Sasha Bikoff, Marshall Watson Will Share Their Insights During East Hampton Antiques & Design Show Weekend

The annual East Hampton Antiques & Design Show was held virtually last year due to the pandemic, but returns to being a weekend-long in-person event in 2021, kicking off Friday, July 16, with a preview cocktail party at Mulford Farm to benefit the East Hampton Historical Society.

The weekend will also include a symposium at East Hampton Library on Saturday, July 17, with the preview party’s honorary chairperson, Marshall Watson, and his fellow interior designer, Sasha Bikoff. Titled “Point of View: Vintage to New,” the talk will focus on the designers’ work, their use of antiques, mixing old and new, and sustainably in interior design.

Mr. Watson founded his Manhattan-based firm Marshall Watson Interiors 35 years ago, and he was a longtime interior design columnist for The Southampton Press and The East Hampton Press. It just so happens that he and Ms. Bikoff are neighbors in Springs.

Ms. Bikoff recalled during an interview last week that they first met a couple of years ago when she attended a garden tour at his home. “I love what he does, I respect what he does,” she said, calling Mr. Watson a legendary interior designer. “He’s so talented, and I’m super excited to be doing this with him.”

While Mr. Watson’s bio says, “Classic is his hallmark,” Ms. Bikoff’s style is bold, colorful and maximalist. She said that though they have different aesthetics and tastes, there are many places where she and Mr. Watson do connect, the main one being their love of antiques and vintage.

When she was younger, her family would call her “the garbage collector,” she said, because she would take the stuff her family members didn’t want and would rummage through storage spaces. “It’s easy to find the beauty in everything,” she reflected.

She enjoys taking something old and updating it to make it fresh and contemporary. For instance, she would take furniture that she purchased at flea markets and vintage and antique shops on her travels and reupholster them using “crazy, wild, very contemporary fashion” fabric remnants from Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and other designers.

“I love this idea of breathing new life into these older pieces, but I also love this sustainable aspect of it, and I love the idea that this chair has lived many lives,” Ms. Bikoff said.

A chair may have started out at an English manor before it was moved to a French pied-à-terre, and then made its way to America and ended up in a home in the Hamptons, she said. “I love the romance behind all of it, and to this day I’m still buying antiques and vintage.”

Using antiques in decorating gives a space a worldly, intellectual, grounded, richness, she said, and antiques have an artisanship and craftsmanship that is not found in mass-produced items made in a factory today. “It’s what differentiates really interesting eclectic personalized spaces from homes that look staged or look like a showroom.”

Ms. Bikoff’s formal education is in fine arts, art history and museum studies, but when it comes to interior design, she is self-taught. She said she’s always been very observant in her travels to her surroundings and her environment, and that’s something she was born with, but it’s also something she has nurtured.

When she attended the American University in Paris for two years, she lived in a decorator’s apartment among the shops of historic antiques dealers and vintage dealers, and on weekends visited the famous flea market Marché aux Puces. She taught herself about the history of design and photographed everything she loved.

“I’ve always loved antiques and design, but I think in Paris is where it really flourished,” she said.

For the antiques shoppers heading to the East Hampton Antiques & Design Show, Ms. Bikoff has some advice. She noted that when shopping for antiques, what you see is what you get. There’s no opportunity to place a special order or to customize an object in a different color.

“My number one advice to shopping for antiques is that if you love it, buy it,” she said. “Act on instinct, because you could think about it and come back and it can be gone. And even if you don’t know where it’s going — you’re not really sure if it fits, you’re not really sure if it works — just buy it, and you will make it work in some capacity.”

Look at an antique or a vintage piece as a sculptural-like object that could work anywhere in the home, or that the design can be built around, she said.

She also advises inspecting the condition of the piece, and factoring in the additional cost of repair. If there is a lot of chipped paint, a broken leg, or a cracked mirror, consider the work that will have to be put into restoring the piece before making a fair offer.

“Negotiating is always recommended when it comes to these kinds of things,” she added, saying to think of antiques shopping as a bazaar, where negotiating is expected.

To mix old and new in design, Ms. Bikoff said there is a method to the madness.

“It’s all about being eclectic and finding those whimsical little statement pieces and conversation pieces that excite people when they walk into the home, but it’s also about balance,” she said. “With something old, you incorporate something new.”

The East Hampton Antiques & Design Show preview party is Friday, July 16, at 6 p.m. at the Mulford Farm Museum, 10 James Lane, East Hampton. Tickets start at $175 and include return visits over the weekend.

The show will be open at the farm on Saturday, July 17, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, July 18, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $10, or $8 for East Hampton Historical Society members.

Tickets to Point of View: Vintage to New at East Hampton Library on Saturday, July 17, at 5 p.m. are $50, or $40 for historical society members

To purchase tickets for any of the events, call the East Hampton Historical Society at 631-324-6850 extension 1 or email info@easthamptonhistory.org. Tickets can also be purchased online by visiting the Events page on the East Hampton Historical Society’s website at easthamptonhistory.org.