Ian Stallings Design

08/31/2026

Work in progress, but it is coming along.

Gladden Space: an Art Gallery Ian Stallings Design IS FiIan Stallings DesignRIS Fine Art and DesignEDWRRStark Carpet SFwARKITEKTURAStephen Galloway

08/29/2026

I took this photo last night. It is a collection of women’s work; including Mary Ann Lawson drawings, the suffragette votes for woman banner, etc….

It felt very Dolly to me.

07/24/2026

“How do you find peace?”

It is a great question. We create peace.

For me, it has never been about escaping the world.
It is found in the quiet pursuit of making something meaningful.
Every project is an opportunity to listen, to a place and to the people who will inhabit it, and to the light that moves through it. Working alongside Gary Hutton, I am reminded each day that great design is never just about beautiful rooms. It is about creating spaces that slow us down, invite us to gather, and quietly enrich our lives.
If the spaces we create inspire someone to pause, to breathe a little deeper, or to feel more at home in the world, then we’ve done something worthwhile.
Design, at its best, is an act of generosity.
— Ian Stallings

07/06/2026

I found this antique carpet a few years ago at the estate sale of Irving and Barbara Nussbaum. Although it lay in the imposing front hall of their home, designed by architect Irving Tobocman, I immediately knew it would draw the colors of the garden, the Japanese maple, the daisies, and the surrounding landscape into the living room of our much more modest house.

The carpet fits the room like a glove, and the quality is exceptional. Of course, if anyone knew fine carpets, it was the Nussbaums.

David & Edith Emerman House (“Stonehaus”)
Irving Tobocman, 1969

The house is one of the remarkable residences featured in my friend Peter Forguson’s book, Detroit Modern.

“For many years it was the home of Irving & Barbara Nussbaum. Barbara was a terrific woman who was very supportive of the project. The Nussbaums were owners of New York Carpet World.”

Ian Stallings Design Gladden Space: an Art Gallery IS Fine Art and Design Le IS Fine Art and DesignLe Shoppe Modern

05/16/2026

04/27/2026

This afternoon I walked through this year’s San Francisco Decorator Showcase:
a series of interiors that each approached space as something more than composition.
Before going, I revisited a project of my own from 2016, The White Witch Study.
It was a room built on contrast: light as atmosphere, not absence.
A study in restraint, material tension, and the quiet psychological weight a space can hold when everything unnecessary is removed.
At the time, the work was often described as cinematic, where reflection, surface, and perception blurred the boundary between architecture and illusion.
Walking through the house today, that idea surfaced again in different ways,
in the tension between tradition and personal interpretation,
in rooms that leaned into immersive atmosphere and escape,
and in others that used reflection and material to construct a more introspective, almost nocturnal experience.
What felt most relevant was not any single gesture, but the shared understanding that interiors are no longer just visual, they are psychological, narrative, and deeply personal.
Some moments leaned toward ritual and material purity, others toward narrative and illusion, but all pointed to the same shift.
That question still holds:
not just how a room looks, but what it asks of the people moving through it.

04/12/2026

I hope they do it, and it is a success for the local multigenerational community.