For twenty-five years, the right answer was something only my clients could afford.

I spent that quarter-century placing forty-one million dollars of furniture for chief executives, Oscar winners, and the quietly powerful — and I am putting all of it here, at no cost, for whoever is listening.

What I know is mostly unglamorous: how to read a spec sheet, which few parts of a sofa decide whether it lives a decade or sags by spring, when a price is fair and when it is staged, and when the right answer is to walk out with nothing.