The secret to some families’ happiness is that they play board games together or picnic at the beach on weekends. Cris Briger and her two sons, Charles Peed and Pablo Briger, collect together, as well as share a spacious three-bedroom Palm Beach condominium.

“We all love to collect things because we love the provenance of things and their history,” says Briger, who with her sons own Casa Gusto, a West Palm Beach emporium of distinctive objects and artworks old and new. “Historical stuff drives us crazy and if we can’t find that certain old something we like, we go ahead and make it,” she adds. Indeed, Casa Gusto, whose name (in either Spanish or Italian) evokes a gusto for life, is known not only for its antique treasures, but also for its new furniture items and objects, including the business’s signature tole flowers and plants. As Briger emphasizes, “We’re in business together, we live together, and we collect together, but this is the first time that we made a home together.”

Briger can easily count up at least seven prior residences to this one in Palm Beach that she first purchased in 2016—citing earlier forays into other areas of Palm Beach, as well as New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Mexico. Her interest in being, as she describes herself, “nomadic” is one reason she uses so many slipcovers in her rooms. As she has moved from one locale to another, she’s brought along much of her furniture. “When you move from house to house, the furniture you bring with you changes in a new setting,” she says. “Some of it fits into the rooms, some of it doesn’t. But slipcovers allow you to change something while keeping something from the past. I even keep my old slipcovers in case I get nostalgic and want to see a sofa or chair as I knew it from a prior home.”

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INTERIOR DESIGN BY STUDIO GUSTO

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHARLES PEED

WRITTEN BY DAVID MASELLO

This story appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of MILIEU.