In a world that so often flattens the past, Suzanne Demisch stands as a steward of layered memory – a collector, gallerist, and restless seeker who sees design as living history. In conversation with photographer William Jess Laird, she traces the threads of her upbringing among New England antiques, her serendipitous partnership with Stéphane Danant, and a lifetime devoted to celebrating overlooked voices, from Maria Pergay to Sheila Hicks. As she moves between folk furniture and postwar French radicalism, between her own preserved apartment walls and the pulse of the gallery, Demisch’s story reveals an enduring fascination with the imperfect, the inherited, and the yet-to-be-discovered – a reminder that the spaces we inhabit are as complex and curious as we dare to let them be.

WJL: Can you tell me about the home you grew up in? I’m curious if there are any influences you can trace back to that space.

SD: I grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut – a quintessential New England environment. Growing up, I visited many museums, historical homes, yard sales, and antique fairs. My dad’s house was in New Hampshire. As a teenager, I went on a stretch on Route 4, between Lee and Chichester, known as Antique Alley. My dad also owned the Colonial Inn in Concord, Massachusetts. That building is special: originally three separate structures that were joined together in 1897. The central portion, which is today’s main inn, was used as an ammunition store during the American Revolution. That’s where I became interested in folk and historical works.

SD: After graduating, I worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the Marine Policy Center in Cape Cod, where I was involved in research. I started dealing in antiques as a hobby. Later, I moved to New York City. In 1993, I earned a Master of Fine Arts from NYSID, focusing on Folk Furniture. In 1995, I established myself as a professional dealer, and by 1996 I was on Industrial Home’s website alongside ten design dealers globally!

Through my education and my first professional experiences, I developed a passion and curiosity for research. This is what drives my collections – both personally and with the gallery. I love learning, exploring and finding a particular work. There are a lot of layers to this process because I'm still captivated by my initial interests early in life (Americana, for example) as much as I am by my more recent affinities. To me, the most exciting part of collecting is that it can take years of discovery, anticipation, and commitment to finally find what you’re looking for. Since 2017, I have been researching the more architectural side of Sheila Hicks' practice.

WJL: Were your parents interested in design?

SD: [laughs] No.

WJL: Was there anything you collected as a kid?

SD: I began collecting 18th-Century Americana furniture as a teenager. I was drawn to the craftsmanship, the materials, and the historical depth each piece carried. I was especially taken by American furniture from the 1730s to the 1790s – pieces in the Queen Anne and Chippendale styles – which blend Baroque, classical, and Asian influences.

WJL: I read that you met your partner, Stéphane Danant, in the gallery by chance at a Paris flea market. What sparked a conversation between the two of you? What were you looking at?

SD: When I met Stéphane in 1999 at a Paris Flea market. We were both dealers eager to travel Europe and source new works and pieces. It was during this time that we recognised a void in the representation of French postwar design in the United States. That was the beginning of our partnership, and in 2005 we opened our first gallery in Chelsea.

WJL: You two created a gallery with such a tight focus on postwar French design. Can you reflect on how the reputation of this period of design has changed in the past two decades since the gallery’s inception? Are there particular designers whose reputation has shifted in an unexpected way?

SD: I believe our work helped draw attention to the practices of designers like Jacques Dumond, Joseph-André Motte, Pierre Paulin and René-Jean Caillette, and place them in a broader, international design landscape. We’ve also been committed to showing the work of women – Maria Pergay, Sheila Hicks, Claude de Muzac, Janine Abraham, and Jacqueline Lecoq. Their contributions were overshadowed for a long time by male dominance in the industry. Through consistent focus, we’ve helped expand the recognition of their legacies. We’re currently working with Sheila on an upcoming exhibition that will take place this fall.

WJL: You had a very special relationship with Maria Pergay. Can you talk about how you met and how you came to represent her work?

SD: Stéphane and I first came across Maria Pergay’s work at a flea market. We knew we had discovered something special, but we weren’t quite sure what it was yet. Vintage copies of French magazines like Maison et Jardin and L'OEIL were instrumental in our research. We’d use old images and texts to piece together her body of work while exploring flea markets in Paris.

After three years of collecting and researching, I finally met her. A friend helped – she called every person in the Yellow Pages – and eventually reached a relative who put us in contact.

SD: We met Maria in Paris, at a bar in Montparnasse. At the end of that meeting, she invited us to visit her home in Essaouira, Morocco. Within three weeks, I went and stayed for ten days. I will never forget that trip.

WJL: You were a real partner in helping her realise her later works. Can you talk about this shift in her output? How would you characterise the early work from the late?

SD: Maria had stopped producing works in the 1990s, but she quickly expressed her desire to produce new pieces. It’s hard to differentiate the early works from the later ones, and we tend to show them together simply because Maria saw every work as part of a larger, ongoing conversation.