Open Concept

Inside a former gymnasium-turned-gallery in East London, a design-dealing couple lives among the contemporary work they’ve devoted themselves to discovering.

- Tom Delavan

“WE HAD NO IDEA what we were doing,” says Sam Pratt of the first show he and Valerio Capo staged in London 13 years ago — a surprising declaration from the co-owner of Gallery Fumi, one of today’s most respected design dealers in the world, with an exhibition space in Mayfair and a roster of famous British designers including Max Lamb and Faye Toogood.

A few years earlier, Capo and Pratt, who are partners in both work and life, had been on vacation in Milan and timidly entered Nilufar, the elegant gallery established in 1989 by the dealer Nina Yashar, from whom they purchased a vintage rug by an Argentine architect (which they could scarcely afford at the time) to bring home to their Marylebone flat. “That’s when we got the bug,” says the now 55-year-old Pratt; soon after, they approached Yashar with the idea of co-hosting a London exhibition of her wares, including mid-century Italian furniture and objects designed by the likes of Gio Ponti and Gino Sarfatti. Charmed by their enthusiasm, she agreed. So in 2006, Pratt and Capo, who were then employed as a banker and marketing consultant, respectively, invited all of their friends and the few collectors they knew to their apartment, where they had inadvertently doubled the retail prices of the roughly dozen items on display from Yashar’s collection — and, thus, didn’t sell a single thing. “We were so embarrassed that we bought a Ponti headboard and a Sarfatti Ladybird lamp,” says the now 47-year-old Capo.