The Kitchens of Michelle Nussbaumer

Interior designer Michelle Nussbaumer has not one, not two, not three, but four kitchens in her home in Dallas, Texas.

The wild Main Kitchen (which, it should be noted, won House Beautiful's 2019 Kitchen of the Year!) is a natural blend of Art Deco and Mayan influences...a Mayan design sense is one of the many motifs that influenced the Art Deco movement in the 1920s. But she pairs it with an homage to the sculptor Louise Nevelson all along an upper cabinetry wall.

The Mayan mural is custom, the doors and windows are cased in Rosso Marquina marble, and the cabinetry is carnation, navy, and black lacquer. The kitchen also has two matching pantries, one for porcelain storage and the other for food storage.

Here is an image, below, of a monumental sculpture by Louise Nevelson called Big Black, created in 1963, currently at MOMA in Manhattan. The MOMA sites says, "To create this sculpture, Nevelson stacked boxes against a wall and filled each compartment with found wooden scraps including moldings, dowels, spindles, and furniture parts. She then covered the entire assemblage with black paint, both unifying the composition and obscuring the individual objects." You can see how Nussbaumer used this design to replicate Nevelson's iconic work.

And here are the stunning pantries...

The next kitchen, on the second floor, is what Nussbaumer calls the Art Kitchen. Part Moroccan, part Mexican, it was created to celebrate the designer's love of travel to exotic locations. The pattern mixing here is bold and breathtaking--and totally works.

The Speakeasy Kitchen with its extensive wine collection has the sense of a Gentlemen's Club from long ago. The designer created the grass-cloth wallpaper with Paul Montgomery to evoke Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, in Mayan lands.

The last space called simply The Cocktail Bar is jaw-dropping in its scale (the ceiling height must be at around twelve or thirteen feet!) as well as for the black marble cladding. Nussbaumer says, "I was looking for an art deco bar that felt like we were somewhere else in time and yet still current. I had taken the photo of the mural years ago and saved it. With the help of Paul Montgomery studios, we brought to life the spectacular image. It’s based on the story written by Rudyard Kipling, THE JUNGLE BOOK."

https://michellenussbaumer.com/