Chicago in 1979. After a stint at Crate &
Barrel, she developed a reputation for her
abstract paintings on fabric and furniture.
"I eventually got tired of always having
dirty hands," she remembers about her ser-
endipitous switch to interior design. "I was
looking through the want ads in Chicago
one day and saw an ad for an interior-
design school there and had an Aha!'
moment."
She studied at the Harrington College
of Interior Design and worked as a design-

er in Chicago before marrying a photogra-
pher and moving to Manhattan in 1984.
"I went through every interior-design
magazine and made a list of designers I'd
want to work with," she remembers. She
found herself a position working with Soho
designer Stanley J. Friedman.
"I learned a lot from him," she says. "He
was well known for monochromatic inte-
riors, great texture and well-edited art. He
called it classic modernism and was defi-
nitely ahead of his time. It's a look we're

still doing today."
Weinstein children Emily, 17, and
Benjamin, 14, were both born while she
was living in New York. She moved back
to Michigan when Emily was 5, Ben was 2
and her marriage ended.
"It seemed like a saner life," she says of
her decision to pursue a freelance design
career closer to her family. "I moved to
Birmingham because I had to see at least a
little street life."
In 1997, a mutual friend introduced

Above: Amy Weinstein, relaxing on her patio, says she's been focusing on jewelry on recent shopping trips. "I don't have any more room

in the house." She looks for anything that's "interesting or different ... it's got to have the look." Her favorite haunts? Treasure Mart in Ann

Arbor, the Royal Oak flea market on Sundays, New York City's 26th Street flea market and Paris' legendary Marche aux Puces.

JNPLATINUM •

SEPTEMBER 2006 •

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