Open over 30 years, Tiger Lily’s is the market leader of luxury custom furniture and drapery design in Fairfield and Westchester Counties. We are the only local showroom to offer a curated library of the biggest names in textile design along with a curated sampling of flooring & carpeting, tile, wallpaper, wall color, hardware, lighting, and exclusive home furnishings.

Our motto, From Our Home to Yours, is at root of our family business.  In 1991 when husband and wife, Betsy & Robert Knapp combined their heritage in textiles and construction engineering to open a design studio, they envisioned a space where they could share their talents for interior design and lifestyle with like-minded clients who valued hand crafted, locally sourced furnishings.

As Tiger Lily’s bloomed so did the family tree.  Three families make up the majority of our artisan team. Then, seeking to make her own roots, Betsy & Bob’s daughter Samantha joined the Tiger Lily’s Team. Her homecoming follows a successful broadcast new career where her story assignments also provided a back stage invitation to different lifestyles and design around the nation.  As creative director, Sam infuses a young approach to design with eclectic tendencies. Her portfolio includes international installations like Tommy Hilfiger’s Palm Beach in Mustique to working on the papal chair for Pope Francis’ visit to New York in 2015.

 

Our Team

Bob Knapp

Robert “Bob” Knapp is one of the foundering partners of Tiger Lily’s alongside his wife Betsy.  After more than 20 years in commercial construction trade, Knapp retired his hard hat to help Betsy build her literal “fairytale” business. 

Tiger Lily’s was founded in 1991; a neighborhood antique shop with a small upholstery operation that included one upholsterer and a seamstress.  In 199X, Knapp joined alongside Betsy to help expand her vision from upholstery to full-service, custom craftsmanship.  

Over the years, Knapp and his team have created thousands of custom interior and exterior design installations.  Specializing in multi-faceted fabrications to architectural details, Knapp is revered as the one at Tiger Lily’s who can literally make all things conceivable, achievable. 

One of the many projects Knapp finds most exciting during their years in business, is when Tiger Lily’s was commissioned to create chair cushions and linens for Pope Francis’ Madison Square Garden Mass (2015). 

Now in its 20th year of business, Tiger Lily’s has seen three location expansions and provided custom craftsmanship for clients both domestically and internationally.  The current location spans 2,000-square-feet of showroom and workroom space, where Knapp oversees a full-service team of more than 14 seamstresses, upholsterers, and custom craftsmen.

Betsy Knapp

Betsy “B” Knapp is the matriarch of the family.  As a wife, mother to four girls and “mom-mom” to eight beautiful grandchildren, it is naturally fitting that her title of the family-run-business is “Grand Dame.”  

With family-togetherness at the core, her love for design dates to her childhood in Brooklyn, where she watched and learned beside her mother who created textiles in a knitting mill.  A self-taught interior decorator for residential and commercial spaces, B is inspired by the creativity that defined her childhood and as such creates spaces that are intimate while well-suited for communal use.

“Tiger Lily’s is like a second home to me,” says Knapp. “I try to infuse a bit of family into all my design – whether we story board a wall with pictures; offer an oversized dining room table; or put a sectional in a formal seating room, I take to each project like a mother building values.  It is all about sharing spaces and unity.”

Before Tiger Lily’s was a family-operated business, it was a husband-and-wife collaboration she ran with her “partner-in-crime,” Robert.  More than 20 years later, the businesses still operates on its founding principles that the client comes first, customer satisfaction is guaranteed, and one-of-a-kind production is executed no matter how small or large the size of the project.

B’s vibrant personality is ever present in her design process where clients not only find a creative partner, but a friend throughout the process.

Samantha Knapp

After spending 10 years behind the camera as a television news reporter, Samantha Knapp’s career path changed and she found herself working for her family’s business, Tiger Lily’s Greenwich, an interior design studio specializing in interior design, furniture revitalization and custom upholstery.

Knapp and her mother immediately made a dynamic design duo; her inherent position as full-time daughter was a true complement to her new role as full-time interior designer. Knapp’s style not only honored her mother’s traditionalist approach, but added the perfect contemporary nod, infusing a “hip factor” into the brand.

“When I enter into a home I ask myself, ‘where is the family’s story?” says Knapp.  “I look for elements that speak to my clients’ personality and through creative craftsmanship try to repurpose the legacy items that ground the home, while breathing fresh life into them.”

She immediately punches-up the ordinary in her design approach, capitalizing on Tiger Lily’s all-work-done-on-the-premises selling feature.  Knapp adds an “old meets new again approach” to her design, bringing new life to the vintage artisan trade found in antiques, and one-off home furnishings. Her design is balanced; where she mixes bold colors, she offsets it with small scale patterns, and when she uses raw materials finds a complement with soft-textured accents.

Knapp’s designs have been well-received by the industry and in just 8 years in the business her talents have been recognized by Architectural Digest Germany, Lonny Magazine, Hospitality Design, At Home, Southern Accents, Miami Design, New England Home Magazine, Coco & Kelley and WAG.

Her career path has come full circle since leaving news, Knapp has been featured on the “I Brake For Yard Sales” series, which aired on HGTV and later on Great American Country as well as “House Hunters Renovation.”

When she is not designing, she can be found taking inspiration from the wind and the water be it via meditation or sailing.