Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Nate Berkus - Celebrity & Award Winning Interior Designer Talks Collecting Vintage Furniture
1.1k Plays1 year ago
Celebrity and award winning interior designer, Nate Berkus, is our guest today and I couldn’t be more excited about this one. Nate’s been on the block for quite some time, but it seems that with each year, he gets more and more relevant. He’s a master at mixing vintage and new, and when I need some home inspiration, he’s the first person I go to. Nate and his partner Jeremiah have just started their second season of their HGTV show, The Nate and Jeremiah Home Project, and Nate has also just launched his own line of home goods, Nate Home. Being that he’s a vintage guy, I knew he had to be a collector of sorts. Nate’s got an amazing collection of vintage furniture and home goods, some of which you can buy directly from him, but a lot that he’s keeping in his personal collection and homes as well. We talk about how his nights usually end with him scouring auctions on his phone and how he’s hunting while on vacation. There’s a lot of exciting projects he’s got going on, some of which are still under wraps, but one thing remains the same, and that’s that he’s still hunting and sourcing at all times. So without further adieu, Nate Berkus, for Collectors Gene Radio.
Nate Berkus' Website - https://nateberkus.com/
Nate Home - https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/6EC50DF0-4818-4740-AF90-E4F2225B0D55
Nate's Vintage Furniture For Sale - https://nateberkus.com/collections/all-collections
Nate & Jeremiah On TV - https://nateberkus.com/blogs/nate-on-tv
Recommended
Transcript
The Essence of Original Patina
00:00:00
Speaker
I don't think there's a replacement for the feeling you get or the layering a room sort of takes on when you are working with things in their original finish with their original patina.
Introduction to Collector's Gene Radio
00:00:14
Speaker
What's going on everybody and welcome to collector's gene radio. This is all about diving into the nuances of collecting and ultimately finding out whether or not our guests have what we like to call the collector's gene.
00:00:27
Speaker
If you have the time, please subscribe and leave a review. It truly helps. Thanks a bunch for listening, and please enjoy today's guest on Collector's Dream Radio. Celebrity and award-winning interior designer, Nate Berkus is our guest today, and I couldn't be more excited. Nate's been on the block for quite some time, but it seems that with each year, he gets more and more relevant.
Featuring Nate Berkus
00:00:50
Speaker
He's a master at mixing vintage and new, and when I need some home inspiration, he's my go-to.
00:00:56
Speaker
Nate and his husband, Jeremiah, have just started their second season of their HGTV show, The Nate and Jeremiah Home Project, and Nate has also just launched his own line of home goods, Nate Home. Being that he's a vintage guy, I knew he had to be a collector of sorts. Nate's got an amazing collection of vintage furniture and home goods, some of which you can buy directly from him, but a lot that he's keeping in his personal collection and homes as well.
00:01:20
Speaker
We talk about how his nights usually end with him scouring auctions on his phone and how he's still hunting while on vacation.
Nate's Passion for Auctions
00:01:27
Speaker
There's a lot of exciting projects he's got going on, some of which are still under wraps. But one thing remains the same, and that's that he's still hunting and scouring at all times. So without further ado, this is Nate Berkus for Collector's Gene Radio.
Early Career and Influences
00:01:43
Speaker
Nate Berkus, thank you so much for joining me today on Collector's Gene Radio.
00:01:47
Speaker
My pleasure. I was watching what you're doing with the podcast, Cameron, and I was very flattered to be asked. So thank you. Oh, well, it goes both ways. So I've actually been a fan of yours for a really long time now. And honestly, my mother, who we lost a little over a year ago, introduced me to you when I got my first apartment and showed me a bunch of your stuff. And I'll never forget it. She was like, Hey, Cam, this is the guy and you have to get everything that you see here at the store.
00:02:18
Speaker
That's amazing. And I still have it all today. So needless to say, I've been a fan of yours. And while I haven't been around my whole life to watch your career flourish, I've been following you for as long as I have been. Oh, that's awesome. Thank
Starting a Design Firm
00:02:32
Speaker
you.
