One Man's Folly

The driveway to the estate of Mr. Fulow Gatewood
is lined with pots of hydrangeas.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.

Three great Southerners, each a much-admired acquaintance of The Devoted Classicist, have come together to produce a new book, ONE MAN'S FOLLY: THE EXCEPTIONAL HOUSES OF FURLOW GATEWOOD by Julia Reed (whose home was featured in a previous post here).  Furlow Gatewood, 92, has been an associate in the wildly successful to-the-trade source John Rosselli Antiques for more than 40 years.  Bunny Williams, my friend of over 32 years since our days at Parish-Hadley, wrote the Foreward to the new book.



Phillip, and Italian greyhound, sits in the entrance hall
of one of the guest houses known as Peacock House,
before a 17th-century Italian table below a
19th-century Dutch chandelier.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.

It was Rosselli's wife, the reining queen of decorators, Bunny Williams, who convinced Mr. Gatewood to do the book, according to the article in the March-April 2014 issue of Veranda.  "Gatewood never went to architecture school, but he creates these buildings with fabulous style because he has this innate feeling for architecture," Bunny is quoted to say.  "Then he furnishes them in the most delightful, eclectic way.  He has a real flair that often eludes professionals."


Another view of the entrance hall
at Peacock House.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.

The property near Americus, Georgia, consists of eleven acres with five houses and numerous outbuildings.  Peacock House, featured in the current issue of the magazine, originally began as a dirt floor greenhouse before becoming home for 40 peacocks.


Flush boards face the walls of the living room in Peacock House.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.

Now, with a few rooms added, it is a guest house, although no one has ever slept there overnight, according to the article written by Mimi Reed and produced by Carolyn Englefield.


A bed from John Rosselli fills an alcove at Peacock House.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.



Furnishings from John Rosselli decorate a guest room
at Peacock House.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.

A guest bath at Peacock House.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.



Architectural salvage played an inspirational factor in the design.  Fretwork from the noted West Cornwall, Connecticut antiques dealer Michael Trapp led to the creation of an elegant open garden room.  Porch posts from the Atlanta flea market, Scott Antique Market, set the theme of the gothic gingerbread exterior.


A porch with salvaged fretwork
becomes an outdoor garden room
with furnishings from John Rosselli and Treillage.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.

Architectural salvage was effectively used to give
character to a storage building near Peacock House.
Photo by Max Kim-Bee via Veranda.

 

An earlier article featuring different aspects of the property can be seen on the Veranda website here.

The Devoted Classicist Library
ONE MAN'S FOLLY:
THE EXCEPTIONAL HOUSES
OF FURLOW GATEWOOD
 

The new book, to be released by Rizzoli on April 8, 2014, may be ordered now at a discount at The Devoted Classicist Library here.

Finishing Touches

For The Devoted Classicist, the perfect finishing touch to a room is a dog or two, plus maybe a cat.  This is not to say that one needs to have a pet as an decorative accessory, of course, but nothing adds more to a room than one's most devoted family member.  The image above is the Family Room of clients in Highland Park, Dallas, a delightful couple for which I have had the enviable position of working with several times previous to this renovation.  The project was a collaboration with the highly regarded Dallas firm, Josie McCarthy Associates. 

Bunny and John's dogs in the Kitchen of their Connecticut home.
Photo from AN AFFAIR WITH A HOUSE.

Of course, it is hard to talk about dogs, decoration, and delightful couples without mentioning Bunny Williams and John Rosselli.  Bunny's wonderful book, AN AFFAIR WITH A HOUSE, surely the best book of its type, includes a chapter on dogs and interior design. 

Bunny and John's dog on a sofa in the Barn guesthouse.
Photo from AN AFFAIR WITH A HOUSE.

It can be ordered at a discount, here.  (Despite the note to the contrary, it is available on the site if a price is given on the detail sheet, but not with the option of free shipping).

Thomas Jayne & The Finest Rooms in America

The Master Bedroom of Annette and Oscar de la Renta at their home in Connecticut.
Photo from THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA by Thomas Jayne.

