Open House. A Connecticut couple wanted every room at every time of day or night to be open to family and friends

Transcription

1 Open House A Connecticut couple wanted every room at every time of day or night to be open to family and friends INTERIOR DESIGN BY Carrier and Company PHOTOGRAPHY BY Samuel Frost WRITTEN BY David Masello

2 SOME INTERIOR DESIGN DECISIONS are not just about color and pattern, texture and treatment. They can be about something as mundane as having clients who sneeze too much. But a good designer must respond to all of the variables of a project to make it a success. This home is minimalist by design, because all of the family members who live here, a couple with twin daughters, suffer greatly from allergies and asthma, declares Mara Miller who, with her design partner and husband, Jesse Carrier, created the interiors of this home for their clients in Greenwich, Connecticut. Those health issues dictated only part of the resulting interior design. Everything in this home needs to stay clean and modern and be easily maintained. Fortunately, though, the homeowner and her husband are minimalist at heart and we set out to respond to that. These are not clutter bugs. So sensitive, in fact, are the family members to allergens that Carrier and Miller couldn t even use certain wallpapers because of reactions to the glue. As a child growing up in Greenwich, the homeowner had always admired this grandly scaled Victorian in her 126 A Dutch door announces the entrance to a Victorian home in Greenwich, Connecticut. Apart from natural light, the foyer is lit with a custom steeland-glass chandelier/lantern by Grant Larkin. The dining room is illuminated by 1970s-era Italian chandeliers and Circa double sconces. A custom color by Deirdre Newman for Benjamin Moore is used on the walls. Drapery fabrics are Peter Fasano. Sidechairs are upholstered in Spinneybeck leather.

3 One of the seating areas of the living room includes a Dmitriy & Co. sofa, upholstered in a durable fabric from Pollack, which is fronted with two Bradley Hughes custom coffee tables. The Lucite and maple console is by Jonathan Adler. The vintage Knoll chair is upholstered with a linen from Quadrille. The lamp is from John- Richard.

4 neighborhood. So, when she married, and after she and her husband relocated to the town after living in Manhattan, they purchased the house. Prior to hiring the New York based Carrier and Miller, the couple lived in the house for a number of years, in what Miller characterizes as a pervasive state of gray. Not gray in terms of the mood or milieu of the home, but as in the actual color. Everything was gray, completely, and we were amazed that they let us open up the house to so many other possibilities and to let us introduce warm colors and expanses of brightness. Carrier recalls, too, that upon deciding to revamp their rooms, the couple, like a lot of people eager to change their homes, needed to decide what they really wanted inside. Was it about renovating the home back to a prior era? Was it to be an historical renovation, with furnishings appropriate to a certain era? Or was it to be a completely new look and feel, something that had never before existed? In consort with a local building firm, in nearby New Caanan, Carrier and Miller were able to re-establish the classic proportions and detailings of the Victorian home, but doing so with a much cleaner aesthetic. Wainscoting and paneling were added in the living room, foyer, and hallways, while fireplace surrounds, as in the master bedroom, were replaced with more traditional, but still modern detailing. Interieurs four-poster Armande bed, made of oak, is used in the master bedroom. A Lee Industries bench, upholstered in their blue leather, is positioned at the foot. A pair of antique brass sconces from The Urban Electric Company frame the working fireplace. A Pollack seaside-motif fabric is used for curtains. A Cheviot freestanding cast-iron soaking tub is fitted with a polished chrome faucet from Kohler

5 You could say we understand anatomy how the bones of a house help make for good design. Mara Miller The whole reason the couple came to us for the project was that they knew we understood their need for a combination of softness and tradition, says Miller. They thought we were a good fit for their home, that we could work with the original to fashion something new, adds Carrier. It was a good feeling to know they felt this way. One of the especially appealing dynamics of the project was the closeness of the family living in the house. The couple insisted to Carrier and Miller that no room be off limits to the children or their children s friends, their friends or anyone. The kids have their piano lessons in the living room and no matter how big the family gatherings, no kids are exiled to the kitchen to eat dinner, says Miller. To respond to that directive, in fact, the designers treated the dining room as the core of the home. While the room is sophisticated, even elegant, it is also meant to be used and useful. A striped carpet conceals potential stains and two crystal vintage chandeliers, circa 1970, were installed as a way to visually divide the room. The family has certain traditions, explains Carrier, and one of them is to host big family dinners, with so many people that the table needs to be divided in two, thus the two chandeliers to demarcate spaces. Referencing a classic mid-century Modern piece of furniture that they had seen in an auction catalogue, the two designers engineered an ingenious table with two pedestals, allowing it to seat two groups of people when necessary. The table can be split. If it s to be a big family meal, everyone eats in that room. While Carrier and Miller emphasize that the homeowners were very involved with the design process from the start, the design team was allowed to work in the ways they know best. We ve been in business together for twelve years, says Miller, and we ve been together even longer. As designers, we collaborate very well aesthetically, though for the sake of project management, one of us takes the lead, so that the client always has a point of contact and knows that an they send will be answered right away. As a couple, we tend to divide and conquer with every project we undertake. Part of their collective strategy is to prepare a full-scale interior design plan first that can then be edited and tweaked as the project progresses. As it is with all of our clients, our MO on this project was to tease out of the couple exactly what they wanted after showing them what we were planning, says Miller. Trust develops as we get to know the clients better. And as they prefer to do with all of their clients, Carrier and Miller approach every project as a soup to nuts job, says Carrier, meaning that every detail in a design scheme is attended to well in advance and later installed. This is a loved and a lived in home, adds Miller. The project is complete, but we usually find that we get followup calls from clients once the kids are grown up and the couple wants to make changes. For this project, though, the kids are young and it will be a few years before we might get that call. We ll answer that call. n Jesse Carrier and Mara Miller, are principals of their New York based firm, as well as husband and wife. Although they collaborate on every project, they designate one or the other to act as lead designer. 132