A Favorite Chicago Shop Is Redesigned with a European Sensibility
A hulking 19th-century cabinet found in the countryside outside of Milan—just beyond the city of Parma, better known for cheese and ham than antiques—dwells in the far back corner of the recently revamped Michael Del Piero Good Design store. It’s made of pine and, at 13-feet-by-13-feet, is so massive that no one can gauge its weight. “It took three weeks to put that cabinet together; it was made in pieces and arrived that way. It took three different crews to make sense of it and put it together,” says Del Piero, shop owner and founder of her eponymous interior design firm. “We added glass to the doors so it would show off our finds better.”
Indeed, it does.
It’s been in her shop in the West Town neighborhood of Chicago since 2017, and it was one of the few items among her vintage wares to make the cut after she recently restyled her space to reflect a more European sensibility. “We wanted to have an experiential space that felt more like a residential setting,” she explains.
It takes only a quick glance at Del Piero's Instagram account—which is smattered with words like “textural” and “worn”—to get an idea of her taste in design. Absent are images of trendy graphic patterns (overblown floral wallpaper!) or brightly colored tchotchkes (turquoise foo dogs!) and her store, awash in a sea of neutrals and patina, is much the same. Instead, shoppers will find Japanese vessels, antique gilt mirrors, handwoven baskets, and other treasures unearthed during international buying trips, mostly during the winter months when prices are better, according to the traveler.
There are textiles, too. She loves a good, nubby bouclé or woven leather. Batiks, as well, and other cloths in natural fibers of wool, cotton, or silk.
“I like to travel and source everywhere at all times,” says the designer. “I am drawn to finds that are traveled and textural, weathered and worn, or cool and unusual.” Her well-trained eye can easily weed out the more common, and detect what is truly unique. By way of example, of six wooden bowls, she says, “I have seen so many by now that I know why one is going to be more appealing, as well as what is going to sell better than the others.” Naturally, it’s the one that has been most touched by hands and weather. “Patina reflects history and a story and it provides a soul that brand new items don’t carry,” she muses.
New items, however, are not excluded from the shop. For that, she offers custom-designed furniture, including the Hamptons sofa in linen and the metal Hamptons stool, a curvy take on the classic X-bench. The modern forms are the perfect antidote to all the antiquity, as are the minimal pieces from Chicago designer Lukas Machnik’s Monument collection.
A visit to the shop—in the industrial neighborhood just ten minutes west of Chicago’s downtown—is worth it for art lovers, too. Paintings in the form of abstracts by William McLure tend to loom large. “We’ve always been selling and attracted to larger-scale art over smaller pieces, and we’ve found more and more that’s what people want,” she says. Del Piero prefers large-scale, unusual objects as art. “Abstract expressionism is really my favorite genre and, in particular, midcentury pieces from the men who embodied it. I am also drawn to works with primitive shapes and three-dimensional multimedia pieces with lots of texture.”
So what would Del Piero, who also recently opened a Hamptons location as well, keep all to herself if she could? “The truth is that I don’t keep much of what I buy,” she confesses. “I love to travel and I love beautiful things, but I like to live in a minimal environment, which gives me the opportunity to sell unique finds to others who would appreciate them.”
428 North Wolcott Avenue, Chicago.
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