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About This Design
Interior Design: Paul Miller
Venice and turtles. It’s funny the elements of a home a designer calls upon for inspiration. In this project, photos of travel and a collection of our shell dwelling friends influenced choices in color, texture, and additional art.
But first we studied how to use the rooms. The room directly off the front entry could have been furnished as a dining room or a sitting area, even having been outfitted with a chandelier by the previous owner. The large kitchen and great room area in the rear of the house also had space for a table and chairs.
A study of layout options led us to recommend that the primary functions of food prep, shared meals, and relaxation around a fire should happen in the back of the home, offering an opportunity to create a cozy lounge up front for getting away to read and talk and to warmly greet company.
In the front space, we established a grounding focal point with a striking gallery wall of crisp, geographically diverse photography and nature-oriented images. Our selections were chosen to round out the story that existing art already told - of travel, faith, and love of nature. A modest church in a grassy meadow reflects iconography elsewhere in the home, while the coral walls of a building in Spain evoke the timeless lure of travel.
These art choices were the inspiration for the colorful, folkish drapery fabric in the sitting room. Lamps with amorphous, craggy bases in an earthy golden finish bring to mind the silhouette of an ancient tortoise shell. A mirror carved and painted with mermaid-like scales in the foyer evokes a sense of seaward wanderlust.
In this space blue takes the lead, supported by shades of green, rust, and gold. Aqua stain over petrified wood gives the appearance of Caribbean waters to a pair of nesting tables in the sitting area, while velvet pillows printed with aquatic blooms explode with joyful color. The woven seagrass shade on the pendant light seems plucked right from the ocean floor.
In the great room, color is used more sparingly, honoring a custom kitchen in white and soft grey, but still we carry shades of blue, green, and rust throughout. Those hues show up in art, drapery, pillows, and a vintage-inspired vinyl floor cloth in the eating area, a practical, wipeable surface for everyday use. A custom ash dining table was crafted to perfectly fit the space and the open design of the updated Windsor chairs allows the gaze to pass through the dining space to appreciate the adjacent areas.
The design woven into the drapery fabric in the living area has an erased quality that gives the treatments the charm of age, while the textile’s shades of blue and green reflect colors in the foyer mirror and elsewhere.
A drink table crafted in hand-chiseled wood offers more of the dense texture we were mindful to introduce throughout the house. The vibrant rust-toned velvet on the hearthside chair, repeated in sofa pillows, pulls similarly warm hues from art throughout the home. A designer knows when to drop punctuations of color into a space to create an aesthetic rhythm that is friendly to the senses and draws attention to a room’s strongest points.
A pair of ceramic lamps, incised with a repeating pattern of diagonal lines, adds an earthy whimsy to the room, while carrying notes of grey from the kitchen and repeating forms found in the drapery fabric. Hand-planed ash wood in a rich brown finish warms the custom hexagonal cocktail table, a dramatic, yet light centerpiece to the sitting room. The light, wool rug and Revolution sofa fabric are woven from washable, livable fibers that allow for an airy look and beloved family pets to coexist.
Inspiration can come from anywhere, although the more connected to the interests and experiences of our clients, the more genuine and rewarding the design outcomes. The art of supporting existing elements with the overall design is in being subtle and not literal in the interpretation. Not every thread connecting choices should be detected, but when each piece is built on something solid and meaningful, it is felt by family and guests alike.