00:02:32
Speaker
I have so many questions for you today from design to collecting and decorating and all that sort of stuff, but let's kind of start at day one. You started your company in 1995, if I'm correct, and while you didn't necessarily get your BA in interior design, you grew up in a household kind of around that stuff, is that correct?
00:02:51
Speaker
I did. My mother divorced my dad when I was 18 months old and moved us back in with her parents years ago. This was early 1970s. She started a design business by starting out helping people
00:03:10
Speaker
kind of pull their spaces together and then she went back to school and then she founded a bunch of chapters for sort of accredited designers as her career went on but I definitely was lugging wallpaper books that was my chore in front of the trunk of her car.
00:03:26
Speaker
And also in all fairness, my mother was really primarily interested in things that were old. And so growing up in suburban Minneapolis, it's not like a bastion of antique shops. It's not like where people think you can
00:03:43
Speaker
Really source beautiful vintage or antique furniture porcelain or silver or whatever but you can and so I spent a lot of my childhood going to auctions and estate sales and sort of multi-dealer antiques malls and walking behind my mother and being dispatched to the front desk so that they could get a key and open a case to show her something that she liked and I think that that sort of
00:04:11
Speaker
Lesson if you will that internship at ten years old and eight years old Has stayed with me, you know my entire life You now have a celebrity and award-winning design firm Did you ever dream of being in this position when you got into interiors on?
00:04:29
Speaker
No, I got into interior design because I was working for an auction house based in Chicago. I interned there when I was in university in Chicago and I ended up, that was my first job out of college. And the only reason I started my firm was that I had this inkling that I could do it and then I would figure out what I didn't know, but also that I just couldn't make that 8 a.m. breakfast meeting that the auction house had every Monday morning.
00:04:57
Speaker
and the boss used to charge us $5 if we were even
Impact of Oprah's Show on Nate's Career
00:05:00
Speaker
a minute late. Every Monday, I had to pay her $5 and it drove me out of my mind. The truth is- I'm going to do that to my wife next time we're late for dinners. It was crazy. Then in the end, design was the only thing I really felt like I had a real skill set around, but I just wanted to sleep in. Little did I know, 27 years ago,
00:05:25
Speaker
I just wanted to be my own boss, and that was my path to that. Now you've done collaborations with some of the biggest names in the industry. You have your own TV shows. You served as an executive producer for an Oscar-winning film. You were a regular on Oprah. I mean, the list goes on. I'm sure that all of these things have culminated to help you get to where you are today, but is there something in particular that really propelled your career, maybe a specific project?
00:05:53
Speaker
You know, I would have to say I'm a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due. And I had a successful design firm before I met Oprah and was asked to start doing makeovers on her show. But I don't think that that 26 year old kid had any sense of what the licensing or the publishing or the producing world was.
00:06:13
Speaker
prior to that. In fact, I know I didn't. And so, you know, what was interesting about the opportunity, and I was on The Oprah Show almost monthly for 12 years consecutively, was that, one, it taught me what to say no to.
00:06:30
Speaker
because that was a really important element. All these opportunities come flying out of the woodwork for product lines and endorsement deals and commercials and all these things. And luckily I was at least smart enough to have a smart team of people around me. And even though I was, you know, in my mid twenties, I guess I was pressing enough to know that if I wanted there to be any longevity,
00:06:56
Speaker
around my career and around my brand that I needed to be strategic and not just do stuff for the money.
Interest in Estate Jewelry
00:07:03
Speaker
Is there a dream collaboration for you? You've done some amazing ones and I'm sure a lot of those were dreams at one point, but someone maybe you haven't worked with.
00:07:12
Speaker
You know, it's funny that you say that I have this like absolute obsession with estate and vintage jewelry and I've never had the opportunity to play in that other than to find it at auctions and buy it and save it all for our daughter who's eight.
00:07:28
Speaker
But I would love to collaborate. And I have a lot of friends who are jewelers, like noted contemporary jewelers, Irene Newworth and Solange Azigary Partridge and Monica Rich-Kozan and Brooke Knight from Sydney Garber. I've never done a collaboration with jewelry. I don't even know if I'd be good at it, but it would be really fascinating to me.
