Ruby Read March, 2014

“I’ve always admired the dining room in the castle, just outside Antwerp, in which the antique dealer and interior designer Axel Vervoordt makes his home,” writes designer and society maven Carolyne Roehm in her newest book, A Passion for Interiors. “It’s an extraordinary fantasy space, the walls of which are decorated with Chinese porcelains that were salvaged from a centuries-old sunken ship.”

Vervoordt’s use of old Chinese porcelains to set a room’s décor inspired Roehm’s design of the master suite in Westbury, one of the homes featured in her new book. The porcelains at Westbury are Delft, “but the effect is similar,” she writes. Any blue and white vintage collection can instantly bring life to a room.

“What a difference color makes,” Roehm continues. “My passion for blue and white is such that it could fill a book.” (And it has, in 2008’s A Passion for Blue and White).

Her own Connecticut country house, Weatherstone, is packed with ideas for how to use vintage to declare a blue and white scheme: Chinese export, blue-and-white fabrics and painted furniture, blue stone surrounds on fireplaces, blue checks painted on bleached floors, and elegant antique picture frames crafted of blue lapis and goldleaf are just a few. Less pricey quick color fixes include using blue matting to bring the palette to picture frames, or painting a piece of architectural salvage white, as Roehm did with the 18th-century Swedish decorative trophy above her fireplace. She made a trip to Home Depot for white paint: “All my friends were horrified, but I wanted something in that spot that matched the walls.”

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