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The sons of sisters, Kelly Gale Amen and Todd Tautfest both grew up in Weatherford, Oklahoma. But Amen is 10 years older than Tautfest, and in childhood, that’s a big gap. So it was only later that the two became real friends. When Tautfest finished college, he paid his cousin a visit in Houston, where Amen was already establishing himself as a designer. “I walked into his house, and I’d never seen anything like it,” Tautfest says. “There was a 10-foot wall around the property. He’d taken the roof off of one bedroom in the bungalow and a wall off of the apartment above the garage in back and connected the two buildings with a glass room. The place was full of art, and young artists and craftspeople.”
The irrepressible Amen, now 56 (“but I look 37,” he demurely insists), is still based in Houston. He works nationally as an established residential designer and also produces a line of distinctively quirky art furniture. Tautfest, who is managing director of BNY Mellon Wealth Management, has followed a more buttoned-up career path. But even bankers are susceptible to the seduction of beautiful things. Early on, Amen began counseling Tautfest on how to collect. “He helped me start buying things intelligently,” the younger cousin says, “and all those things I still have today. I haven’t outgrown the pieces, they’ve just changed in their role.” Amen has also designed the interiors of Tautfest’s succession of homes, including a townhouse in Boca Raton, Florida, a Mediterranean-revival cottage in Miami Beach, and most recently a spacious new house in Morningside, which Tautfest purchased when he moved here from Florida.
Collecting, Amen says, “is about what a person is going to travel through life with. Todd used to ask, ‘Why are you making me buy such big art?’ And I would say, ‘You won’t always be living in a 1,600-square-foot townhouse.’ Long-term stability doesn’t mean you stay in the same place.” It also doesn’t mean accumulating just to have more stuff. “This was a lot of space,” Tautfest says, gesturing across the wide-open first floor of the house. “We could have filled it with things that weren’t valuable to me.” Amen concurs. “There are not tons of pieces. The placement, the lighting and the use of mirrors all give the illusion that it’s full, but not stuffed. It’s a luxury to have empty corners.” The banker supplies this dictum’s economic corollary: a great interior design doesn’t have to be costly. “Kelly is as creative with somebody on a limited budget as he is when the sky is the limit,” Tautfest says.
Amen’s furniture designs fall into two broad categories, both of which embody his exuberance. He makes tables, chairs and benches with shapes loosely inspired by both folky and formal historical styles. These are cast in metal, in sections that are then joined as if they were made of wood, with the use of dove-tailing and dowels. Amen also does the occasional rather wild upholstered piece, including a series of elaborately trimmed “Poof” dog beds. These have a thick top cushion that can be removed from the footed base but is really meant to bring a small pet up to its master’s level. “How you treat your pet is how you will probably treat those around you,” Amen notes.
The first friend Tautfest made in Atlanta was silver dealer Beverly Bremer, whom he met through his colleague Jack Sawyer. “Most [banking] people just can’t wait to get your business, but he was so low-key and so charming,” she recalls. As for silver, Bremer says, “This is an investment for an inheritance, and for a quality of life. You use it every day. It’s not perishable, and it’s not fashion.” To this, Tautfest responds, with an irony he may have learned from his cousin, “Part of being a capitalist is identifying value when you see it.” Tautfest had thought he would never leave South Florida but voices no regrets. “As I have grown older, each city has been a perfect place for me. Here, I’m more focused on indoor-outdoor living because the spring and fall are so beautiful—sitting around out by the fireplace and having dinner.” Thanks to his cousin, he has a house that both works for Atlanta’s climate and eagerly accommodates this city’s mix of casual and dressy, old and new.
