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Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but Jenny Dina Kirschner of Jenny Dina Kirschner Interiors is smitten with stone. In fact, in her own kitchen featured here, she’d chosen the slabs before she’d even closed on the property—that’s commitment to a material.
The space was completely gutted, so Jenny had a fresh canvas on which to leave her indelible imprint. It would be impossible to misidentify the focal point of the space in this kitchen. The luscious sculptural island is made of polished Belvedere quartzite. The entire piece is seamless with mitered corners at the top and sides; two large slabs were used, measuring approximately 80 square feet of stone in total. Jenny found her match at ABC Stone, a renowned resource for natural and man-made stone. The company also features Functional Art and Cubic Elements to complement any exceptional interior or exterior space.
When designing kitchens for her clients, Jenny often starts with the countertop material, and her own kitchen was no exception. The entire perimeter of the room is white: the flooring, cabinetry and even the hardware deliberately sublimates itself to the majesty of the quartzite island. “The intensity of the dark stone immediately grabbed my attention,” says Jenny. “It has all these really beautiful earth tones: green, caramel, crystals and ivories. It’s swirly and very dreamy.” The cantilevered drop to table height creates an architectural play of lines and volume that add visual interest and functionality. Flanked by Prouvé Standard SP Chairs, designed by Jean Prouvé and produced by Vitra, the island beckons to be touched and interacted with—it’s not passive decoration.
With storage often a challenge in urban kitchens, Jenny chose to extend her cabinets to new heights, quite literally. “Building the double-height cabinetry was pricey and challenging, but a must for me,” she says. “There were architectural soffits and elements we had to work around, and I wanted it to look seamless.”
Since the kitchen is an open concept, Jenny preferred to delineate the spaces discreetly yet purposefully. Flooring in the kitchen is porcelain by Stone Source in UonUon, and the rest of the flooring on the first floor is pickled and white-washed white oak. By interweaving individual floor planks, Jenny creates a subtly textured boundary between spaces. Visually blurred, it’s less jarring and abrupt than a complete switch of materials and colors.
Jenny masterfully integrates textures into her spaces, but here in the kitchen she deliberately kept textural layering to a minimum. She prefers instead for the enraptured gaze and attention to wander into the vastness and beyond.
Resources:
Jenny Dina Kirschner
Jenny Dina Kirschner Interiors
646.242.6336
jdkinteriors.com
ABC Stone
129 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011 | 646.707.3065
234 Banker Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222 | 718.389.8360
210 Miller Place, Hicksville, NY 11801 | 516.997.9412
abcworldwidestone.com