Knoll came to Santa Fe to ask how a person builds a room out of four centuries at once. It is a fair question to put to this house. The gallery has been buying since 1972, and the collecting principle Christopher gave them in reply is either the most useful advice in the trade or the least, depending on how much you trust yourself.
LIVING WITH
Christopher Webster on Designing a Home You Can Love and Live With
Collecting art and design for your home can be intimidating. How do you thread tastes, eras, movements, and historical contexts together in a cohesive whole? For gallerist Christopher Webster, it’s simple: “Buy things that you like.” Since 2005, Webster has lent his personal touch to his family’s eponymous collection and gallery in New Mexico, showcasing historic and contemporary works of the Southwest united by quality, craftsmanship, beauty, and detail.
In the Santa Fe home that he shares with his partner Paisley Mason, Webster sat down to discuss the Webster Collection, the stories of the Southwest, and collecting for the home and gallery.
Originally Published at Knoll.com
https://www.knoll.com/story/shop/living-with-christopher-webster
The rest is harder than it sounds. Buying what you like is only a workable rule if you have spent long enough looking to know the difference between liking a thing and liking the idea of owning it. Christopher and Paisley have spent that time, in this gallery and in the rooms of the people who buy from it, and the house they live in is the argument: an eighteenth-century object, a photograph from 1977, and a chair designed in the year the gallery opened, all agreeing with each other because somebody chose all three.
That is also the standard the whole of Webster Santa Fe runs on. It is the same eye across the gallery, the store, and the properties.