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The Inside Story Begins with the Dining Room
Rural Restoration blogger Carey Maloney is back, his shattered elbow now sufficiently healed for him to type (soon he’ll be up to feeding himself!). As promised, with the change in weather, we are bringing our saga of the restoration/decoration of a 19th-century riverfront Livingston mansion indoors, at last getting a close look at the interior work that Maloney and his partner in M (Group), Hermes Mallea, have done on The House over the past few years.
Since it’s the Holidays, let’s start in the Dining Room. For some, that can be a trophy room, seldom used. For our Clients, it is a room used frequently and well. She loves the holidays and is a great cook and a welcoming hostess (and she’s got a job—makes me tired just thinking about it). Her silver is always out and polished (with silver, shiny is good) and the best china features regularly —yet another reason we get along so well. I’m from the South and have a mother who is big on entertaining. Growing up, our dining rooms were frequently used—at a minimum, once a week. Every Thursday dinner, the family broke away from the breakfast room, suited up, and sat in the dining room for lessons in finger-bowl comportment, fish forks, and asparagus tongs.
HM and I love doing dining rooms—they’ve got one purpose, so they have a focus other rooms often lack. They don’t have that much furniture—so what’s there can be extra nice. Mirrors (used well, mirrors are your BFF) work particularly well in dining rooms. The furniture layout usually results in several good art walls (i.e. above the sideboard). All in all, we love ‘em. And The House has a beautiful one— in the southwest corner, it is a lovely rectangle, with tall windows, and views down and across the river. Architecturally, it’s got the house’s signature BIG door surrounds, a plaster crown, and a chair rail.
We started with the rug, our usual Step 1. Until you’ve got the rug, you can’t do any real fabric or color work. This one is a huge palace rug, a 19th-century Indian (Agra) carpet covered with flora and fauna. Indian rugs have a wonderful palette—so different from their Persian counterparts. The pale blues, acidy greens, beiges, instead of the jewel and earth tones of Persion rugs, indicate a more Hindu mindset. You can get wacky combinations too—a purple and green rug—that you’ll never find in a Persian. The Clients indulge my rug fetish—they’ve picked winners all over the house. This one really has that “magic carpet” quality. I always aim high: Carpets trump a wood floor, even these really fun floors. We cover them up, and we’ve still got acres of wood floor showing. Rugs rule.
With the rug signed off on, we then enlisted paint specialists Donald Kaufman and Taffy Dahl to come up from town for our color consultation. The Kaufmans are the best—trust me—and their advice has been invaluable to M (Group) for over 20 years. We only use Donald Kaufman Color paints (off the rack) and Donald Kaufman custom colors in our work. They serve us and our clients well.
We stuck with one trim color throughout the ground floor and up through the second floor stairhall. We like the continuity of color flowing from room to room. Instead of using off-white, which would have looked too fresh, we use a more yellowed, almost beige color—sort of a pre-aged thing. (In the photos everything looks white-white, but it’s not.) We chose a ceiling color—a champagne-y white—that would work in the front hall, living room, and dining room. These constants allow us to use a different wall color in each room and not have it look chaotic. There’s consistency and calm.
Donald Kaufman paints have long numbers instead of names, so I can’t tell you what the dining room color is officially called. But for convenience, let’s call it Periwinkle (“Periwinkle!!?”)—a medium blue with lots of violet. Warm and lovely in candle light, it is also beautiful in sunlight. As blues go, it is upbeat, but tempered. Because of the rug, we had to go blue, but I wanted a warm blue. If you saw it in person, you wouldn’t know whether to call it blue or lavender.
Once the paint colors were chosen, I pounded the pavement to the D& D Building in search of non-silk taffeta, and darned if I didn’t find the perfect one at Old World Weavers—118” wide (always useful) and 100% polyester (the western sun would fry silk in two years), slightly iridescent with a rusty brown undertone. In the photos, it looks flashier than it actually is—in life, it is more glow-y than shine-y. Last step: order tie backs from Paris, because the Parisians do passementerie better than anyone. We opted for a 20th-century design—simple and not too bulky (big tie back tassels can be bulky)..
