary. They’re very effective in an interior, but it’s the last thing that somebody not using a decorator might think that they need.” For more on this masterful piece deemed an instant heirloom, read on.
What drew you to this piece?
“Mike Diaz is, I think, a unique genius because he’s making furniture from the past as if it was from the future. He’s in love with the Mexican Baroque, and he makes it as if it's imagined by a movie set designer in the 1930s. It’s furniture that looks like the past, but it actually hasn’t happened yet. The way he makes it endowed with patina is to use very old timbers. The screen is a great example where you can see the wood, and you can see that it’s old. The raw lumber aspect of what he does is the beginning of how gutsy his pieces are,” says Netto.
Why do you think it has staying power?
“All of Mike’s work has staying power because it’s not of any particular time. It looks like it’s a piece of history. I think it’s very exciting when someone’s obviously got the intelligence of knowing the past on their side and sort of informing their work,” Netto says. “I also think plain wood goes with everything. This could go in a country house or a city house—it’s not hard to like it.”
Does it inspire new storytelling in its form or artistic details?
“Anytime you put a piece by Mike Diaz in a room, it’s going to dominate the story. It’s very hard to imagine something having more narrative power and theater on its side. Being a screen, it’s already got sort of this whimsy of being the unnecessary thing but the most compelling thing. The carving is robust. You sort of see what you want to see when you see it. You can imagine it an antique or this weird thing that could only have been made now. I think the whole story of the room is sort of locked up in there,” he says.
“Like all decorating, it’s not about one object—it’s about the three things you put it next to. Next to a B&B Italia chrome bed, it’ll behave a certain way. The storytelling capabilities are not about just the object but about the thing you put it next to,” adds Netto.
How would you envision using this piece in a room?
“I would make it the star," Netto says. “Modern architecture is sometimes irregular. A screen can make a graceful transition between the place where you eat and the sitting room. A screen can go in any corner and soften it. You can uplight it and put a tree in front of it, so that makes an event out of a corner. And a screen can go behind a bed as a kind of amplified headboard,” he says.
Are there any designers of the past that seem like kindred spirits to this piece?
“Michael Taylor would love everything Mike Diaz does. Taylor loved guts and scale, and he loved finding new ways to use the past of the West. His California decorating from the 1960s and 1970s used a lot of 18th-century provincial furniture—not fancy, but farmhouse stuff that still had the curves and the scale,” says Netto. “Syrie Maugham or Dorothy Draper would love it, because in the 1930s they weren’t afraid of anything.”
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