ILIAD DESIGN
As experienced world-class purveyors of Austro-Hungarian Biedermeier, French art deco and Art Moderne furniture, ILIAD'S ateliers in New York and Prague create unique and bespoke, period-inspired furniture designs for distinguished clients by Andrea Zemel for ILIAD.
Washington DC born, Zemel received her BFA from the University of Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She later completed her MFA at Penn’s Graduate School of Fine Arts. Zemel spent three years on the faculty at Penn, having launched a collaborative and public art program that continues to this day.
In the mid 1990’s, Zemel left academia and later moved to New York with her partner Adam Brown to explore fine art and antiques in the post-communist Czech Republic. There she was captivated not only with the Biedermeier style, but by her first encounters with the modernist art traditions of Eastern Europe. Informed and inspired by these new idioms, Brown and Zemel would share their zeal as collectors and purveyors of Czech and Hungarian modern art. In 2000, the two opened ILIAD Antik in the heart of Manhattan’s midtown design district to become one of New York’s premier dealers in Biedermeier and continental art deco furniture and decorative arts. Zemel would later draw on her experience as sculptor and draftsman in 2001 by launching ILIAD Design, and has since created an extensive portfolio of bespoke commissions for distinguished clients at ILIAD’s comprehensive atelier in Prague.
She is actively involved in the curation of the repertoire of ILIAD’s Contemporary Art collection, which includes a selection of allegorical glass and ceramic mosaic works from her own studio. As lead designer and founder of ILIAD Design, she currently collaborates with leading international architects and interior designers to produce some of the world’s finest bespoke furniture and decorative arts commissions. A seasoned interior decorator, she is currently involved in a number of comprehensive residential projects with leading architects here in New York.