Susan Yeley

CREATIVE DIRECTOR & OWNER

SYH technically launched in 2005 in Bloomington, Indiana, but truly originated in 2001 in a cold-in-the-winter and hot-in-the-summer rental apartment in Hyde Park, Chicago. Susan was a graduate student in Religion and Philosophy when she swapped Kant for Dwell and took an unpaid internship at Thomas Job, a terrific but now defunct furniture and fabric showroom in the Merchandise Mart. Soon enough, she enrolled at the Harrington College of Design and took a job in a high-end residential design firm in River North. She and her husband returned to their Hoosier roots a few weeks before their first daughter was born in 2005. Susan initially dubbed the little design business she did on the side "Gravity and Grace: Design that Grounds and Uplifts"—after a Simone Weil book she read in Divinity School. It was a nod to the place that led her to this happy career in which she is privileged to be invited into people's homes, relationships and lifestyles, to help them make their spaces warm and inviting, or cool and calm, or cozy and lovingly cluttered. The unofficial SYH motto remains: designing spaces that ground, and uplift too.

Things Susan loves (a non-exhaustive list): markets (farm, craft, flea, you name it), velvet, beautiful paper, meeting new people, colorful trim, vintage everything, big art, local art, any art!, yoga, a big laugh, the unexpected, roaring fires, mobiles, East-meets-West, gently used, wallpaper, terrazzo, the Farnsworth House, farmhouses, Victorian staircases, Spanish tile. Susan has traveled extensively (but not nearly as much as she'd like), and her most favorite tourist activities are wandering, market-going, eavesdropping and breakfasting.