00:07:53
Speaker
Absolutely.
Nate's Design Philosophy
00:07:54
Speaker
In my opinion, you do the most incredible job at mixing vintage and new. Has this kind of always been part of your MO? A hundred percent. You know, I think early on and part of this is a bit of a Midwest upbringing, but I've never really been a snob about where things come from. If I see something and I used to buy things at garage sales on my walks, I'm from school in elementary school. And I think that
00:08:19
Speaker
you know i just love finding things that other people don't have and i love assembling spaces with pieces that someone's neighbor or mother-in-law doesn't own and i love the attention that's created by mixing old and new which is ironic because i sell new things i sell them at target i sell them at living spaces i
00:08:40
Speaker
sell them through Amazon at betting and all that stuff, which is fine. I think all that should be new. I don't want to sleep on someone else's sheets. But, you know, I think that probably 85% of what my firm sources for projects is old. And I don't think there's a replacement for the feeling you get or the layering a room sort of takes on when you are working with things in their original finish with their original patina.
00:09:10
Speaker
Couldn't agree more. And you and Jeremiah just launched a new show, or second season rather, Nate and Jeremiah Home Project. How has that been for you two to work together? You know, he's like my favorite person. I mean, we, you know, I actually can't imagine having a job or filming a show where we would say goodbye to each other at 6 a.m. and then see each other at dinner time with the children. So I mean, I think for us, our heads are in the right place in that it's, you know,
00:09:40
Speaker
It's challenging because we work together. We both have separate firms, but in terms of TV and some of our licensing projects, we do those as partners, business partners, and then we go home and our son has a fever. We have to go back to raising the kids and being a family. But I do think that we're very lucky.
Working with Jeremiah
00:10:03
Speaker
that we like to be with each other as much as we do. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for his perspective. I don't think I could have married someone who I thought had bad taste.
Vintage Sales as a Side Business
00:10:16
Speaker
Like that would have been really hard for me.
00:10:19
Speaker
I love it. All right, let's dive into collecting a little bit. Sure. So it's no secret that you love all things vintage, but I think what a lot of people may not know about you is that you also collect vintage furniture and home goods as well as sell them, right? You have a first dibs page, a cherish page, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. When did this come about in your existence in this interior design world?
00:10:43
Speaker
So it's funny, two things. One, I got my start at an auction house, which is, as I'm sure you know, fueled by three main things, death, debt, and divorce. And so the secondary market, which is First Dibs and Cherish now, and all the auction sites and all of that stuff, and the flea markets and whatever. But the secondary market has always been a complete fascination for me.
00:11:10
Speaker
I love, love, love the fact that you just don't know what you're going to stumble across. And I collect different places to source things from voraciously.
00:11:22
Speaker
canvas of foreign capital, I will find out where the local flea markets or fairs are if I'm in rural Portugal or wherever. So, I mean, I just love things that are secondhand. I love that marketplace, whether it be online or in person. And the first store that I have was actually started because we were 27 years into our design firm and we've done multiple homes for a lot of people.
00:11:52
Speaker
And what really always bugged me was that it was a little bit embarrassing. I would sell these people 7,000 square feet of vintage furniture, and then they would move. And some of the pieces they would take with them, or some they wouldn't. And there wasn't really a service that a design firm offered to say, you know what?
00:12:15
Speaker
I have all the original records. I have all the original receipts. Let me see if I can get my own shop on First Dibs and sell all this stuff for you. And so it really started as an additional service to my design clients. And now it's like almost all I do after hours.
00:12:33
Speaker
Like, I lay in bed next to my husband on auction websites. I buy everything I can get my hands on that I think is beautiful and underpriced. And then I recover things, I'll fix things, and then they go on first dibs or on Cherish or on my own website. And I just, I love it. I feel like I'm back to that eight-year-old kid following my mother in an antique small every day.
00:12:59
Speaker
What's the personal battle like between keeping some of these vintage goods
Collecting Stories and Balance
00:13:02
Speaker
or furniture for yourself versus selling them?
