There’s So Much Color Inspiration to Be Had in This Tiny Prewar Apartment

Known for his candy-colored baubles and his equally vibrant sartorial style, the jewelry designer Mish Tworkowski likes to drench his universe in color. Not surprisingly, the newly renovated Greenwich Village apartment that he shares with his partner in life and business, architect Joseph Singer, reflects that same playfulness and joie de vivre. “We are not afraid of color,” says the designer, whose brand is Mish Fine Jewelry.

Tworkowski purchased the prewar apartment in 2004. “It was love at first sight,” he says of the two-bedroom unit in a building whose style is described as neo-Renaissance. He loved the quirky character of the space, which has soaring double-height rooms with coffered ceilings and a narrow staircase leading upstairs to the bedrooms. “It felt like a miniature version of a grand English apartment,” he says.

He and Singer lived there full-time until 2021, when they decamped to Palm Beach and moved the Mish store, formerly in downtown Manhattan, to a 1920s-era Addison Mizner building. He enlisted his longtime friend, ELLE DECOR A-List interior designer Katie Ridder, to transform the shop into a very Mish-like backdrop. Now painted in his signature lavender and layered with pattern, the space is a merry showcase for Tworkowski’s nature-inspired jewels, like gold sea urchin earrings with turquoise drops and bark-textured gold cuffs sprinkled with diamonds.

The dining room in the New York City duplex apartment of Mish Tworkowski and Joseph Singer, which they renovated with interior designer Katie Ridder. The table is by Founders Furniture, the walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s Pink Cup, and the diptych is by William Dunlap.

Palm Beach was grand, but he and Singer weren’t ready to give up on New York. The move south gave them the opportunity to redesign their Manhattan apartment into a singular pied-à-terre, which they use on frequent trips from Florida. Once again, they turned to Ridder, a kindred spirit who the jeweler describes as “an extraordinary colorist.” She worked alongside Singer, who oversaw the architectural design. A new powder room (sheathed in a pastel pineapple print) was created, a dumbwaiter was removed to enlarge the pantry-bar area, and a spare bedroom was converted into an expansive dressing room.

Go Inside This Vibrant Greenwich Village Apartment

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From the moment you enter the tortoise-patterned foyer, the couple’s whimsical style comes vividly into focus. “The apartment is so clearly a reflection of them,” says Ridder, who considered their vast assemblages of art, furnishings, and antiques when selecting the colors and fabrics. In the living room, the starting point was a newly acquired Donald Sultan painting of red roses, which hangs against dreamy blue walls. There is art everywhere, from Alexis Rockman’s Paris Underwater canvas, which hangs above the fireplace, to Harry Watrous’s Egyptian Vase artwork and an oil painting of a cactus by Matt Smith. The couple has amassed their collection over decades at auctions, antiques shops, and while traveling, and it is nothing if not eclectic, ranging from Old Masters to Hawaiian florals and landscapes by Shirley Russell.

In the primary bathroom, the walls are covered in Gioia Venatino marble, the towels by Matouk, and the artwork is by Jessye McDowell.

The couple loves to garden: They tend to their plants and flowers at their weekend home in Millbrook, New York, and both serve on boards of public gardens. Their passion for nature is apparent throughout their New York apartment, where botanical artworks—by Cecil Beaton and Jean Cocteau, along with pieces from the estate of Bunny Mellon—hang in almost every space.

Since they rarely host formal dinner parties, Singer says it made sense to transform the dining room into a “comfortable and fun place to eat, read, and relax.” The room’s fanciful scheme features salmon walls, a custom banquette in cobalt leather, a vintage metal bookcase originally from a French library, and two Jansen-style bergères. The kitchen has a more functional, streamlined style with white subway-tiled walls and stainless steel appliances, but cabinets in two shades of purple and a linoleum floor in black and purple add plenty of flair.

A former bedroom was turned into a dressing room for Tworkowski. The desk is a stainless steel restaurant worktable, the bamboo shade is by the Shade Store, and the rug is by Mark Nelson Designs.

Nothing pleases Tworkowski more than his new bedroom-size dressing room, which is filled with his colorful wardrobe (including several floral-print jackets). A stainless steel restaurant table in the center displays personal treasures, from vintage boxes and miniature watering cans to a large seashell that Singer found on the beach on their first vacation together and handed to Tworkowski as a gift. Later, the jeweler turned his own scavenged seashells into a pair of cuff links for Singer. “The natural world and all its colors,” he says, “inspires my jewelry and my world.”

This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE