SHELTER, MAY/JUNE 2007

CONNOISSEUR’S DELIGHT

A Modern home reveals a synthesis from a well-curated collection of art and antiques. Contemporary elements, such as a commissioned Chihuly chandelier, Asian wares, prints by Miro and world curiosities make welcome appearances.

Text: Thomas Connors

Photography: Tony Soluri

A place for everything and everything in its place.  As cliché as that old saw sounds, it still applies to good design. Especially if one’s home needs to be as much curated as furnished. For a suburban Chicago couple with a taste for art and antiques, creating a home that looked and felt just right meant showcasing their treasures without forfeiting an easy-going ambiance for their blended family of 12 adult children, numerous friends and fellow champions of good causes. With the help of architect Ernest A. Grunsfeld III and the architecture and design firm of Suzanne Lovell, Inc. they succeeded in creating an environment studded with exceptional pieces, interiors for living well - when living well means good times with family and friends, as well as savoring the finer things.

The home, a classically modern structure originally designed by Grunsfeld in the 1980s and reworked by him several times since then, was last occupied by a musician, for whom the architect had added a large recording studio. In order to make the residence serve the current owners, Grunsfeld and Lovell stripped the interior down to its bones, reconfigured the spaces to meet the new program, and added character maple flooring and red cedar on the ceilings to soften the home’s unmistakably modern profile. “Amy Cassell - my director of design - and I are both architects,” notes Lovell. “We’re heavily involved with the architecture of a space and the selection of materials. We also have an extensive knowledge of product, art and antiques, and know how to put them together.”

The latter ability was key with these clients, whose possessions include European and Asian material, as well as such curiosities as an elephant’s headdress from India and a butterfly collection assembled in the 19th century. “We’re not challenged by style - specific decoration and design,” says Lovell. “We’re more challenged by the juxtaposition of countries, of origins, of time frames, and how things can go together beautifully to express a scrapbook of a client’s life.”

Formatting this scrapbook meant transforming the recording studio into a playful retreat paneled in American elm and outfitted with a big-screen television and pool table; expanding the kitchen and converting the existing family room into a formal dining room. “We entertain a lot for family and friends,” relates the lady of the house, “and host parties and events for various charities. The previous owners used the living room as a living and dining room combined, and I wanted a larger space in which to have fun parties.” By relocating the dining area, Lovell liberated the living room for socializing on a grand scale. And to keep this roomy space suitable for even smaller get-togethers, she arranged the furniture into three distinct seating groups.

“He was into form, I was into function,” laughs the hostess. Her husband concurs. “I’m much more visual than my wife. She has great ideas about what a space should be - this should be the dining room. I’m more comfortable making decisions about the art and antiques we’ve collected. So every room has significant things in it. With Suzanne’s help in blending everything and my wife’s skill in making something very warm - she said we had to have family photos, we had to have flowers, all those things that make a house great - we’ve ended up with a wonderful and inviting home.”

The careful consideration with which this home has been orchestrated is evident the minute one enters the foyer, where a chinoiserie cabinet that once graced Potter Palmer’s Lake Shore Drive mansion stands, topped by a pair of rare, basalt encaustic decorated Wedgwood ewers. In the Living Room, leather-clad processional trunks from the Qing Dynasty (circa 1700) and a pair of 19th century Spanish Colonial wrought iron and tin eagles share a companionable grace with such contemporary touches as a lean-limbed armchair by French artist Ingrid Donat. The master bedroom assumes a decidedly French cast, with an iconic poster by Toulouse-Lautrec, a Directoire game table and a canopied bed with a curvaceous headboard from Melrose House in Los Angeles.

The epitome of the collaboration between homeowners and designers is manifest in the dining room, with its grand circular table from Sri Lanka (fashioned from 38 indigenous woods), walls adorned with Miro aqua prints and a chandelier commissioned from renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly. The homeowners bought the antique table from a dealer in New York, and Lovell sought out Chihuly to create a piece that complements the spiraling pattern of its veneers. Then her office designed the two ivory-inlaid, stone-clad buffets that add a striking, horizontal dimension to the room.

While the home is rich with artwork and fine furniture, its formality is understated. The judicious arrangement of objects expresses a connoisseur’s delight in sharing the beauty of his collections, rather than any effort to impress. And the range of material housed here reflects a genuine, wide-ranging curiosity at work, not a consultant-coordinated panoply of nice things. “Our work is always about breathing the client’s personality into their interiors,” offers Lovell. “This house is not about us. We never want anyone to know we were here. We try very hard to understand our clients, what they love, what makes them tick, and then make the interiors sing.”