00:13:07
Speaker
Jeremiah calls me a fancy hoarder. I resent the descriptor because I feel like, for me, a hoarding, aside from the fact that it's a mental, psychological condition. But I always know and appreciate what I've got. I'm not confused about what's on my bookshelves. I know where that silver box came from. I remember the trip that I found it. So I think when you're hoarding, you have too many things. You don't remember or appreciate what you do have.
00:13:36
Speaker
That's at least my personal definition, but I'm not sure. Let me go with that. I'm not sure because I'm right in the middle of all of it. Do you also use some of the items that you find at these auction houses for the projects that you work on?
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, all the time. And I think that, you know, for me, I have sort of an encyclopedic knowledge at this point in my career of furniture makers and designers and eras and materials. And so I'm definitely like an informed buyer. And I try and pass that access onto my residential design clients.
00:14:17
Speaker
So I went on your website and I pulled a couple of my favorite interiors that you've done and pulled just like a couple items that are my favorite. And I'm hoping you could either tell me a story about how you found them or just a few details about these specific pieces.
00:14:32
Speaker
Oh, fine. Okay, great. I feel like in the old game show, this is your life. Yeah, exactly. Don't mess this up. Exactly. In the West Village Brownstone, it's either light, light wood or travertine round table with a black marble top and you had it near the fireplace. And I think it was also maybe in your Hancock Park home, if I'm not mistaken.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's been in several homes. So thank you, Cameron, for bringing that up. It still is sitting on Charles Street, because the people who bought that place bought some of our furniture with it. That was part of the deal. And I'm still bitterly angry about a lot of it, which is a ridiculous way to move through the world. And Jeremiah thinks I'm ridiculous, obviously, for many reasons. But that's one of his top ones. He's like, let it go. That table is a 19th century French table.
00:15:26
Speaker
It came from an antique stealer here in New York City and it has the original white painted sort of worn finish on the base. It's wood. And then the top is actually the original stone top in black marble and honed
00:15:44
Speaker
really old black marble. And it's rare to find those with the original top and a lot of the detail like the edge of that stone is rounded in a way that isn't really done frequently anymore. And the whole thing is just really chalky and really worn and really beautiful. And I might have to end this podcast so I can walk back over to Charles Street and ask them to pour it back.
00:16:10
Speaker
It's one of my favorite pieces in that house from the photos and whatnot. Also, I mean, the crown molding in that house is just out of control. That was, yeah, that was a great place. It really was. Next one, in your Manhattan penthouse triplex, there's a pair of vintage leather and brass Italian lights that kind of go over a couch. They're like reading lights. Oh, yeah. Where'd you find those? How'd you store some?
00:16:39
Speaker
I found them on live auctioneers and they are Luigi Caccia Domignoni, a Milanese architect from the mid century. I think those were done in the sixties. They're so cool. They're incredible. The locker is actually weighted. So it sits on the arm of a chair or on a, I think when he designed it, it was meant to like go on a wing chair or like an arm chair for reading. Right.
00:17:07
Speaker
but it's like this chocolate brown leather, buffalo sort of leather, that thick kind of beautiful, like the leather that's tanned in Italy that they do so well. And then the old brass globe, it had to be rewired, which was not simple, but it was worth it. When you posted that on Instagram,
00:17:29
Speaker
Talking about those I I commented right away and I was like where are these from and I got like Five or ten messages of people responding to it. Like yes, please figure out where they're from blah blah blah I went online and I I did like a deep dive trying to find them and I couldn't find vintage ones But I did find a company out of Italy that does remake them I wanted your opinion if you think it's worth holding out. It's always worth holding out to find vintage ones I just don't know that I ever will
00:17:57
Speaker
It's worth holding out. I mean, I really think it's worth holding out. You know, it's funny because new just doesn't have really a secondary value.
00:18:07
Speaker
And that's, I think, one of the other main reasons why I've always been drawn to vintage and advised my clients to sort of stay the course. You can't really put a new fixture, a few tire of it online for sale someday, even if you could, I guess, if you wait 60 years.
00:18:28
Speaker
But it's just, I really hoped you were going to talk me off the ledge. I know. I'm sorry. No, I will. Listen, I've seen your Instagram page and what you've got. So if you're ever interested in the trade, I'm open. I 100% am. We'll make something happen. I'll wrap it up right now. I can walk it right over to mailboxes. Perfect.
