My design work gains when I open up to what’s already out there. Sometimes, what’s just out there, meaning recent, new.

The Connecticut Governor’s residence isn’t new–it’s a century-old, brick Georgian Revival house built as a private residence–but 17 public rooms are newly-renovated. All labor and materials used in this magnificent endeavor were either donated or were recycled from the basement of the manse. “Shop the basement,” was the rallying cry of D.J. Carey, Editorial Director of Connecticut Cottages and Gardens (http://www.cottages-gardens.com/Connecticut-Cottages-Gardens/ )  and also of Carol O’Shea, Executive Director of the house. This week I took the tour sponsored by the magazine.

The re-do has gotten big press since it was completed in September. Deservedly so. Fourteen designers participated, including industry stars like Jamie Drake (who has decorated Manhattan Mayor Bloomberg’s digs) and Phillip Gorrivan. Others are not (yet) as well known, but will be on the strength of their work here. Both the scope and speed of the renovation are remarkable,  given the condition of some rooms and especially of the guest house. Work began in July and a photo shoot took place at the end of September. CT C&G gave their entire November issue over to the transformation.

Here are nuggets, gleaned from the tour, that might not have been reported a dozen times already.

1. Gov. Dannel Malloy and his wife Cathy own lots of art, and their paintings are interspersed among others already in the house collection or borrowed from the Wadsworth Athenaeum. Many are by Connecticut artists. One canvas found a particularly felicitous home on a library wall, where its apple green landscape adds a knock-out punch against persimmon Venetian plaster walls.

2.  Several ceilings feature other-than-white hues. The sunroom (designed by Gorrivan) at the south end of the house  has a pale lavender ceiling glazed with silver. He aimed to temper the glare a white ceiling would have amplified in this sunny room (there are no window coverings, only drapery panels hung in the corners.) Drake’s reception room ceiling is pale-pale-pale pink. He added a stripe of coral in a reveal near the ceiling, between the stacks of crown molding. The dining room (by Sandra Morgan) ceiling is covered in yellow-and-white wallpaper the same as that on the walls, a large-scale, Chinese Chippendale kind of geometric design.

3.  No one (except me) was using the word “dowdy,” but DJ Carey used the adjective “sad” more than once to capture the sense of the pre-redecoration house.

—more to come

“Meitan, full of spring breath, is well energetic, exciting and refreshed. It’s a great and beautiful new village.

River, mountain and wine flag.

She used to be forgotten by people. Mountains and waters there were only in people’s memory. Stepping onto the beautiful land again, visitors would see the modern road reaching directly to the lake area with different beauties before. People there strive for new rounds of construction and development here. At present, natural and new sightseeing areas become new point of economic development.

Tianjiagou is another great village. With the help of new economic development, the ancient village has become beautifully energetic, exciting and refreshed.  The beautiful landscape, the village small gardens, the villas are dazzling visitors’ eyes.

Meitan is a county where you can find tea bars are everywhere.

Early in the morning when other stores still with “Close,” tea shops/bars already open their door to customers. Though the shops open very early, their customers are earlier.

Tea shop/bar, different from tea restaurant, is more for public and simple. Rows of pews and soft-back-bamboo chair make customers relaxed. No matter you are the richest or the poorest, sitting there like a milord, very relaxing. The in-store TV set plays DVD all day long, including aged and new.

Men here at Meitan become familiar at tea shop after 50 years old when their sons/daughters are out of control and also they have no interest to look other females.

People here were born with the familiarity with teas. Men become quiet, positive when the come to Meitan.”

The accompanying images show  positive (though hardly quiet) men, drinking tea and clenching long pipe stems in their grinning mouths.

House in Xingping (not Meitan)

James Buchanan (“Buck”) Duke, Doris’s father, died in 1925. Buck had consolidated four competitors and his father’s tobacco business into the American Tobacco Company in 1890 to create a cigarette monopoly. Later he founded Duke Power, the vehicle he used to bring electricity to large areas of the South, a pursuit Ann described as his “passion.” Buck Duke endowed Trinity College in North Carolina with $40 million (some sources say $60 million), which then changed its name to Duke University. Today Duke Energy, a public company with assets of $50 billion, supplies electrical, natural gas and nuclear power throughout the Southeast, very profitably.