Readers of The Devoted Classicist that are within convenient travel distance to Memphis should take advantage of an up-coming presentation by Thomas Jayne on the subject of his book THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA.  On Saturday, January 28, 2012, 10:30 am, Thomas will speak at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (featured in a previous post here) as a guest of Decorative Arts Trust (featured here).  This invitation also includes the reception immediately following the talk including a book sale and signing.  As part of the Trust's goal to advance education in the decorative arts, the program is open to the public, free with regular museum admission.

Author and interior designer Thomas Jayne.
Photo courtesy of Thomas Jayne Studio.

As regular readers might remember from a post on the book about a year ago, here, Thomas is also an interior designer with a line of products developed for Chelsea House, E.J. Victor, and Stark Carpet.  Just last month, Thomas was named to Architectural Digest's prestigous list of the magazine's favorite designers, The AD100.  The JAYNE DESIGN STUDIO BLOG, accessible through My Blog List in the right-hand margin of this post, is always an interesting read.  We have been friends for almost 25 years, sometimes collaborating on projects.  We both worked at Parish-Hadley in New York City and attended the Attingham Summer School in England, but our tenures did not overlap.  The book is particularly interesting because it features 50 rooms from a range of periods and styles, all extant.

The Tea Room at Monticello.
Photo from THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA by Thomas Jayne.

Beginning with Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello, which he began designing at age twenty-five in 1768 and re-designed for over 40 years, the book includes a number of historic examples and continues to current times, ending with Albert Hadley's apartment in Manhattan.

The Guest Room in the Manhattan apartment of Albert Hadley.
Photo from THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA by Thomas Jayne.

There are enough wonderful rooms in between to inspire those with a wide range of taste in residential design.  My favorites include the Master Bedroom in the Connecticut home of Annette and Oscar de la Renta, and the big room of the Barn at the Connecticut home of Bunny Williams and John Rosselli.

The main room of the Barn at the Connecticut home of Bunny Williams and John Rosselli.
Photo from THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA by Thomas Jayne.

All the images of rooms come from THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA by Thomas Jayne with Anne Walker, The Monacelli Press, New York City, 2010.  Copies at a discounted price with the option of free shipping may be ordered here.

Pampered Pets

Each year in Dallas, there is a fund-raiser called Paws Cause that benefits Texas' Village Fair Clinic which is associated with the Humane Society of the United States, the SPCA.   This is the first facility in the state to provide affordable spay/neuter procedures to combat the heartbreaking problem of unwanted litters.  Last year, the clinic served 24,000 pets.  In 2004, the chairperson for the event was nationally known Dallas decorator Cathy Kincaid who organized a group that included Bunny Williams, John Rosselli, and The Devoted Classicist to create a pet bed to be specially made and donated to be auctioned with the proceeds going to this charity.  My design is shown above and all are shown below, with the exception of the one by Ms Williams and Mr Rosselli which was not ready by the photography deadline for the October, 2004, issue of D Home magazine, the source for all these images.

The design was based on a line of occasional furniture that I developed starting in 1987 with the finish being a covering of leather or fabric held by nailhead trim.  I had a supply of cherry red split leather that I decided to use when I happened to see plush terry cloth towels on sale that exactly matched the color of the heavy suede.  The towels were woven in a fretwork design that were particulary attractive as well as a comfortable and practical removable cover for the loose pad.  Titled the "Red Bed", it was suitable for either a small dog or a cat.  Fabrication was done by my frequent collaborator Hector Alexander, who donated his labor for the worthy cause.

An Invitation to the Finest Rooms

Thomas Jayne -- friend, author, interior designer, decorator, and sometimes collaborator -- will make a presentation of The Finest Rooms in America this Friday, January 21, 2011, at 4 p.m., as part of the lecture series of the Winter Antiques Show in New York City.  The talk will highlight the individuals and their distinguished collections featured in his new book of the same title.  The location is the glorious landmarked "Tiffany Room" of the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at East 67th Street.  Seating is on a first-come basis and is complimentary with Show admission of $20 (to benefit the East Side House Settlement).  A book-signing reception follows.  For more information, see http://www.winterantiquesshow.com/ and click on Special Events.

For those who are not able to attend, there is the book which features fifty of the most attractive and influential rooms in the U.S. from the past two hundred years.  Starting with the Tea Room at Monticello and ending with a Sitting Room in Albert Hadley's apartment, there is an eclectic mix of extant rooms from a diverse range of periods and styles, with extant being a key word.  Both public and private rooms are shown, with my favorite U.S. house museum, Vizcaya, represented by the Master Bathroom, shown here in the first two photos. 

Vizcaya's bachelor owner, James Deering of the International Harvester fortune, and his companion collaborator, the incredibly talented Paul Chalfin, created this fantastic estate, then on the outskirts of Miami, and started spending winters there in 1916.  Architect F. Burrall Hoffman, Jr., and landscape designer Diego Suarez helped realize the magnificent and exotic tropical estate that once empassed 180 acres.  The walls of this bathroom are panelled with three types of marble with silver decorations.  The ceiling is tented with linen embroidered with Pompeiian motifs.  The most memorable feature of the lavishly handsome room, however, is the shaving stand in the form of an antique brazier, seen in the first photo.  This house is open to the public and is not to be missed if you ever travel to the area;  actually, it is even worth a trip as a destination.

No decorator is credited with the furnishing of the Master Suite of the Kent, Connecticut, home of Annette and Oscar de la Renta pictured above.  Annette de la Renta was a long-time client of Parish-Hadley, in both her present and previous marriage, as her mother and Sister Parish were life-long friends.  But Mrs. de la Renta is now her own chief designer for her interiors, often calling on various interior designers to do particular aspects of a room.  For example, one person might be called on for locating a specific piece of furniture, another for arranging furnishings and selecting fabrics, and another to supervise fabrication and upholstery, I am told.  The results are certainly as individual as they are stylish.

Another favorite room in the book is the collaboration of two of this country's most influential design talents, Bunny Williams and John Rosselli.  It is the 30 by 50 main room of the renovated 1840s barn on their property in Falls Village, Connecticut.  One of the top interior designers, Bunny owned the property with her former husband and used the building as a garage and shed for garden equipment.  After her marriage to John, a now-not-so-secret-trade-source for decorative furnishings, the two were able to combine their incredible talents on this space, a contrast to the relative low-ceilings of the historic main house.  The hospitable couple created a lovely, yet remarkably comfortable, room for entertaining with a delightful mix of informal furniture, shapes, colors, and textures.

Readers of The Devoted Classicist might be surprised that I would be enthralled by this outdoor room featured in the Introduction.   It is from the Frances Brody House, Los Angeles, decorated by Billy Haines, the former silent film star.  But it can be analyzed as a classical space;  it just has a modern vocabulary.  Modestly, Thomas Jayne has included only three photos of his own work, and they are confined to small images in the Introduction, which also includes his thoughts on design philosophy and how they were formed.

All photos are from The Finest Rooms in America by Thomas Jayne with Anne Walker, published by The Monacelli Press, 2010, a book that is highly recommended for all who appreciate the study of decoration, past and present, or "ancient and modern" as Thomas would say.

Thomas Jayne's book THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA can be purchased at a discount of 37% off the published price with the option of free shipping by clicking here to visit The Devoted Classicist Library.

Mid-Winter With Gardens on My Mind

This past week, I officially passed on the gavel, ending my term as President of the Memphis Horticultural Society.  For those who enjoy reading about gardening, the organization's newsletters are available on-line at http://www.memphishorticulture.org/.  Readers of this blog might particularly enjoy the description of my favorite private garden in the U.S. that I described in the President's Letter of the September, 2010, newsletter "Clippings" which can be viewed by visiting the site.

As some may guess from the photos, the garden that I have written about belongs to interior designer and author Bunny Williams and her antiques dealer husband John Rosselli.  The first photo shows antique tole flowers in pots on a window ledge at the Manor House, Bunny and John's weekend house in Litchfield County, Connecticut.  And the second photo shows a portion of the sunken garden, an outdoor room with a wonderful stone retaining wall on one side and lattice walls on the other three;  trimmed boxwoods around the lily pool form a room-within-a-room.  (The photo is reversed, for those who have visited).

 

My very minor contributions from years ago, a drawing for a fence, a bench, an arbor, etc., are all still part of the scheme for the remarkable series of gardens to form a collection that Bunny has created and beautifully maintained.  All these photos and more, along with the whole story of the property, are delightfully presented in An Affair With A House, written by Bunny and published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York.  The book is one of the best of its kind and highly recommended for all house and garden lovers.  And yes, it is pleasing to the most devoted classicist.