00:18:48
Speaker
So you often say that one of the best gifts that you can give is a vintage frame. You collect these, you have a bunch of them, but is there something else in that category of gifting that is a great place for people to start collecting and gifting that's accessible?
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Silver is a great place to start, especially because you can always find it, whether it's a box or a vase or a decorative box or a bud vase or a bowl. We have a lot of silver things.
00:19:20
Speaker
I'm not even that fascinated by the material but I'm fascinated by the sort of the worksmanship, the chasing, some details look like watch bands, some things from Vienna look like foliate carvings and things like that. But I think that if you're smart,
00:19:37
Speaker
You don't go to a silver dealer on Madison. You go to the flea market in Athens or the local antiques mall in Ohio. And I think that that's also something that I've given a lot of little objects like that away over the years, and they're always just really well received. I was in Long Island where my grandmother lives, and every time I go visit her, we always go antique diving. My brothers always make fun of me for it, but it's my favorite thing to do. And
00:20:08
Speaker
We're in this antique shop that we always go to and I find this silver triple stepped bowl and it has an engraving on it from a country club that's down the street of some lady that got a hole in one during a tournament and they gave her this silver bowl and I use it at my place now as like a nut bowl or an olive bowl or something like that if we have guests over and it was 10 bucks and it's silver and it's incredible.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, I love stuff like that. In fact, Jeremiah and I were on a trip to Laos and we took a boat on the Mekong River and it stopped and we walked through this like sort of hilltop village and there was an antique store that they'd like turned the one hanging white bulb hanging from wire on and everything was sort of filthy and in these like wood cases. And I found these beautifully chased
00:21:02
Speaker
Silver like ornaments and I had no idea what they were and they were silver elephant tusk Ceremonial like decorations that they went they slid onto the elephants tusks for like a ceremony
00:21:20
Speaker
And I was like, I've never seen something so beautiful. Like, these are so amazing. They could be candlesticks. They could, you know, but who cares? They could just be in a bookshelf. And what an amazing memory of this trip that he and I had in such a beautiful part of the world. And then I asked how much they were, and the guy said $120. And I was like, that's crazy. Like, $120. I was like, we're on a hilltop in Jeremiah. Like, to me, he goes, you get so weird and cheap
00:21:50
Speaker
in certain situations. And this is one of those situations. They're silver, like eight inch tall by three inch diameter, handmade ornamental elephant tusk holders. And you don't want to spend $120 or whatever it said. He's like, we're leaving. He's like, sir, we'll take them. And we carried them around. And of course they sat on our kitchen island every morning in LA.
00:22:18
Speaker
In our apartment now in New York, they're in the bookshelf that in the family room, we're always gathering as a family. And it's just so funny to me that I almost missed that. But thank God my husband was like, you can't be cheap on a hilltop in miles. You have to be a normal human being. I love it. Does Jeremiah love to collect as much as you do? Not at all.
00:22:41
Speaker
Not at all. He's not attached to anything.
Gifting and Collecting Silver
00:22:45
Speaker
Nothing matters really to him. The experience matters. The object doesn't necessarily represent it for him. And I'm the polar opposite. And you love collecting items from France and Italy. Is there one out of the two that you prefer or maybe one that you've found some of your more cherished goods from?
00:23:06
Speaker
No, not really. You know, cause I'm happy to find something Italian in Bridgeport, Connecticut too. I don't, I, you know, I would never put any sort of limitations on where you can find beautiful things. I mean, that's why I love seeing people killing it on Etsy and eBay and Facebook marketplace. Like we live in such a global,
00:23:32
Speaker
world right now that, you know, I just think that there's just always an opportunity to find something beautiful and make it part of your own collection. And now you have a brand new collection, Nate Home. You're back doing home goods, but this time it's just you. No large big box store behind it. This has to be extremely exciting for you.
