Swoon, the Studio is Curating a Shoppable World of Cool

Is there anything that local design house Swoon, the Studio, doesn’t do brilliantly? Since the firm’s inception in 2009, founder Sam Sano and principal Joslyn Taylor have built a boutique powerhouse focused on interiors for residential, commercial, and hospitality projects, along with branding, and photography. Their booming hospitality design CV includes several historic properties: The Adolphus Hotel in Dallas; The Vanderbilt, an Auberge Resorts Collection hotel in Newport, Rhode Island; and Emeline in Charleston, North Carolina. Recently, The Adolphus’ venerable French Room and lobby of the W Dallas Residences were given elegant refreshes, along with a glowing redo of Forty Five Ten’s penthouse restaurant, Mirador, which reopened in late December.

Now, they’ve launched Shop Swoon, an e-commerce website that offers a range of home decoratives, all carefully assembled to reflect Swoon’s passion for artisan-made objects. As a bonus, Swoon has also opened a new 600-square-foot physical store inside the downtown Swoon studio for those who prefer a more tactile and immediate shopping experience. Longtime Swoon collaborator and retailer Christine Visneau was enlisted as the company’s new chief curation officer.

“As lovers of beautiful things, we are constantly around the world sourcing and buying for clients,” Taylor says. “Our shop offers some of the cool, interesting things we encounter and want to share.”

Look for furniture, rugs and textiles, tabletop, accessories, art, books, wellness products, and found objects — all with a focus on independent and small makers, along with their own designs and artwork.

As with Swoon’s interiors projects, there’s a preference for furniture made from understated raw materials such as pine, ash, red cedar, and vintage bark, along with textural upholstery like sheepskin, flax, linen, and mohair. A collection of vessels, platters, and plates includes pieces made from marble, soapstone, stoneware, alabaster, and papier-mâché. Exquisite unglazed pottery they discovered in Paris while shopping for a client starts at just $25 and is already a big hit. Cutting boards from Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria restaurant in New York City — one of Visneau’s favorites — are made in Italy from architectural elements salvaged from old estates.

It wouldn’t be a Swoon-designed interior without well-curated art, and that obsession is reflected in their new shop, which features works on paper by blue-chip artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Joel Shapiro, Josef Albers, Eduardo Chillida, and Donald Judd, along with photography and sculpture by local and emerging artists.

Shop Swoon is also a way for the team to showcase their own designs — Sano’s petite lamps are made from West Texas carved stone and leather; and Taylor’s photographs of desert landscapes have a moody beauty.

Shop Swoon, 1217 Main St., Second Floor, shopswoon.com.