July 27, 2025“I’m a collectors’ collector,” says New York–based art adviser Jessica Arb Danial, a hunter-gatherer for residential and commercial clients who seek works that veer from the blue-chip bastion. “I like things that provoke conversation, that get people to be a little curious.”
That orientation toward the new, unusual and emerging was the main reason she hired designer Kati Curtis when she and her husband purchased a 3,300-square-foot loft in an 1857 Tribeca cast-iron building for themselves and their two boys (ages seven and nine). “Kati brings an eclectic worldview to her projects that’s very much like my own,” Danial says.
A casual tour through Curtis’s portfolio reveals a Tudor home enlivened with densely floriferous wallpapers and profoundly saturated palettes; the offices of a teachers’ advocacy group with a graphic ceiling paper of oversize Granny Smith apples beneath which stools resembling apple cores pull up to a desk; and a Central Park high-rise-apartment kitchen with dramatically figured turquoise marble counters and backsplash. Curtis is no blushing flower. Neither is Danial.
The designer remembers Danial telling her at the beginning of the project that she liked “things that are a little weird” — music to the ears of a designer who admits that, in her interiors, “there’s always something just a little bit off.”
Describing her client’s design brief, Curtis says, “Jessica needed to showcase her collection first and foremost.” The boys were not a concern in this regard — they were, after all, raised around valuable art in sophisticated surroundings — but it seemed prudent to use durable fabrics and other materials that could withstand their youthful energies.
For Danial, a major draw of this full-floor four-bedroom unit had been the sense of arrival it offered. The front door opens into a large gallery-like hallway that, Curtis says, is “wide enough for you to step back and actually look at the art.”
Another part of its appeal was its urban character. Danial explains that, coming back to Manhattan after a sojourn in a “pretty traditional home” in Upstate New York’s Hudson Valley, where she and her husband had moved to start their family, “I wanted a quintessential New York City apartment. A loft in Tribeca seemed the absolute opposite of what we were coming from.”
The gallery-like flat came to Danial and Curtis as a clean slate — all white walls and wood-plank floors— requiring merely cosmetic revisions to infuse it with the family’s idiosyncratic personalities and tastes. The only major overhauls were the kitchen and baths. In the former, Curtis replaced melamine cabinets with earthier walnut and swapped out marble countertops for quartzite.
“There’s so much wide-open space in a loft like this that you need to add some softness and warmth,” she says of her use of wood. New walnut doors throughout and a wood floor with a matte finish (and UV sealer, to prevent fading from the abundant natural light) “add a depth that the white, boxy apartment didn’t have.”
Curtis’s texture-rich crowning touches in the kitchen include Throne rattan barstools from De La Espada and two mellow aged-brass Lantern pendants from Apparatus. The powder room became a prismatic jewel-like space with a rainbow onyx sink, a vintage Murano sconce and a dichroic wall treatment that changes color depending on one’s vantage point. The boys’ bath has tile walls in a large polka-dot pattern that Curtis describes as “fun and spirited but not juvenile.”
The initial design plans were followed in all except one significant area. Curtis suggested that the vast, generously fenestrated main space, encompassing a living room and dining room, be draped in boldly patterned floral drapes with teal walls. Her client was unconvinced. “It’s like those incredible dresses you see walking down the catwalk,” she explains. “They’re super over-the-top and fabulous, but when you buy them and look in the mirror, you realize, ‘I can’t wear this.’ I loved the idea, but I needed to live in it. It’s the only thing I nixed.”
Luckily, Danial’s husband loved the curtain fabric, which now dresses the windows of his study, joining a clean-lined Julian Chichester desk and another Apparatus pendant, plus a mustard-yellow ceiling and Zak + Fox purple wallcovering swathing the room.
“To complement who Jessica is with our furniture selections,” says Curtis, “anywhere we could, we used pieces that were unique or were works of art in themselves. I like pieces to be functional as well as sculptural.” At the terminus of the entry hall, for instance — between an Alex Prager work and an Alex Dodge painting — is an elaborate ceramic pendant lamp by artist-designer Katie Stout from R & Company.
In the living room, side tables by Hillsideout, found at Galerie Phila and made of recycled Murano glass illuminated from within, sit at the ends of custom sofas. An adjacent seating vignette couples a sheepskin chair by Dagmar and an Embrace chair by Royal Stranger. At the center of it all is Umberto Bellardi Ricci’s biomorphic Luna coffee table. The eclecticism of the seating looks “curated rather than decorated,” says Danial.
She acquired most of the art as the project evolved, so palettes and fabrics were not drawn from the works themselves. This imparts a sense that spontaneous collecting has produced interiors that radiate creative eccentricity — in contrast to ones consciously assembled with an ensemble mind-set. The resulting spaces embody Danial’s aesthetic ethos of “a little bit weird” combined with Curtis’s signature “just a little bit off” vibe.
For instance, Ben Tong’s painting The Crystal, which hangs above the Moroccan tile fireplace, pulsates with magenta tones that appear nowhere else in the room. A Didier Williams landscape and a ceramic vessel by Jonatan Nilsson — atop one of two steel Shingle cabinets by Luke Proctor — forge distinct identities, holding their own against the bold energy of the geometric linen from Lee Jofa upholstering the Royal Stranger chair.
In the dining room, a large table provides a sturdy and stylish surface for eating but also, says Curtis, for “all sorts of craft projects” the boys do there. Around this massive table, she placed pink-framed Maguire chairs, with rope seats and backs and curved frames, that balance its severe geometry.
Overhead is a stunning blown-glass FEYZ chandelier from Wexler Gallery, while on the custom parchment sideboard are displayed a basket sculpture by Dee Clements, a small work by Sanford Biggers and a ceramic bowl by Leckie Gassman. A painting of a shell-like female figure by Chason Matthams on the wall, says Danial, “is like a woman enveloping you as you eat dinner. I love a moment of a powerful girl.
“The loft is not only beautiful but so comfortable,” she concludes. “That’s hard to achieve with a lot of art. It feels like a home.”