00:23:52
Speaker
It is. You know, it's the first opportunity that I, you know, when I set out to do this again, I really just didn't want to deal with a corporate environment. I didn't want to meet with their marketing team. I wanted complete creative control. I didn't really want to work with their buyers, even though I loved working with the target buyers. We used to like make bets on what towel colors wouldn't sell. And then when I'd lose, I'd have to take everybody to a beautiful dinner in Minnesota. But,
00:24:20
Speaker
It's a real opportunity for me. It's a big turning point in my career. I've only ever done deals with the retailer. And so now the fact that Nate Home is available at Kohl's and Target, back at Target.
00:24:35
Speaker
on Amazon with all these five-star ratings already and it's two weeks old. I mean, it's just exciting to see what I consider to be the truest version of the marketplace because it's just out there with a lot of different points of sale now. Yeah, I really love the off-white and then the brown stripe comforter and the matching shams.
00:25:00
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's handsome stuff. And the quality is really beautiful. And I've never wanted to design things that people couldn't afford. I've always catered to mass. We are launching another collection with a big retailer, like a department store, which I can't announce yet. But that's a little bit pricier than anything I've ever done before in home.
00:25:29
Speaker
The basic set of towels, the sheets that you want to sleep on every night, that's a real luxury.
Collecting as a Way of Life
00:25:36
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, that's definitely on my list of things to snag, so I'm excited for that. Anything brown I love. Yeah, we can send you some. Same. Oh, that'd be amazing.
00:25:47
Speaker
I also see that you love watches and I would have to assume that case and dial design are important things for you. I wore my Aquanaut today as I know that you have one as well, so I always notice that on. But is time more important to you or is design more important to you? You know, I used to buy myself a watch with every big sort of
00:26:12
Speaker
I would hallmark a moment in my life or in my career by buying myself a watch. That was what I was always, that was to me like what it was, the physical representation of the hard work, a wearable, you know, physical. I don't wear really any jewelry but a watch and my wedding ring. But I think I'm a little bit out of the watch world. I have to tell you, I'm like a little bit like,
00:26:39
Speaker
disillusioned with the price of things now. It's crazy. It's crazy. And I sort of have what I want. I used to go crazy and get it in my head that there was a certain model or a certain maker or a certain design that I had to have. So it was about time, but not as about telling time. It was about marking the time in my life, which is where the acquisition sort of became interesting to me.
00:27:06
Speaker
And then of course it was always about the design. And also having things that not everybody wears was interesting to me.
00:27:14
Speaker
I've never bought a new, oh no, once I bought a new watch, like walked into a jewelry store or boutique and bought a watch and left with it in the box and the papers and the whole thing. I've only ever bought watches on the secondary market for 30 years. And I think that that again is like, it's also just like about, it was about finding it, finding that model, finding that metal, finding the, being able to change the strap, change the band, make it my own.
00:27:44
Speaker
that was always really fun for me. But I'm a little bit over it right now. I mean, I think it's crazy. Like some of the watches I own, I would never be able to go out and buy again. I don't blame you. And a lot of the stuff that you have right now that I've seen is amazing. And I can't imagine what else you would actually need in your collection of watches right now. You check a lot of boxes from my perspective. So
00:28:07
Speaker
Oh, thank you. I mean, listen, I love my watches. I really do. I don't sell them. I don't get rid of them. Jeremiah was some, he is a beautiful collection of watches too. But like when I'm standing in front of a watch that I know is beautiful, I just, something happened. I don't have to own it.
00:28:25
Speaker
Nate, before we wrap up with the collector's dream rundown, I want to ask you one last question about collecting. You've had a lot of success in your life, and you've also had some hardship, which you've been very open about. So how has collecting gotten you through all of these moments, good and bad?
00:28:44
Speaker
What a great question. Collecting for me is like, it really is a way of life.
Support Through Collecting
00:28:51
Speaker
It informs a lot I think about how you move through the world and the people that you meet, how you live and how you assemble your life, sort of how you organize your life. And I find myself always feeling more connected human to human with someone else who collects.
00:29:10
Speaker
They don't have to collect the same thing that I do, but someone who has this amazing collection of South American pottery or whatever, it's moving through life with that constant curiosity. You can never know everything. You're always learning. You're always on the hunt. You're always really excited.
