Minister of the interior
Trusting someone to design the interior of your home, however, can be a much larger show of faith. Not only does the person in whose hands you put your house have to come up with a design that you like, it has to be a design that you can live with, and will continue to live with for some time. A bad design then, is like a prison sentence, and your time is only up when you lose face, concede you were wrong, and paint over the gold and green color-scheme in the sitting room.
It is little surprise, then, that Ferenc Molnár comes across as more of a diplomat than an artist. Surrounded by the tools of his trade in Nicolas Neumann Interiors in Warsaw, namely leather upholstered armchairs, bookcases that slide and pivot, and an array of lamps and cushions in all the colours of a very big rainbow, he is softly spoken and avoids difficult questions with the deftness of an ambassador. If I needed someone to tell me that, really, when it comes to furniture I have absolutely no taste, it should be Molnár.
Nicolas Neumann has been in the business in Germany for around 15 years and has had an outlet on ul. Mysia in Warsaw for the past 14 months. The place is an Aladdin's cave of sumptuous chairs covered in some rare form of leather, chocolate brown bookcases that look good enough to eat and lights that change their brightness when you brush against them.
It's all very well having the furniture, but you have to know what to pick and where to put it, and that's were our man Molnár comes in. Whether it's just the bedroom, the whole house or an office that needs a makeover, Molnár can pick the perfect cushion or find the finest sofa. "We are concentrating on living areas so it can be at the same time a home or a very comfortable office; we don't make a distinction that we only do home or offices. Everyone should decide on their own what they need," he says. "Our armchairs, for example, would be very good for any office, and one of our manufacturers has models specially made for offices."
The best thing for Molnár is to get his hands dirty right from the start, though. "We can go and make a plan of a flat and make a proposition including colour schemes and materials. This is our first and main line of business. We would like to do mainly plans for the customer who comes to us, looks at what we have and then decides on a plan for a flat; that is the ideal customer."
However, the first step with any interior design is usually the, eh, exterior. "[The first thing is to get] a general impression of the whole building and afterwards the flat; what sort of place it is and secondly what the customer wants to have. Sometimes there are customers who have a very strong idea of what they want but mainly the customers have no clear ideas and that's why they come to us for some consulting."
However, there is no accounting for taste and all the consulting in the world can't help some people with strong ideas. When a client insists that they want the black-and-white tiger-skin rug with the leopard-skin armchair, it can take the tact of a saint to steer them round to a room design that won't give most people a headache. Nicolas Neumann is a bit short on tiger skins, but Molnár uses the versatility of the company's products to get around this. "There are a few products that cannot be combined but most of our furniture come in a variety of upholstery, in every type of fabric or leather and you can always find a matching solution with each piece, because we can change the color and the material," he says. "If somebody really wants something then we don't argue, if they are very sure. However, we would tell them our suggestion; if they like it, good, but if not then we will try something else." The UN wouldn't have a look in.
The customer might always be right, but their mind is not always made up. So what to do when somebody decides half-way through a job that hot pink may not be the best choice for a sitting room? "It doesn't happen," says Molnár. "We are always consulting with the client to find what they want. We sometimes do two or three proposals and the customer picks out one or two. When we do it this way it never happens that the customer doesn't get what they want."
Fashion is a difficult mistress and what may be hip in Milan might not pass muster in Poland, and many of the brands that are carried by Nicolas Neumann, such as Fendi, may strike a chord with western Europeans but fail to immediately impress eastern Europeans. However, Poles are adept at keeping with the times. "Most of our clients are Polish and a few, maybe 20 percent, are foreign people. Some Polish customers are completely up to date with the newest design and they know what they want exactly. Perhaps it is easier to explain our products to foreign people. They can maybe more easily understand some specifics of the products. But our customers in general are all well oriented in design so most know what is fashionable and what isn't. The ones who don't have good taste, don't take care and rely on us."
Wise move, but for this kind of style, you need a fat leather wallet to go with the fat leather three-piece. "For a living room a real budget would be about EUR 10,000-15,000. It depends on the manufacturer and the quantity of the furniture and the style but usually in my opinion it should be about E10,000 for a complete living room with two sofas, carpets, curtains, tables, and armchairs," says Molnár, with a straight face. Prices like these have most people reaching for the Ikea catalogue and, while Molnár refuses to take the bait and launch into a tirade against the Swedish giant, he does concede that it has made people think about spending less on furniture.
"This is a common problem in Poland that even the richest people don't want to spend too much on furniture and there are only a few people who are deciding to have designer furniture in their home. However, there are some of the people in Poland who are really looking for something new, and something that is not well known in the market." The ultimate chair, it seems, is one that no one else is sitting in, and some of the seats in Nicolas Neumann make a certain flat-pack superstore's stock look very plain indeed.
