Showroom

Holland & Sherry

Trade account to buy

Interior textiles, rugs, and wallcoverings from a house founded in 1836, with its own mill in Tome, Chile.

Holland and Sherry has been a cloth merchant since 1836 and an interiors house for rather less time. The New York showroom opened in the D&D Building in 2001 in a single small room and now occupies nine thousand square feet, which is the clearest measure of how the interiors arm has gone.

It owns its mill. The plant at Tomé in Chile dyes, spins, weaves and finishes under one roof, so a colour that does not exist yet is a mill run rather than a request passed to a third party weaver. That is the fact that decides what can be asked for here. Elsewhere a custom colourway means persuading a supplier. Here it means scheduling production.

The embroidery is a separate operation again, designed in Paris and worked by hand in Germany, and it is ordered rather than pulled from stock. Lead times follow from that and they are not short.

It is in the D&D Building at 979 Third Avenue, which is open to the public, and buying requires a trade account. A floor that size takes more than one visit to read. Designers who use it well arrive with a scheme and a rough colour already settled, and spend the time on weight and hand rather than on direction.

A vertically integrated mill is a different kind of supplier from a fabric house that buys and edits. It is slower to start and it will make what nobody else stocks, which is the trade this showroom asks a project to accept.