The curtain poles and rings are mahogany with water-gilded details and water-gilded acanthus finials. Water gilding is bright and shiney. Oil gilding is more flat. At first I pushed for distressed, but the Client reminded me that from way down where we stood in this tall-ceilinged room, subtle would disappear. This gilding will age—but not much. Our resource for curtain rods is Joseph Biunno Ltd.. Joe always understands what we are after, whether grand and gold, or hammered iron and Moderne.
We looked for a table for three years. At 40 inches wide, the one in the photos above is too narrow for this room. Since these pictures were taken, it has been replaced with a handsome, 54-inch Georgian table. With dining tables, reproduction is often the best route (major asset: stability), but, in this case, we held out for 18th century. The Clients love wood, and the new table is made from fantastic mahogany.
Good things come to those who wait (in a perfect world…). Now, with furniture that spans the 18th- and 19th-centuries, the Aesthetic Movement (1880s) fireplace, and a chandelier that could be original to the 1860 house, the room looks as if it evolved naturally over its 150-year lifespan. Chairs are still on the Wish List. The Regency style lyre-back chairs are good for now, but we hope for something taller and more substantial in the future. (Beware of chairs that are fragile—Regency can be. Nothing’s worse than pushing back a chair and hearing the rear leg snap (been there…). Strength and comfort are key.
When we first installed this room, I imagined that, upon seeing it complete, the Livingston ghosts (a happy bunch, I’m sure) clutched each other and squealed “OMG. We’re rich again!”
A few more dining rooms we’ve done:
The townhouse dining room at right features a painting April Gornick flanked by 19th century Italian mirrors. The dining chairs are by Jacques Adnet (French 1940’s) covered in their original Hermes leather. The table was bought in Paris—it was blond wood—and Stair Restoration in Claverack (world-class restorers right here in our own backyard!) ebonized it for us. I found the chandelier in Sotheby’s warehouse—a beat up mass of crystals and metal. We sent it to Pell Artifex, New York’s premier lighting restorer, and voila!—it came back an intact Regency light that was then appraised at five times the purchase price! (A happy ending—that broken mess was a very hard sell)
HM designed the paneling with inset antiqued mirror in the dining room at left to complement the other public rooms. You enter a front hall that is completely paneled, move into a living room that is glazed plaster which opens onto the dining room that is, again, completely paneled—rhythm, right? Like everything else, there is good antiqued mirror and not good. This was made by Mirror Fair and is the best. The painting is by Helen Frankenthaler. The chairs are Queen Anne style—generous and padded—with gilded legs. The table is 18th-century English. The rug is an antique Persian from Tarbriz.
The client for this room collects great French Art Deco furniture and contemporary Chinese art. The table and chairs are by Emile Ruhlmann and were lacquered by Jean Dunand. This combination is tres rare and tres cher. The bronze crane chandelier is by Albert Cheuret. (Housekeeping hint: be extra careful with alabaster shades. High-wattage bulbs get so hot the stone “burns,” (turns opaque white). Alabaster cannot be repaired, only replaced. And you want your Cheuret shades to be original! )
And finally, a book:
Sixty Years of Interior Design; The World of McMillen by Erica Brown (Viking Press) is a must-have for the interior design library. McMillen worked from the Roaring ’20’s through the Psychedelic ‘70’s and still exists today—beautiful and very fancy work for names like Vanderbilt, Duke, Paley etc.
Eleanor Brown’s dining room on the cover is a favorite—maybe because it confirms my ramblings above? Simple and elegant and sort of ‘clean’ feeling. Lots of hard surfaces – not that we’re expecting food fights, but dining rooms should feel hygienic. The only soft furnishings should be the rug and the curtains – never wall upholstery or tapestries hanging. Mrs. Brown opted for yellow leather chairs – the same as my childhood dining chairs. Very practical – and with age they look better.
The statues of the four seasons are by Wheeler Williams (circa 1940) and have been reproduced and are sold at Quatrain in Los Angeles. Coincidentally I just saw a handsome Baby Neptune fountain by Williams at Fun House Antiques in Hudson last weekend, and we have a Baby Pegasus at our house. Wheeler Williams (American, 1897-1972) may be experiencing a comeback.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 12/01/08 at 02:32 PM • Permalink