Buck passed away a year after the Dukes finished renovating Rough Point. Although the Dukes enlarged it from 20,000 to 30,000 sq. ft., it was, truly, a Newport cottage compared to the Breakers, at 120,000 sq. ft.

The house by the sea was a place of freedom for the young Doris, who loved to swim. During summers there she won trophies in tennis, dancing and even in “sand modeling” on Bailey’s Beach, which sounds to me like a fancy name for what we used to call “dribble castles.” Her New York City life was severely circumscribed. Ann described how wealthy families guarded their children after the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, but by then (1932) Doris was 19. More likely limits were imposed after Buck Duke died and bequeathed her the fortune, turning her at age twelve into an attractively newsworthy public figure.

Doris was tutored in French and Italian. She was educated the way wealthy young girls were, the goal being to “finish” her. That would be “finish” as in “polish,” but it might also have meant “stop from too much intellectual growth.” Her later investing success resulted not from schooling, but from reading, smart thinking and confidence, supplemented by a coterie of advisors. Within the walls of Rough Point the art history education was there for the taking. Talk about home schooling. . . Although Ann stressed that Nanaline and Buck purchased art and precious objects for their own enjoyment (rather than to create an art gallery), the collection is gallery-worthy. They bought when they traveled, and their agent Joseph Duveen trolled Europe buying for them (as he did for J.P. Morgan) when the Dukes were at home.

The painting I would grab hangs in the inviting Morning Room which was, we learned, used after dinner. It’s easy to imagine retiring there for port and cigars, or American Tobacco Company cigarettes. A pair of colorful, intricately-patterned, Portuguese needlepoint carpets grace the floor. The room is cozy, though any Rough Point descriptor implying “small” must always precede the conditional “relatively speaking.” The painting was also one of Doris’s favorites, the guidebook says. It is a seascape entitled A Visit of the Stadtholder Prince Frederick Hendrick to the Fleet of the States General at Dordrecht in 1646. (Ann called it “Return of the Fleet.”) It is a handsome oil by Jan van de Cappelle painted ca. 1650, in its original, carved and inlaid frame. The washed-out blue of a high summer sky is the backdrop for voluminous, gray-white clouds and ships with angular, tea-colored sails. Doris paid $1.5 million for it in 1981, and Ann averred that today it is worth at least $12 million.

Mostly, the examples reminded me of the rich mother lode that is English.  Lucky for me I was raised as a native speaker, rather than having to learn it as a foreign language—or translate signage into it without having learned it.

Recently I re-viewed my China photos and couldn’t resist pulling some into blog posts. Captions pertinent to my company’s publicity, marketing and  DESIGNER BRAND BUILDING efforts leapt into my head, then scurried down my fingers onto the keyboard.  It’s really all about communication. If the words, tone or connotations of your message are off-pitch, you might as well be speaking a foreign language. In fact, I’d argue it would be better if you actually were, so fewer readers would be off-put.

Could Your Message be Clearer?

Images:  Debbie Peverill

What do you mean, what do I mean?

My client, Sanson, Inc., certainly fills those Pros shoes. Sanson’s booth showcased a gorgeous kitchen: cabinets finished in a hand-brushed, ivory paint; dramatic red-brown, veined-granite countertop and full backsplash; oversize kitchen-table island with handsomely turned legs and shallow, old-fashioned drawers; oiled-rubbed bronze knobs and pulls; a striking, line-of-lights chandelier from Connecticut Lighting in the same bronze; a visual feast, really.

Sanson, Inc. Dream Kitchen

Around the back of the kitchen display Sanson installed a hand-crafted fireplace surround with bookmatched veneers, beneath a mantel and flanking bookcases they crowned with mouldings, all in walnut. Adjacent to it, a short flight of stairs cum balustrade ran up the wall, to end at a traditional doorway with detailed trim. Then a run of contemporary kitchen cabinets sporting a flawless, high-gloss finish show off,  behind the R wall in the photo.

