Designing Custom Pieces with Meaning

Here at Emily Lindberg Design, we believe the most memorable homes are made not just of beautiful rooms, but of meaningful details. Imagine homes full of pieces that tell a story, spark connection, and evolve gracefully over time.

 

Custom furnishings play an essential role in our work. More than simply filling a space, they’re often the heart of it, designed to honor how our clients truly live. Whether it’s a dining table that hosts both candlelit dinners and Saturday morning pancakes, or millwork that feels integral to a home’s architecture, these pieces speak to the depth and care behind intentional design.

This custom spalted maple bed frame featuring a merlot leather drawer face was designed in partnership with Kate Duncan in our Fort Greene Project with OF/D 

Past Influences, New Expressions

Every project begins with inspiration. These references live in the background as anchors, not blueprints. Equally present are the people we’re designing for and their stories. What we create emerges from that intersection of lasting ideas from the past, shaped into something specific, grounded, and alive for the present.

We love it when clients bring their references to the table, either specific places, artwork, or even just a feeling. In a Connecticut renovation of a 1960s glass house, our clients were drawn to the work of Clara Porset, the Cuban-born, Mexican-based designer who believed that design should be both functional and reflective of cultural identity. Her Butaca chair is rooted in vernacular Latin American forms and refined through a modernist manufacturing lens of the 1950s, embodying the kind of balance we aim for: sculptural, relaxed, elegant, and casual, both of a place and of a time.

Clara Porset's lounge chair design | Clara and her chief of production in the workshop, circa 1951-1952 | The Shulman House, Southern California, 1952

Porset saw design as a social practice, one that drew from folk traditions as much as from international style. Her legacy reminds us that modernism doesn’t have to be cold; it can carry history, geography, and human touch. We aimed to resonate with the existing structure with it's chrome and glass, and bring warmth and touch with oversized hand carved pulls and hooks, and a palette directly influences from the lush green woods of the property.

Nature, Craft, and Gathering

In Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens, a single-slab Claro walnut table anchors the dining space, a custom piece designed in partnership with Rowan Shaw-Jones. Its form and materiality tell the story of the tree it came from, while serving as a welcoming center for family life. It’s a reminder that the best pieces carry both functional and symbolic weight.

We love collaborating with clients who want their homes to reflect not only their personal stories, but also a broader legacy of design where craft, sustainability, and beauty come together in lasting ways.

 

If you’re imagining a home filled with custom touches that honor the past while creating something entirely new, we’d love to hear from you.