Leslie and Leigh Keno, who have achieved celebrity appraiser status through “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS, have introduced a surprisingly-contemporary furniture line. Here, they answer questions about their work and inspiration.
Q:You’re both plenty busy with “Roadshow” and your other ventures. (Leigh owns a Manhattan auction house. Leslie is a director at Sotheby’s Auction House.) Why did you decide to create your own furniture line?
Leigh:We’ve been thinking about it for five years. We would look at a chair or a table and think, “If only the leg were a little shorter or the back were less puffy.” And in today’s world, furniture needs to be multifunctional because everyone’s doing six things at once.
Q:Describe the Keno Bros. Collection.
Leigh:Sensual. Many have S-shaped curves, the beautiful serpentine line we see in nature that is pleasurable and sensual to look at.
Leslie: They’re pieces that we would want to live with, and the finishes invite you to touch it. We decided not to put handles on our pieces. We didn’t want to interrupt the beautiful form.
Q:Why did you choose a modern aesthetic?
Leslie: People were really surprised when they saw the line at the home furnishings market at High Point last year. People couldn’t believe we were doing modern because we’re associated with 18th- and 19th-century furniture.
It would have been easy to replicate Chippendale and Queen Anne furniture, but we wanted to come up with something that is fresh and not reproductions. We like the element of surprise.
Q:Are any of the pieces in the new line inspired by antiques?
Leigh:As auctioneers, we have handled and cataloged thousands of pieces from Europe, America and Asia. We’re not inspired by a specific piece but by all we’ve seen and owned, like a 20th-century Italian table in our apartment that we like the curve of.
We took the saber leg, which has been around for centuries, and used it in the Slope mahogany armchair. Our Dance side table is inspired by 18th-century French furniture. We have modernized it with tremendous parquetry.
Q:How is your knowledge of furniture evident in this line?
Leslie: We have an innate curiosity about woods, craftsmanship and history. We take the best of what we’ve seen — line, proportion and sculptural form — and condense it into pieces we would like to wake up to each morning.
Q:What kind of furnishings do you have in your homes?
Leigh:I live in a Manhattan townhouse upstairs from my auction house. It’s really a mixture of ancient to modern. I have an 11th-century Khmer goddess sculpture, next to a tribal war shield, next to a modern sofa from 20 years ago.
Q:How do you get the right mix in any room?
Leigh:In today’s world, we mix modern and old, and there’s no such thing as a period room anymore.
Once I was in an art collector’s English country manor home. Each room was beautiful. She told me her secret — she placed one ugly thing in every room. In this perfect room with her Chippendale sofa was a weird 1950s thrift shop lamp. It’s the imperfections that make life interesting.
Q:Your Sampler cocktail table is a real head-turner. What’s it made of?
Leigh:That’s one of our favorites. There are over 12 exotic woods used in that piece. It samples the beauty of wood — zebrawood, lacewood, rosewood. It’s very modern with cast brass legs and a wooden grid pattern in the middle.
Q:What was collaborating on a line like? Did you clash over design ideas?
Leigh: If we disagreed on the shape of a leg, one of us usually talked the other into it. We get along pretty well. We’re twins.
Q:Do you think your furniture will become family heirlooms like the ones you appraise?
Leigh:We hope someone will bring one to an “Antiques Roadshow” of the future and a couple of blond kids will tell everyone that it’s from the Keno brothers from back in 2011. We like to think that in this era of disposable items, it’s nice to have something that really will last for generations and hopefully be cherished.
