The Good-Humor Guys

What unexpected flourishes might you find at Darin Geise and Bob Wilms’s furniture showroom, Coup d’ Etat?

Darin Geise, 37, and Bob Wilms, 32, are the team behind Coup d’ Etat (111 Rhode Island St., Ste. 1, 415-241-9300) a nearly year-old furniture shop in the Design District with an inventory that mixes antique, vintage, industrial and mid-century pieces. In the vaguely library-inspired, 35,000-square-foot showroom, one might find a formal, Edwardian-style tufted wing chair (imagine your grandfather sitting here, thumbing through Thoreau’s Walden) alongside a photographic study of birds’ nests (to satiate your Darwinian curiosities), spools of nautical rope (for hostage situations) and a human skull carved from rock crystal (just because it’s cool). Though the SF residents are, in some ways, “fresh meat” for the stalwarts of the local design scene, Geise and Wilms’ good humor, and, frankly, good taste, make them well suited for that notoriously critical, mostly conservative world. The duo gives us examples of the unexpected flourishes that are rapidly making them, as their shop’s name suggests, design revolutionaries.

Viva la Revolución

“We have a client who bought a circa-1850 monumental neoclassical-style portico mirror from us to use as—get this—a headboard for her bed,” says Geise. “Just to give you an idea of how enormous it is, the mirror, which is framed in gilded wood and faux marble, fits flush against the ceiling of her bedroom.”

“Our wood wall idea is so simple: just a wall of stacked firewood. We didn’t expect it to go over big, but everyone loved it,” says Wilms. “A friend of ours loved it so much that he re-created it for his home.”

“Once I saw a spiked hay wheel that was tilted upright, and at the time I had no idea that I would eventually turn it into a chandelier,” says Geise. “It’s something that didn’t exist that now all of a sudden exists.”

“We have some life-size lobsters carved from bone—they make the perfect pet,” says Wilms. “They don’t eat, make noise or bite your guests in the bum.”

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