The Best of the 2019 Blog

Dana Joy Altman and Laurent Rebuffel at the home he shares with his wife, designer Kimberly Denman, which they opened to us for a wonderful party in the fall of 2018.

Well, here we are reflecting on the past year—and what a momentous one it’s been. Over the last twelve months, we’ve brought you a range of incredible stories covering the people and products we love, and we’ve had an absolute blast doing it. If we do say so ourselves, Design on Tap is a darn good blog.

We began 2019 by celebrating our 70th anniversary and a brand new logo, and we hosted a great celebration at Stephen Kenn’s gorgeous DTLA loft. We featured some of the city’s top design talent—among them Adam Hunter, Jamie Bush, color scientist Gillian Rose, Avenue Interior Design, Erica Islas, Paul McClean, Caren Rideau, Shannon Wollack of Studio Life.Style, Anthony Poon and Timothy Corrigan. And we interviewed such dynamic Angelenos as David Silverman of LA House Histories and Dana Slatkin of Violet (they’re brother and sister, how cool is that?), and New York City wellness expert Kerrilyn Pamer of CAP Beauty. We profiled local artists Tracy Hiner of Black Crow Studios, Uri Davillier of Neptune Glassworks and photographer Gintare Bandinskaite, too. And we partnered with none other than Michael S. Smith on his home renovation and did two posts with him that gave us insight into how he designs kitchens and bathrooms.

Along the way we’ve covered emerging design trends and launches from some of our most celebrated vendors: Kalamazoo, Jenn-Air, Victoria & Albert, Dacor, Kreoo, Duravit, True Residential, U-Line and so many more. We’ve also welcomed two new fabulous British makers to our showrooms, Kast and Buster + Punch. Our owner, Russ Diamond, was profiled in LALA magazine. We designed an in-house podcast studio in our Santa Monica showroom. We partnered with Miele to create special videos with chefs Jason Kim, Kat Turner and Mei Lin. And we went to Salone del Mobile again—just that little hop across the pond where we organized a weekend trip to Casa Fantini, private tours of the fair, visits to historical sites (and Piero Lissoni’s office!) and exclusive dinner parties. We even flew our guests via helicopter to Foppolo in the Italian Alps to tour a new project by architect Matthew Rosenberg.

To say it’s been a whirlwind year is something of an understatement. And next year will be off to a booming start, too, as we reopen our North Hollywood showroom in a beautiful space.

But sometimes there’s a bit of sad news to share, too. As some of you may already know, Dana Joy Altman, long the mastermind of Snyder Diamond’s marketing and social media efforts, leaves us this month. She is an absolute treasure to all who know her, and we’ll miss her energy, vision, friendship and guidance.

On that note, we bid you adieu until 2020. The blog always takes a little sabbatical at this time of year, but that doesn’t mean we’re not still answering emails. Have something you want to share? Send us a note at our new blog email: [email protected]

With our best wishes for the holidays and the New Year,

Snyder Diamond and the Design on Tap team