PARK SLOPE — A 10-room brownstone on the market for $4.6 million will be transformed Saturday into a pop-up department store where shoppers can buy "avant-garde candy," perfume, booze and every piece of furniture in the house.
Hovey Design, the decorating firm that staged the townhouse at 857 Carroll St., will host the retail event (which doubles as an open house for the property) on Jan. 23 from noon to 7 p.m.
A children's bedroom inside 857 Carroll St. The townhouse is on the market for $4.6 million and was staged by Hovey Design.
"It will just be a really neat way for more people to see the house," said Hollister Hovey, who runs Hovey Design with her sister, Porter.
The sibling design duo has staged apartments for sale inside some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Dakota. They've also helped Hollywood-based actors in New York to shoot movies or TV shows quickly decorate temporary digs.
The two first attracted attention in 2009 for the eccentric look of their Williamsburg loft on Bedford Avenue, a whimsical style sometimes called "flea market chic." The sisters wrote a design book called "Heirloom Modern" and opened Hovey Design last year. At Saturday's event, they'll unveil their first product line — throw pillows featuring images painted by Hollister Hovey.
Every piece of carefully selected furniture and art inside 857 Carroll St. will be for sale Saturday, and the Hovey sisters have also invited a selection of high-end vendors and artists to sell their wares at the event.
Items for sale will include sweets created by former lingerie designer Maayan Zilberman, which The New York Times recently described as "avante-garde candy."
Other vendors will include the florists Brrch Floral; olive oil maker Wonder Valley ($33 for 12.7 ounces); leather bag maker Billykirk, and Lynn & Lawrence, which makes $120 Jacque Costeau-inspired wool hats. For a complete list, click here.
The Hoveys spent several weeks picking out furniture and art for the location and even cooked up a fictional backstory for the family they envisioned inhabiting the 4,300-square-foot townhouse.
It reads like a discarded Wes Anderson script, with "an Italian zoologist father who has a music-loving teenage daughter from his first marriage,” Hollister Hovey wrote on the firm’s blog. “Together with his second wife, a French botanist, he has two twin 8-year-old boys who love astronomy and cars and a new baby girl who enjoys Frank Gehry pop-up books."
The sisters create backstories for many of the properties they stage, Hollister Hovey said.
“It gives you a bit of a vision and soul,” Hollister Hovey said of the sisters’ pre-staging prep work. “You want people to be able to come in and see themselves there, but you want it to have personality.”
Pieces inside the brownstone include a giant stuffed camel, a sectional sofa that resembles a kidney bean, and a 1960s burled wood and brass backgammon set designed by Tommaso Barbi.
The six-bedroom, three-bathroom brownstone, located between Prospect Park West and Seventh Avenue, most recently sold for $4.05 million in 2015, according to StreetEasy.
The Romanesque revival mansion includes a separate one-bedroom apartment on the first floor that can be rented out, according to the listing with Halstead Property.
For more information on Saturday's event, click here.