00:29:32
Speaker
Finding something that fits within your collection that you didn't have before and there's a real childlike joy I think to collecting that people you know like you said initially it's it's not about the money It's not about the status of stuff. It's not about you know having to have been none of that makes anyone happy
00:29:50
Speaker
Like I don't, you know, if I had another watch, if I had one less, if I had one more silver frame, if I had one less silver box, would it change my life? Not at all. But, you know, meeting people throughout the years.
00:30:04
Speaker
that share this kind of passion. Even my dad who collected sports memorabilia and baseball cards when he was little, that translated to me as a kid. I didn't care about baseball cards, but I did care about how hard he would have the links he would go to to find the thing that he was missing or the time he would put into
00:30:25
Speaker
finding something that he knew he wanted or that he needed for his collection. And I think anyone with that collector's gene understands exactly what I'm talking about. It's a passion.
00:30:38
Speaker
When I've had gone through really difficult things in life, could I say that it saved me? No. I mean, I think that that would be too, too general. But let's say this, like when my, my former boyfriend died in the, in the Indian ocean tsunami, you know, collecting things or finding things was the last thing I was thinking about.
00:31:02
Speaker
And then, you know, maybe a year later, I was with someone that I work with in my Chicago office and we were on this road trip to see a client's home and we saw this antique mall and I got really excited and we're running up and down the aisles looking for the best stuff we could find. And I felt like I was coming back to myself in that moment.
00:31:25
Speaker
It's ingrained in how I move through the world and how I see things and what I search for. You know, it is still my favorite thing to do. And we're trying to teach our kids who actually seem to have a natural enjoyment for it as well. We call it treasure hunting. But, you know, it's a pastime. I guess it'd be like somebody else's yoga or their hike. You know, for me, it's shopping.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great place to store, you know, mental energy to focus on something that makes you happy. Yeah, it's fun. And it's just it's so fun. It's and it's it's never ending. And, you know, I'm grateful to my parents for sort of instilling that passion and like and explaining their own in their own ways, how they went about it being collectors.
Rapid-Fire Collection Preferences
00:32:17
Speaker
And it's a really interesting thing to be
00:32:21
Speaker
When I was at the auction house, I would say like, I know a little bit about a lot of things. And as I've gotten older, I know more about the things that are truly interesting to me, be it furniture, decoration, or jewelry, or watches.
00:32:35
Speaker
But like the other day we were on a family vacation with another family and he collects wine. I would not spend my money collecting wine. Like you'd have to put a gun in my mouth for me to like, you know, $100,000 or $10,000 on a bottle of wine. I wouldn't even conceive of it. But listening to his excitement and stumbling upon this wine store in London,
00:33:00
Speaker
and telling me like what they had and why it was interesting and why it was cool. It was like, we couldn't have been talking about anything. It's just, it's a passion play. I love it. All right. Let's wrap it up with the collector's gene rundown. What's the one that got away?
00:33:14
Speaker
Well, I thought about this question, Cameron, and I actually owned it. It was a paddock steel nautilus on a steel strap from my birth year, from 1971, and it was stolen. And maybe that's why I'm a little over the watch game now, because I've tried to get it back and it's like,
00:33:35
Speaker
It was stolen, I got the insurance money for it at the time, and then even with the insurance money, it's ridiculous. I think my kids' education is more important. I'm assuming it was probably a reference, $3,700. Exactly. Yeah. They've become unobtainium.
00:33:53
Speaker
just so expensive. And I don't need it, but I like it back. It was actually the watch that I was wearing. I lost it twice, so maybe I'm not meant to have it. I lost it in the tsunami in 2005, and I lost it again in a home, in a burglary. And so, you know, maybe I'm just not meant to own it.
00:34:14
Speaker
Try the smaller one, the 3800 and see if you have better luck. Yeah, thank you. They're a little bit cheaper too. Yeah, I'm going to kill you. Don't give me that kind of information right now. How about the on-deck circles? What's next for you and your collecting? This could be in any and all the categories you collect in.
