THE MOST IMPORTANT gift the homeowners got from family was an appreciation for art. The homeowner credits her mother-in-law with inspiring her and her husband to begin a collection. “She was a true art-lover and inspired the same in my husband and me,” she says. The very first piece in the couple’s now-impressive collection was an engagement gift— a painting of the homeowner’s family home in Martha’s Vineyard, where her husband proposed.
Today, that painting, which hangs in the dining room of their home designed (and redesigned) to accommodate a shared passion for art, is only one of dozens of pieces the couple has collected since—a family tradition they’re already trying to pass down to their sons, ages fifteen and thirteen. “Every room is filled with art, including our children’s rooms,” the homeowner says. “We encourage them to pick something out to return with when we travel.”
She and her husband also like to gift each other art on special occasions, and are apt to buy first and figure out where to place later, which has led to some interesting design choices, including an interior renovation of their traditional Georgian home. “We’ve had a good time moving rooms around to fit the art,” she says. To help, she enlisted interior designer Margaret Fisher and also looked to friend and designer Natalie Papier of Home Ec. In addition, art consultant Nelia Verano was integral in helping the couple cultivate some of their most coveted pieces. Beyond the palpable presence of art, though, the house is not remotely museum-like. With two teen boys and a huge hound dog, Duke, who drools a lot, the place had to be livable, says the homeowner.
“We like to have everything comfortable. Nothing is too precious because it needs to be a place where we live.” When the couple bought the home, they were primarily concerned with having space for their growing family, but after living there for a while, they realized some changes were in order. “We were never using the living room, except for Christmas,” she says, so it made sense to swap it with the then dining room to accommodate dinner parties the couple loves to host. The result is an expanded dining space her husband likes to call “the board room.”
The second major change involved converting another unused room into a sunroom. “It was originally a breakfast room,” says the homeowner. “We lived with it for several years but we were really never sitting down together at a table and having a meal.” The family had a tendency to gather around the kitchen island, which they extended, and they transformed the former breakfast room into a conduit to the backyard and pool. Now, it’s a comfortable place where the family can gather to play mahjong or do puzzles or entertain friends. “We spend a ton of time in here now,” she says.
The most recent change was converting a nook above the stairs, formerly a nursery, into what the homeowner calls her “big girl office” with a built-in desk, a window seat, and sunny yellow butterfly wallpaper by Peg Norriss, part of a collaboration with Barrie Benson and Chandra Johnson. “I love wallpaper,” she says. “It adds a lot of extra dimension to a room.”
“My client comes to the table with a lot of ideas. She’s not afraid to try things, and she loves color and texture,” says Fisher, who also worked on the interiors of the family’s previous home. The designer notes that the family’s style has evolved along with their taste in art. “In their previous house, there were a lot of landscapes and waterscapes and boats, which gave it a slightly more nautical feel,” she says. “As they’ve grown their collection, it’s much more eclectic and spans different genres.” There is a mix of fine art and art by local artists they know and love, like Holly Keogh, who has become a close friend of the couple’s.
“My husband and I started out with very, very different tastes,” says the homeowner. “He was more of a traditional landscape impressionist type of person, and I’m more into modern abstract, but we both evolved a little.” The decor follows suit with a seamless coupling of contemporary pieces and antiques, some inherited from her mother-in-law, who sadly passed after they moved into their new home. “The juxtaposition of antique and modern is what does it for me,” says the homeowner. “We love incorporating family pieces into the design of our home.”
The pair trade off on choosing art. The painting of a red sunset in the navy den, for example, was her husband’s choice, purchased last spring in New York from a gallery in Scotland. On the other side of the door hangs a piece they got in Miami several years ago. The house and the art collection are both works in progress, even now. “We’re always adding and moving things around,” explains the homeowner. Recently, she says they’ve both been drawn to alternative photography pieces, which was an unexpected twist in their collection. “It’s easy to look at something and say, ‘Oh, that’s pretty,’ but we both like to find things that make you think or give you a different perspective,” she says. “And also things that remind us of a trip or good time together, family, things we love, places we love. You can find art anywhere.”