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• Ray Marrero Upholstery

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  If your apartment is beginning to resemble a Pottery Barn showroom, it’s time to dress up your beige club chair with the help of master upholsterer Ray Marrero. Though he operates without a website or a storefront, his knack for careful sewing and trimming has garnered celebrity clients like Matt Damon, for whom he made an upholstered banquette. Stuffed and sewn down pillows (from $200) are crafted in under an hour, while bigger jobs like couches (from $2,000) take a month to complete. Marrero will come to your place to take measurements, then reupholster worn headboards and chairs in the fabric of your choice—including hard-to-align stripes and plaids—in his Westchester studio. Skilled in the by-hand European tradition, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of furniture design: One client says her Biedermeier sofa and Ward Bennett chairs are still in beautiful condition 20 years after Marrero worked on them; another hired him to reupholster a daybed once owned by Napoleon.

From the 2014 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine