Conspicuous Coffee Table

Catherine and Ralph Isham

Catherine and Ralph Isham wanted a coffee table that was "modem" yet "traditional," and spacious enough not to get lost in their sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment. Catherine found the answer among a pile of tombstones in a Parisian junk shop—two stone capitals from an eighteenth-century hotel particulier that she covered with a thick sheet of glass.

The Ishams, too, are modem yet traditional. Ralph, managing director of the American Stock Exchange, is a fourth-generation Yalie. Grandson of the editor of the Boswell papers, son of the former ambassador to Haiti, he was bom in Moscow and reared in Berlin, Hong Kong, and Paris, where eventually he met and married Catherine.

Une femme d'affaires par excellence and a recent mother, Catherine is president of Brosse U.S.A., Inc., a branch of her family's French crystal company, the "Rolls-Royce of perfume bottlers." Current scents include Chanel No. 5, Opium, L'Air du Temps, and KL.

In America, Catherine has helped shape the success stories of Giorgio, Paloma Picasso, and the forthcoming Ralph Lauren fragrance. A perfume bottle, she says, "is like a piece of architecture. Designers are always coming up with the most incredible ideas. Our challenge is to make them feasible." Clearly, Catherine's skill at problem solving is as sharp as the edge of her thoroughly modem, traditional coffee table.

Brooks Peters