SCALAMANDRE’S ZEBRAS…LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

Right after college I moved to NYC.  About a year into living there, I had lunch at Gino’s on the Upper East Side. This was an old-school NYC institution that had been around since 1945.  The food was completely forgettable but to this day I still cannot forget the Scalamandré wallpaper that covered the restaurant’s walls. I was in shock and awe that someone would wallpaper an entire restaurant with red zebras. An entire restaurant full of zebras. I loved it.  The story behind the wallpaper is that the restaurant’s owner  Gino Circiello, liked to hunt but he couldn’t afford to pay for an African safari.  So instead of going hunting he decided that he could afford to put zebras on the walls of his restaurant   He commissioned his friend Franco Scalamandré to design wallpaper with leaping zebras pursued by arrows. And so it began   Sadly the restaurant shut its doors in 2010 but the wallpaper still lives on through Scalamandré.

One day, if Luke and I ever get the chance to own our own home, I am determined to use wallpaper somewhere -either  a bathroom, library, guest room or dinning room. What do you think?

The wallpaper even made it into The Royal Tenenbaums

The wallpaper comes in different colors, like this black which I love!