Sanson designs, builds & installs custom cabinets, millwork & stairs.  They’ve been at it since 1951, but until recently were known mostly to builders and non-residential clients. Things are about to change. No kitchen, bath or full-service interior designer can take a pass on this product. Or on the service, by which we mean response, installation, follow-through. I’ve designed more than one kitchen I couldn’t include in my portfolio because the installation was sub-par. (At least I hadn’t chosen the installer.) In one project, the crown moulding was installed upside-down on the wall cabinets. When the homeowner questioned me, I considered for a moment and said, “Hmm, I’ve never seen it done this way before. . . “

But that’s not, most decidedly not, Sanson’s m.o.                                                                                                                                                                                                            photo by Jim DiDomenico

A glorious solarium projecting from the long south wall (@ far R in kitchen photo) offers several pieces of truly comfortable furniture. (Make that comfortable-looking.) That draw, plus the view, make it Rough Point’s most inviting locale. The fax machine Doris used to send recipes out to her other kitchens sits there still. The Atlantic rolls onto the rocks fifty yards away beyond the lawn. Miss Duke’s helicopter landed on that lawn. When the spirit moved her, she hopped the bird over to Quonset a few miles northwest, where her private 737 awaited, a flight crew on permanent call.

FWIW my sisters and I thought one could live here more comfortably than at Marble House or Rosecliff.

Not for hoi polloi

Given a cadre of domestics and an alarm system robust enough to protect the van Dycks, Gainsboroughs and Reynoldses (and that Renoir in Miss Duke’s bedroom), we’d first need to have our portraits painted. Our likenesses would hang on the grand stairway wall, where Nanaline and Doris now rule. We learned that if John Hoppner painted them (unlikely, since he passed in 1810), we’d all have suspiciously rosy cheeks. That’s a dead giveaway for Hoppners.

How frequently we’d use the 10,000-sq. ft ballroom is a point to ponder. Miss Duke called it the Music Room and had her Steinway there. None of us plays the piano, Steinway or Yamaha. The 20-piece suite of  Louis XVI furniture, an ebony and ormolu table and the wooden parquet floor recycled from Versailles aren’t right for our slouching lifestyles. There is a magnificent collection of Chinese porcelains. Since our docent Ann told us Doris allowed her dogs everywhere, all twelve to 14 of them at each house (is that possible??), I wonder how all those Ming vases survived. And the carpets. Maybe the collection started out twice as large.

12-14 dogs at each residence

The adjacent Yellow Room, cutting-edge when done a la Elsie de Wolfe in 1924, also looks too fragile today. Nanaline graced it with more 18th-century French furniture, an Aubusson carpet, a tulipwood desk with ormolu (command central for her social life) and an opulent rock crystal chandelier. Doris hardly touched that decor. Ann said that although the Yellow Room didn’t represent Doris’s taste, she kept it intact as a gesture to Nanaline. Doris also appreciated the pieces were (as my mother used to say) “good goods.” Rooms Doris did redecorate feature exotic furniture and strong (some would say garish) colors boldly juxtaposed. Her bedroom is deeply-saturated purple with electric yellow accents and black wall-to-wall carpet. It houses a suite of East Indian furniture entirely veneered in mother-of-pearl.  We were not surprised to hear her favorite building was the Taj Mahal.

The Atlantic at my back

Rough Point was one of Doris Duke’s five properties and by the end of her life she liked it the best. So said our docent, Ann. Miss Duke (so-called by the Rough Point staff) died in 1993, and Rough Point remains as it was then.  She also owned a Manhattan apartment, properties in Hawaii and Beverly Hills, and Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ.  My mother and I toured Duke Farms in 2001, stunned by the originality and creativity filling its greenhouses. Orchids, orchids everywhere and more than a dozen Duke-designed, themed gardens: English, French, Japanese, Arab-Persian and so on. Despite the Farm’s 2,700 bounteous acres (versus ten acres in Rhode Island), Rough Point would be my choice, too.

It must be the ocean. The strongly-massed residence faces the Atlantic straight on, careless of hurricanes or any other challenges.  According to Ann’s description, Doris  faced the world with an identical stance:  strong, independent, fearless, often alone.

In 1922 her parents bought, renovated and expanded the 1887 house. Frederick Vanderbilt (a low-profile Vanderbilt sibling) had built it; Frederick Law Olmsted had landscaped it. Doris’s mother Nanaline named it Rough Point, from a local map. The building’s granite exterior is detailed with red limestone at the windows and doors. It wasn’t large enough for the Dukes, however. Nanaline needed a ballroom to contain hundreds, additional guest suites and more fireplaces. (She got twelve.) Rough Point was the Duke’s home during the eight frenzied weeks called the Newport season. Society posed brutal challenges–from mid-June to mid-August there were eight or ten parties daily.

