Like an artist working a pristine canvas with a wide array of colors from his palette, one Evanston homeowner has added color to what she calls “an all-white blank slate” with an eclectic use of objects and furnishings.
Though hardly plain, her 1920s Tudor house has little detailing on the inside despite its landmark status and fairy-tale facade, complete with carved doors, grouted stone walls, latticed windows and a pitched roof. The interior is elegant and spare and has unusually spacious rooms.
Intrigued by its ambiguities, the owner and her husband purchased the house in 1990 to accommodate their growing family. “We liked the contrast between the architectural exterior and the clean interior,” she says. In the tradition of most Tudors built in the 1920s, the only embellishments inside the house were dark plank floors, heavy wood doors, subtly textured stucco walls and casement windows with panes.
“Thanks to its simplicity, it can’t be categorized on the inside,” the owner says of her house. The versatility provided by a spare interior was important to her, given the remarkable amount of furnishings she already owned and continues to acquire. “The house meshed easily with all of our possessions,” she explains, describing them as “a little bit of everything.”
The owner actually considers herself “a connoisseur of several different decades,” and she has acquired everything from flea-market finds to fine furnishings. She has used the objects she has accumulated to devise a mix in every room so that no one style or hue is dominant. But the majority of these period pieces, which range from offbeat and quirky to graceful and refined, all have one common denominator-color.
“Color is psychologically important to me,” she says, “but I definitely don’t have a color scheme. Because the walls of the rooms were textured, we didn’t want to paint them. So, with the exception of the dining room, we left them white and added color with our possessions instead,” she explains.
“Every room was also completely self-contained with wooden doors,” she notes, “so I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted in each space. When you shut the doors, the rooms don’t compete with one another in a visual sense, so I could use colors that otherwise might not relate well to one another.”
With this approach, the owner, in effect, created a series of vignettes throughout her home that encompasses a variety of boldly colored furnishings in rather unconventional combinations. Yet, despite the wide range of pigments and pieces she used, she has achieved cohesiveness.
Formal pieces, such as a midsize grand piano, art deco Oriental area carpets and highly styled sculptural seats, reign supreme in the living room. But the upholstered pieces are sheathed in bright shades of red and blue, save for one boldly striped chair. The carpets are brilliantly burnished in shades of rose, peach and blue. Decorative accessories and artwork placed throughout the room also teem with a profusion of tones.
The dining room, which had been painted gold by previous owners of the house, took on a life of its own with a wildly colorful rug from the ’40s and the couple’s collections of teapots and beaded accessories. With a creative paint job by the owner and a friend, a traditional Drexel Heritage dining-room set from the ’50s was given new life and the proper presence to hold its own in the room.
Other areas of the house, like an imposing foyer and a cozy study, also reverberate with the owner’s possessions. But despite all these hues, the residence radiates with warmth and wit. “It’s a fairly imposing and formal house, but we humanized it with objects and color,” the owner says.
Resources: In living color: Where to buy.
P. 26-27: Hallway: Large kilim-Marlis Carpets, Evanston; pine table-Phoenix Design, Evanston; mirror-Ann Nathan Gallery; twig chair-Material Possessions, Winnetka; urn-Grayslake Antiques & Collectibles Market, Grayslake.
Dining room: Painted chairs-Penny Michel; head chair-prop sale at Henri Bendel, New York; antique quilt-collection of owner; shawl-Sandwich Antiques Market, Sandwich.
P. 27: Kitchen: Chairs-Material Possessions, Winnetka; Depression-era basket and fruits-Julie George, Wilmette; pillows-fabric, Pierre Deux, made by Chintz & Printz, Skokie.
