DEALER SPOTLIGHT: Diana White’s Needful Things, Bridgehampton, N.Y.

Diana White’s tastes range far and wide, the result of 30 years of decorating sets for film, TV, and music videos. Biedermeier and Art Deco, Neo-classical and Mid-century, Post-Modern and her latest enthusiasm, Steampunk — all these styles and more — fill her Bridgehampton home and studio in an intriguing mix of vignettes. “I’ve been eclectic all my life,” says White, who comes from an old Southern family in which all the women were avid decorators. She grew up in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, studied art history at Marymount Manhattan College and film at NYU. Back in the day, she sold one-of-a-kind fashions made from vintage beads and fabrics to Bergdorf’s. “In my work, I’ve been exposed to every genre from low to high, and put together scenarios of many different styles.”

Her sweeping but discerning tastes have won her many international customers. She’s been known to ship six-foot-tall mirrored obelisks to Australia, and George Nelson consoles to Japan. She’s studied tremendously and is very knowledgeable. White is a great admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, “the greatest architect America ever produced,” she says. “I love the fact he did interiors and furniture for many of the buildings he designed.” She’s also a major fan of Gilbert Rohde, considered by some to be the father of American Art Deco. “He went to Paris and Germany in 1927, inspired by the designs of the Paris Exposition of 1925. He started designing for mass production, and became head of design at Herman Miller in the 1930s.”

She feels a strong connection with the Art Deco/Modernism era. Like White herself, Deco and mid-century designers were open to varied influences. “They brought in African and Asian material and worked it all together. Everything good can cross over.”

White also works as an interior designer for private clients, and has a stable of upholsterers, ironworkers, and other craftspeople she uses to restore the furnishings she sells. Examples of her unique style are an antique French wood-framed chair which she had upholstered in a burlap coffee sack from Brazil, and a pair of Donghia bergere chairs done in silk jacquard with an animal-paw print. Once-scuffed Rohde pieces, lacquered white, are now glamorous and gleaming. “Pretty much everything is restored, but without losing its patina,” she says. “I like to see a bit of age. Otherwise you could go to Design Within Reach. Personally, I prefer the integrity of the original, or close to it, than the repros of today.”

Another of White’s favorite designers is Frank Gehry, “because he’s so innovative.” “I like risk-takers,” she says, which is how others might well view Diana White herself. She never seems to stop moving, rising at 5AM to walk her Jack Russell terrier, Mlle, along the ocean, and work out at the gym. She is constantly moving pieces in and out of her skylit studio and driving to out-of-state estate sales and auctions.