P eer through the Flavor Paper building’s ground-level glass façade on Pacific Street in Cobble Hill, and you may see a pair of 52-foot-long vacuum tables churning out reams of brightly colored Mylar and pony-skin wallpaper. This is where Jon Sherman, who moved from New Orleans to Brooklyn last summer, designs, fabricates, and markets hand-screened wall coverings for projects ranging from Lenny Kravitz’s house in New Orleans to Frank Gehry’s IAC Building. (“We did holographic wallpaper for their executive garage,” Sherman says. “Clearly prerecession.”) From the outside looking in, you might assume that the rest of the building (designed by Jeff Kovel of Skylab Architecture) is taken up by wallpaper-making machinery. But you would be mistaken. Sherman and a couple of employee-tenants actually live on the floors above, with the boss enjoying a classic bachelor lifestyle (D.J. booth, roof deck, floating beds) inside a retro-futuristic penthouse with the city’s easiest commute.

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• Archive: “Great Room”
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• Table of Contents: Aug 9, 2010 issue of New York | Subscribe!