This collector created a timeless feel inside her Beacon Hill home
For a gorgeously specific example of Art Deco styling, consider the furniture of Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. With their precious woods and exotic fittings, the Parisian master’s creations embody the audacious elegance of his time.
For a gorgeously specific example of Art Deco styling, consider the furniture of Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. With their precious woods and exotic fittings, the Parisian master’s creations embody the audacious elegance of his time.
There’s a piece of Ruhlmann furniture in the paneled living room of Anne Fitzpatrick’s light-filled corner apartment in a 1917 building in Boston’s Beacon Hill. Its highly lacquered wood is accented with brass and ivory; the round, two-tiered table is unmistakably Deco. It stands under an Alex Katz painting and between a pair of Billy Baldwin chairs, all iconic examples of 20th-century art and design.
“I wanted my living room to be a conversation of artists who speak to me and to each other,” says Fitzpatrick, herself an artist, philanthropist, designer, and historic preservationist. Nearby are chairs from Maison Jansen and an 18th-century Italian carved gilt-wood table stacked over a heavily carved Louis XIV table. “It was very important that it feel like home,” adds Fitzpatrick. “I am a collector, but this is no period interior. I am a contemporary person living in this moment; I wanted to capture the beauty of many different periods for a timeless feel. So I chose things I really want to live with.”
To create the home she calls her “nest,” she turned to Gregory Van Boven, whose firm, Gregory Van Boven Interior Design, is in Boston’s nearby Back Bay. Both client and designer refer to this project as a “collaboration.” Together, they agree, they designed a home for the owner and her favorite things in a pale, classic envelope.
“She wanted a neutral palette,” Van Boven says. “For years, I worked for William Hodgins, known for his white-on-white interiors. So we spoke the same stylistic language.”
Fitzpatrick’s new home is endowed with high ceilings and large windows that frame a stellar perspective on the city. “The views make me think of Charles Dickens, the way they look across the rooftops,” Fitzpatrick says with a smile.
She and Van Boven reconfigured the floor plan to remove one bedroom, leaving two and enlarging the remaining rooms and arraying them against the building’s outside walls. They are connected by a 40-foot-long gallery that opens to the apartment’s entry foyer, which doubles as a dining room for large parties. Here, Fitzpatrick, who serves on the board of Save Venice Inc., an international nonprofit founded in response to the epic flood of 1966 to preserve that city’s artistic heritage, displays a photo collage she created using images of Venice. It hangs above a fireplace, which is flanked with antique Fortuny sconces. On the mantel sit a pair of gondola oar rests. A round, tufted ottoman upholstered in champagne-colored silk was designed by the homeowner and reflects her penchant for glamour.
“In this neutral, classic space, the furnishings are choice and few,” Van Boven says.
As in the living room, the master bedroom decor is a mix of furniture from different periods and places. There are a pair of Ruhlmann club chairs, an early-19th-century Georgian mirror, and an India-inspired Lucite side table. Against a backdrop of upholstered walls, draperies stitched from the same champagne-colored silk, and a white tufted headboard, the furniture ranges from the early 19th century to today, demonstrating the compatibility of superior pieces from varying eras and origins.
In the master bath, opalescent glass tiles run between large marble pavers. “It’s classic design with a bit of sparkle,” Van Boven says. “The whole apartment is elegant and feminine.”
The warm and dramatic library provides contrast to the neutral tones everywhere else. “We kept the whole house light, but Anne wanted the library to be spectacular,” Van Boven says. “To ensure that, the walls are treated with a fractured faux-tortoiseshell finish.”
Accompanied by dark chocolate-brown bookcases, a beveled and mirrored fireplace surround, bamboo matchstick blinds, and a ceiling treated with silver leaf over gold leaf, the room is a showstopper yet intimate and cozy.
“The ceiling was inspired by Mrs. Gardner’s private rooms at Fenway Court, where she papered the ceilings with tea paper,” says Fitzpatrick, an Overseer at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. “Layering the silver over gold brings warmth. We redesigned the love seat and the two upholstered chairs to look more Deco and covered them with deep plum mohair. At the hem, they are fringed, which is sexy.”
Fitzpatrick considers the library her homage to Yves Saint Laurent. On one wall, she displays a self-portrait in oils in which she depicts herself wearing formal dress and holding paintbrushes.
“Designing rooms is like putting together an outfit: You have to think about how things will layer and relate to each other,” says Fitzpatrick. “My home is opulent but not garish. When I think of design, I say that life is in the details.”
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