“Just a second,” Enis Karavil calls out as he darts off screen, returning with a handful of antique rulers. Some are wooden, some chrome, one even unfolds in his hands. “I have maybe 50 of them.” Later in the interview, he pauses to lean the laptop towards a chrome set of ultra slim drawers, each containing stacks of magazine tear-outs. “My Pinterest,” he laughs. The SANAYI313 creative director is a collector bred from a family of collectors, namely an antique-minded grandmother. His spoils range from rulers, magazines, and teapots to art, furniture, and decorative objects. “I believe when you collect the same things but different versions from different years, you see what changes about that product or object over time,” Karavil explains. Once he has enough variety across appearances, eras, and makers, the collection is ready for display. The likes of which he exhibits in his Istanbul home.
The home itself is extremely minimal, full of clean, white lines. Huge windows line the living room—"I don't watch TV; I prefer to watch the view." A white linen couch essentially fades into the background. The items he's added to this empty box are typically black, white, silver, or gold and they likely won't stay put for long. The designer admittedly bores easily. At this moment, a winged bench by James Plum rests as a focal point in the center of the room. Oliver Gustav chairs sit as if in conversation in front of a painting. "I believe in minimal stuff with maximal details," is how he describes his furniture and decor. Nestled about are stacks of books and magazines, sculptures resting in the middle of the floor, paintings resting precariously against the wall.
If the design is austere, the artwork is haunting. Two eyes gaze eerily out over the dining room table from a wizened face the size of a small human (a work of art by Vasilis Poulios that reminds the owner of his grandmother). Next to that, hang suspended birds by Mathieu Miljavac which Karavil commissioned. "I like things to be a bit disturbing, somehow." But not everything is that harsh. Karavil infuses greenery and wood (in the form of a large fiddle leaf fig and an antique French dining table, respectively) to quell the severity. And despite this sense of curation in lieu of decoration, "the house is not museum." The interior architect and designer is not precious with his objects—no matter how old or odd.
Whether it's a Gaulino chair or candle holders sourced from a flea market, color is a rarity in the space. It can, however, be found in his assemblage of books and in one singular painting by Ammon Rost in his bedroom. A creative, he seeks out this desaturation. Karavil dresses in head-to-toe black but he sleeps in white. His correspondingly all-white bed is on the floor so he can't see a thing when he sleeps. But, he assures me, his dreams are all in color.