It is little surprise, then, that Ferenc Molnár comes across as more of a diplomat than an artist. Surrounded by the tools of his trade in Nicolas Neumann Interiors in Warsaw, namely leather upholstered armchairs, bookcases that slide and pivot, and an array of lamps and cushions in all the colours of a very big rainbow, he is softly spoken and avoids difficult questions with the deftness of an ambassador. If I needed someone to tell me that, really, when it comes to furniture I have absolutely no taste, it should be Molnár.
Nicolas Neumann has been in the business in Germany for around 15 years and has had an outlet on ul. Mysia in Warsaw for the past 14 months. The place is an Aladdin's cave of sumptuous chairs covered in some rare form of leather, chocolate brown bookcases that look good enough to eat and lights that change their brightness when you brush against them.
It's all very well having the furniture, but you have to know what to pick and where to put it, and that's were our man Molnár comes in. Whether it's just the bedroom, the whole house or an office that needs a makeover, Molnár can pick the perfect cushion or find the finest sofa. "We are concentrating on living areas so it can be at the same time a home or a very comfortable office; we don't make a distinction that we only do home or offices. Everyone should decide on their own what they need," he says. "Our armchairs, for example, would be very good for any office, and one of our manufacturers has models specially made for offices."
The best thing for Molnár is to get his hands dirty right from the start, though. "We can go and make a plan of a flat and make a proposition including colour schemes and materials. This is our first and main line of business. We would like to do mainly plans for the customer who comes to us, looks at what we have and then decides on a plan for a flat; that is the ideal customer."
However, the first step with any interior design is usually the, eh, exterior. "[The first thing is to get] a general impression of the whole building and afterwards the flat; what sort of place it is and secondly what the customer wants to have. Sometimes there are customers who have a very strong idea of what they want but mainly the customers have no clear ideas and that's why they come to us for some consulting."
However, there is no accounting for taste and all the consulting in the world can't help some people with strong ideas. When a client insists that they want the black-and-white tiger-skin rug with the leopard-skin armchair, it can take the tact of a saint to steer them round to a room design that won't give most people a headache. Nicolas Neumann is a bit short on tiger skins, but Molnár uses the versatility of the company's products to get around this. "There are a few products that cannot be combined but most of our furniture come in a variety of upholstery, in every type of fabric or leather and you can always find a matching solution with each piece, because we can change the color and the material," he says. "If somebody really wants something then we don't argue, if they are very sure. However, we would tell them our suggestion; if they like it, good, but if not then we will try something else." The UN wouldn't have a look in.
The customer might always be right, but their mind is not always made up. So what to do when somebody decides half-way through a job that hot pink may not be the best choice for a sitting room? "It doesn't happen," says Molnár. "We are always consulting with the client to find what they want. We sometimes do two or three proposals and the customer picks out one or two. When we do it this way it never happens that the customer doesn't get what they want."
Fashion is a difficult mistress and what may be hip in Milan might not pass muster in Poland, and many of the brands that are carried by Nicolas Neumann, such as Fendi, may strike a chord with western Europeans but fail to immediately impress eastern Europeans. However, Poles are adept at keeping with the times. "Most of our clients are Polish and a few, maybe 20 percent, are foreign people. Some Polish customers are completely up to date with the newest design and they know what they want exactly. Perhaps it is easier to explain our products to foreign people. They can maybe more easily understand some specifics of the products. But our customers in general are all well oriented in design so most know what is fashionable and what isn't. The ones who don't have good taste, don't take care and rely on us."
Wise move, but for this kind of style, you need a fat leather wallet to go with the fat leather three-piece. "For a living room a real budget would be about EUR 10,000-15,000. It depends on the manufacturer and the quantity of the furniture and the style but usually in my opinion it should be about E10,000 for a complete living room with two sofas, carpets, curtains, tables, and armchairs," says Molnár, with a straight face. Prices like these have most people reaching for the Ikea catalogue and, while Molnár refuses to take the bait and launch into a tirade against the Swedish giant, he does concede that it has made people think about spending less on furniture.
"This is a common problem in Poland that even the richest people don't want to spend too much on furniture and there are only a few people who are deciding to have designer furniture in their home. However, there are some of the people in Poland who are really looking for something new, and something that is not well known in the market." The ultimate chair, it seems, is one that no one else is sitting in, and some of the seats in Nicolas Neumann make a certain flat-pack superstore's stock look very plain indeed.
