Trade Secrets | New England Home | September 2015

tenth AnniversAry issue Celebrating Fine Design, Architecture, and Building

Kitchens And Baths From Sleek to Rustic The Best of New England Craft Plus: GorGeous Glass and The sixTh annual “5 under 40” awards

Stylish Selection

Brash, laid-back, pared-down, chic, or colorful: varied are the looks that feel like home.

September–October 2015

NEHOMEMAG.COM

News from and musings about the New England design community

Wait, Walk, Wave ///////////

By Louis PosteL

F

rustrated trying to get out of your leafy, suburban driveway, hedged and wedged by an everincreasing onslaught of traffic? You’re not alone.

Guided by GPS apps on smartphones and other navigational devices, motorists desperately seeking shortcuts around New England’s congested highways have been infiltrating and upending its quiet suburbs. Police chiefs are now calling these places “cutthrough” communities.

Fortunately, there has been a counter-reaction, a purposeful slowing-down, a premium on human over Hummer—homes that are walkable to amenities, mixed-use downtowns, bike paths, and lower speed limits. Porches designed for sitting and waving at passing neighbors are coming back into vogue, as well. As a crosswalk sign reads in Portland, Maine, “Wait, Walk, Wave.” Wave, make eye contact, be a neighbor, be human!

/// ThiS more human-cenTric approach iS expreSSing iTSelf

in other unexpected ways. For example, architect Karen Brown of Sherborn, Massachusetts, is developing a new

and brilliant furnishings collection following her involvement with Architects for Humanity in Madagascar. There, island farmers and craftspeople make a sustainable, non-silkwormkilling textile from abandoned Brown’s natural selection cocoons. Lustrous and roughhewn, the stuff belies the feminine side of silk. Maybe think of it as silk for brawny guys. Brown upholstered the sides of a chair with this material, donating it to IFDA’S Take A Seat Auction for Charity, which was previewed recently at the new sayeed’s papillon Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams showroom in Natick, Massachusetts, along with some other stunning exercises in up-cycled furnishings. A chair called Papillon, by Sudbury, Massachusettsbased interior designer Vani Sayeed, had a vampy blue jacket fabric and LED lights fixed to its bottom, which made for a kind of fairytale garden Boose’s glow over the rug. And one by southie space saver Edwina Drummond Boose of Boston made light of the city’s winter from hell last year.

She found one of those controversial “space saver” chairs perched high on a mountain of snow, and left a note asking if she could have it for a fund-raiser. The owner of the solidmaple ladder-back kindly obliged, thereby relinquishing his precious space as well. The auctioning off of the entire chair collection took place at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts, raising more than $16,000 for

cOurteSy mArk pASnik/Over,under

HOrnick/rivlin StudiO

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innovaTion hub it only occurs every two years, so don’t miss the 2015 design biennial boston, running through September 25. innovative installations—chosen in a juried competition—by four boston-area design firms grace the rose kennedy Greenway. pieces like this wood-and-metal latticed hemisphere by the mASS design Group remind visitors to the Greenway just how vibrant the local design scene is. for more information, visit designbiennialboston.com.

keep in Touch Help us keep our fingers on the pulse of new england’s design community. Send your news to lpostel@nehomemag.com.

214 New eNglaNd Home September–OctOber 2015

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COME MEET THE ARTIST!

“PETER ROLFE” - Friday, September 18th

solo exhibition of famed New England impressionist Peter Rolfe.

Featuring over 60 new paintings depicting Boston, Maine, Italy, France, and many other locations. Peter will be in attendance from 5 9pm to talk about his travelling and painting experiences around the world.

“NEW COLLECTORS” - Friday, October 16th

eet Elizabeth Hunter. An art consultant and former executive director of the Cape Cod Museum of Art. She will offer advice for new collectors and will be showing paintings by Robert Douglas Hunter and his former students and friends; John Terelak, Marie Fischer & Marieluise Hutchinson

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the Women’s Institute for Housing and Economic Development.

In a balmy tent set up outside the museum last spring, Chief Eternal Optimist Ted Goodnow of Woodmeister Master Builders won the auction for Brown’s wild-silk entry. It now has pride of place at the firm’s showroom in Boston’s South End. Perhaps it’s not entirely coincidental that this masculine display of raw-silk upholstery debuted where a few months before the nayak same showroom presented the “Designing Interiors for Men” panel hosted by designer and television personality Taniya Nayak. ///