Architect Horace Trombauer led Rough Point’s two-year renovation, replacing Victorian  features like heavily-carved wood ceilings with visually lighter materials: marble floors and plaster ceilings. But James Buchanan Duke, Doris’s father, died suddenly just a year later. Doris, 12, was totally devoted to him. She was left with Nanaline, her polar opposite. (She was also left with $80 million.) While her mother reveled in dinner parties for 30 and balls for 300, Miss Duke declared that such a social life was “fruitless, pointless and frivolous.” (Ann didn’t swear Doris said that at age 12.)

Doris became an accomplished pianist. (She later kept two pianos in every house). She swam every day, either at Bailey’s Beach or off the rocks at the foot of her lawn. Nanaline kept on party planning, inviting 422 guests to Doris’s gala 18th birthday debut. (I feel her pain or at least her squirm.) Guests arrived for a “light supper” at 9:30 pm and departed twelve hours later, having danced all night and breakfasted at 8 the next morning.

A rising tide may lift all boats, but it doesn’t make them all seaworthy. That’s why I liked reading Faith Popcorn recently — she who chronicles the lifestyles of the present and future.  She said, “Now that everyone’s a Web-based know-it-all, we are secretly longing for the authority figures to guide and assure us with the indispensable nuggets of wisdom that can only come from having actually accumulated life experience.”*

Today’s Web information glut produces neither wisdom nor experience.  Achieving them — same as all quality goals — takes time.  TV design shows can be just as problematic:  they offer information (at times misinformation, but let’s not go all sour grapes) in order to engage a viewer, fit a time slot and sell ads.  If  shows and Web sources swell the ranks of those who think design is not only useful, but also important, I’m all for it.  If they promote the fiction that a kitchen gut-renovation takes a long weekend, I’m not.  Were a tool belt and Web links enough, we could all design — and build — our own homes.

* from Kitchen & Bath Design News, 10/09, “The New Reality of Today’s Luxury Market”

4" garapa on resuscitated E. porch

The historic homes I’m talking about didn’t have decks per se. These New England houses had (have) wraparound porches. A sensitive restoration doesn’t add a deck. It might, however, use any one of several “decking” materials to restore a porch floor. My buddies at SCWW (South County Woodworks) are working on such a project.

Take one shingle-style house crying out for attention; add a design-savvy builder, versed in historical restoration; mix in a family group committed to the project; add boatloads of money. . . and something delicious can emerge.  An immediate question:  What  material works best for a wraparound porch that is mostly roofed, but not enclosed. With its face to Narragansett Bay, nothing mitigates the weather that pummels the house from North, East and South. The porch floor receives prodigious amounts of wind, water, salt and direct sun; in other words, plenty of what all coastal properties get. Steve Rasmussen, President of SCWW, is no stranger to these conditions.

SCWW listed decision-influencing factors:  lumber dimensions; availability of required quantity in desired quality; tolerance for exposure, wear-and-tear; maintenance; installation time & labor (therefore $$); installation method; price; suitability to porch design; other discrete characteristics. Only hardwoods (more period-authentic) were in the running; no planks made of recycled plastic bags.

Mahogany, ipé and garapa were contenders. All three  weather to a seaside shade of silver.

Mahogany (Philippine Mahogany aka Meranti). Benefits of this hardwood include: strength; weather resistance; durability; availability (though look for FSC label); straightforward installation; appearance; price (moderate).

Potential drawbacks:  annual maintenance (scraping/sanding/resealing); installation nailheads show; some grain raise, splinters.

Ipé (Ironwood). Benefits: all of the above; twice as heavy as mahogany, twice as strong and several times harder.  No splinters, no annual maintenance; most $$.

Potential drawbacks: Price; availability in quantity & dimension.

Garapa. Benefits: strength (ranks between mahogany and ipé), hardness, weight, price (between the other two); 4″ & 6″ widths available; 4″  installs w/ hidden biscuit fasteners.

Potential drawbacks: Scarcity of quality material; fasteners and install labor are higher than nailing install.

When all was said, what to be done? Use garapa to fashion the porches that wrap the house on the Bay.

Garapa decking by SCWW

images©designwrite2009

The first time, though, it IS exciting. How about the day we got a new Formica countertop in the blue boomerang pattern. Everybody thought that was the best.

2006

images ©2009 designwrite