Athena Calderone’s Second Crate & Barrel Collection Encourages Mixing Eras and Breaking the Rules

Though the second collection is informed by a whole new slew of references, like the understated elegance of French designer Jean-Michel Frank, beloved elements from the first collection have been carried through. The shearling Le Tuco armchair, for example, was such a sensation that Calderone and Brauer decided to bring it back—and make it bigger. “We’ve done a larger scale of Le Tuco because it was something that the customer was asking for,” she explains. “It’s a different color shearling and we added an ottoman with it.”

The Honoré carved oak media cabinet was another bestseller from the first collection, so the team expanded that style with a bar cabinet and a tall storage cabinet. They also riffed on the popular Sassolino burl wood and concrete nesting tables to create the Argent metal nesting tables. “Rather than repeating ourselves, we’ve changed the materiality and we’ve done these beautiful cast metal side tables that also have this nesting ability,” Calderone shares.

A Memini vanity mirror is flanked by a pair of Onirique metal and alabaster lamps.

Courtesy of Crate & Barrel

These updated crowd-pleasers are the link between the first collection and the second, which is richer in color and more streamlined in form than its predecessor. “The first collection was more designed with the seventies in mind and the new one is the twenties and thirties, so I also want to illustrate that you can mix periods and your home can feel curated instead of studied with one particular period,” Calderone notes. “It just speaks to the ethos that I believe in design, that you can break the rules and have multiple points of view in your home.”

New furniture highlights include the Raffiné sofa, a long, boxy couch in a burnt sienna velvet, the Dualité coffee table, which combines a thick travertine top with plinth-like burl wood legs, and the Reposer daybed, whose walnut veneer base is layered with tufted upholstery and fastened bolster cushions. Calderone’s favorite light fixtures are the Onirique Alabaster pendant, sconce, and lamp, which were originally dome-shaped and then updated with a triangular form that was more affordable to manufacture. “It was priced too high, so it turned into a triangular shape, which was a creative solution that ended up being a better design,” she reflects. “I’m so much happier with the outcome.”