Robin Roberge of Marblehead, Massachusetts,

inTerior deSigner and blogger

feels that good communities, as opposed to the “cut-through” places we’re hearing about, depend on giving back through community involvement. For Roberge, this means a lot of volunteering for The League of Women Voters. “So often the typical female fashion bloggers are pushing products. When I started my blog I saw a void when it comes to living a

roberge

J.TODD GALLERIES 572 Washington St. Wellesley, MA 02482

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216 New eNglaNd Home September–OctOber 2015

jtoddevents.com fineart@jtodd.com 781-237-3434

wholesome life, raising a family, and being a good kind of person,” she says. Roberge’s blog, Catch Haberdashery, celebrates “relaxed, refined, New England style,” and is a catchall for design, entertainment, and lifestyle tips. “People especially love my pretzel-baking video on the site,” she says. /// iT’S eaSy To picTure maSTer refiniSher

Peter Gedrys of East Haddam, Con-

necticut, making a beautifully glazed pretzel. “Using a flat finish is much easier on the finisher. It hides flaws, but it also masks color and kills any life or soul the color once had,” says Gedrys. He explains the difference between a flat finish and a glossy, more labor-intensive finish by

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“ There is nothing more powerful than light in establishing mood and atmosphere in any environment.” ~ Doreen

Le May Madden

Award-Winning Certified Lighting Designer; Atmospheric Strategist

comparing the process of using them to that of cooking chicken thighs. “You put the thighs in a roasting pan with some salt and pepper. They’re edible, but boring. Brown the same thighs, remove, sauté onions, deglaze the pan with chicken gedryS stock, balsamic vinegar, and honey to balance the flavor. Add thighs back in and roast, basting along the way. The result is a delicious, complex flavor. Call it mahogany chicken!” /// deSpiTe The facT ThaT Traffic on The cape

can get backed up enough to send us to our GPS in search of a back-road shortcut, designer and self-described washashore Linda Vantine of East Sandwich has a steady supply of clients who want to slow down while staying relatively close to Boston. “One client had been collecting art for thirty years,” she relates. “We spent many hours going through the collection, but even after whittling them down, there were so many pieces.

She suggested that we do a winter theme and a summer theme.” At first Vantine tried to talk her out of it, but her client persisted. vanTine In the end it worked out much better than Vantine expected.

“I feel we both grew from the experience,” Vantine says. “We labeled every piece and stored it away or hung it—switching themes in winter to brass and gold frames with red and green jewel-tone accessories such as candles, and in summer we’d go back to beach and other scenes in frames of ivory and blue. We’d never wear the same clothes in all seasons, so why hang the same artwork?” ///

Full Service Custom Lighting Design Electrical Lighting Plans Energy Efficient Lighting Smart Home Systems Daylighting Controls and Shades Color Consultation Space Planning

218 New eNglaNd Home September–OctOber 2015

SeaSonS do paSS SwifTly, and moST

parents will tell you that children grow up all too soon. Designer Teresa Burnett reminds parents still in the diaper-changing phase of that eternal truth. Burnett, who heads up Willow Designs in Norwell, Massachusetts, suggests her clients envision a mudroom that goes beyond a place to drop wet boots and muddy sneakers.

“These spaces need to be easy for kids to use, but they can also be fully appointed,” she says. Her mudrooms make for an

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elegant entry, complete with millwork, good-looking drawers and cabinets, and a charging station and message center. She also includes an area for pet accessories and feeding bowls. Can anything be worse than having the entire house redone, only to find yourself still tripping over the dog dish in the kitchen corner? /// aS Summer drawS To a cloSe, iT’S good

Shelly harriSon

to know that one beach scene that has ebbed over the years is about to start flowing again. This is taking place in Swansea, Massachusetts, where architect Stephen Kelleher’s firm, based in nearby Fairhaven, is working on a total revitalization of the nine-acre waterfront.

Once a big draw for community events, Town Beach and its old Bluffs building fell into neglect. The fierce tempos of Benny Goodman’s 1940s swing era became faded and forgotten as cars propelled

“There’s Nothing that a Beautiful Throw Pillow and a Cocktail Can’t Fix.”

Fort Point Channel | Boston (617) 562-6027 | emhdesigninC.Com

sketches of the new swansea waterfront

residents away from Swansea to larger, more exotic beaches farther away. The new plans include a concert and dance pavilion, a new boardwalk, a bath house, a concession building, a waterside patio, a playground, and replacing 25,000 yards of sand lost to erosion. /// maybe whaT we are Seeing iS a recog-

nition of the virtues of slowing down.

We may be giving up our giddy affair with speed in favor of connection and community. Even though a GPS can take us anywhere at all by the shortest route possible, maybe we’re already there. Or, as the critic James Howard Kunstler might say, our “yearning for an everyday environment worthy of our affection” may be hard to calculate digitally, but it’s no less real than a stop sign on Main Street. • September–OctOber 2015 New eNglaNd Home 221