00:34:36
Speaker
probably paintings and continuing with estate jewelry. I was always really intimidated by the world of sort of contemporary art. I'm far less intimidated now. So we've been slowly sort of adding to our walls painters and the works of people and artists that have had an impact
00:35:01
Speaker
on us visually or people that we've known. And I love an original artwork. I really do. I don't care about works on paper, but I love a painting or a photograph or a drawing. So I love, and I love searching for them. And it's, my taste is pretty erratic from old masters to, I'm sitting on the podcast with you right now staring at a Spanish painter from the sixties that hangs in my offices in New York. And I like, it just brings me a lot of joy. So I would say that.
00:35:32
Speaker
love it. Well, if there's anyone that can mix the two, it's you. I'm trying. It got a little weird in all fairness. You buy things on an online auction in Europe or whatever, wait 500 years for it to arrive and then you're like, why would I ever want that? Right. Something attracted you. Exactly. How about the unobtainable?
00:35:54
Speaker
A painter, painting, Fontana, the canvases with the slash in the bright colors, blue, green, yellow, or white even, or black. But, you know, it's just, it's, I don't think, like I said, I don't wanna print.
00:36:12
Speaker
But, I was watching one at Christie's and it was the last day of the sale and I was like, ooh, maybe everyone's sleeping. Of course they weren't. They were wide awake and drove the price up to fair market value. And I'll never buy something really at fair market value. I always have to find a deal. So, I don't think I'm ever gonna find that for a price. One day, one day. Feel good about it. The page one rewrite. So, if you could collect anything besides what you currently collect,
00:36:41
Speaker
Money no object. What would it be and why? Diamonds. It's like single stones, fascinated by the cut, the clarity, by the scale. So I'd start grabbing big stones and just hanging onto them. And then I've always also loved old cars, but I hate the maintenance of it and randomly
00:37:02
Speaker
We have our place in Montauk and we have a place in Portugal and our apartment in the city and we don't have a garage. So it is the most impractical thing. The idea of having a car collection is ludicrous at the moment. You really just need a moke. That's it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I love a moke actually. Yeah. Great. How about the goat? Is there anybody that you look up to in the collecting world?
00:37:33
Speaker
There's two, A.B. Rosen and his wife, Samantha Boardman. I think A.B. has like an unbelievable eye, unbelievable collection of paintings and furniture actually. And his wife, Sam has like the most beautiful collection of signed jewelry from people that a lot of people just don't even know and don't even wear like interesting, interesting things. And then Ari Koppelman,
00:38:01
Speaker
former president of Chanel. He and his wife Coco live here in New York City, and he's been the chair of the Winter Antique Show for many, many years. And I always thought, I'm very in front of his daughter, and I always thought that he's this huge collector, this really successful guy. He's the chair of the Winter Antique Show. He's going to have all this
00:38:24
Speaker
crazy, crazy blue chip, wildly expensive things. And he invited me to the apartment not long ago just to see a new thing that he had bought. And I looked around and I realized the one thing that connects his entire collection is this sense of humor and whimsy.
00:38:43
Speaker
And it wasn't, you know, there are old things and they're all very valuable, beautiful things, but there's also things that are just, that he thinks are funny. And I have such respect for that.
00:38:59
Speaker
The hunt. That was easy. Definitely the hunt. Yeah, definitely the hunt. I've never really been disappointed and you know, I have my own channels to sell things that I don't want anymore. Like we talked about earlier, but the hunt is, the hunt is so exciting. Most importantly, do you feel that you were born with the collector's gene? Thousand percent.
00:39:22
Speaker
Nate Berkus, thank you so much for joining me today on Collectors Gene Radio. It's truly an honor and a pleasure for me to have you on. Like I said, I've been a fan of yours and looked up to you with everything that you've done since I can remember. Truly, thank you so much. It's my pleasure. It was great talking to you. Thanks a lot for having me.
00:39:41
Speaker
Next time I'm in New York, you, me, Jeremiah, we're going antique hunting. We're going to find some silver. I just want to go with you and your grandma. You are more than welcome to come. I will definitely invite you next time. Perfect. All right. Thanks so much. All right. Thanks again. All right. That does it for this episode. Thank you all for listening to collector's gene radio.