I blogged my tour through the HGTV Dream Home a few days ago , & if any of you were wondering, that trip to Martha's Vineyard still feels like a dream. We did so much in just two days there, but I was really sad that I didn't get to take a ton of photos, I was too busy taking in all of the beauty of the island. That's important though right? To put our phones & cameras down & really just enjoy the beauty around us. I did take a few photos while we were on the vineyard & I
NANTUCKET SEASIDE HOME This coastal home located on the island of Nantucket features a gracious open concept on the first floor with spaces for gathering and entertaining. SPACES Kitchen, living rooms, dining room, bedrooms, bathrooms, guest house FEATURES Kitchen design, [...]
Sharing all the paint colors I used in this Nantucket Style Home for one of my design clients and how it all came together.
Whether you're a Nantucket native or just dreaming of the ocean, these nautical necessities are sure help anchor your style.
Roman and Williams' design for Greydon House on Nantucket melds past and present with authenticity and style!
Jane Ellsworth interior design Nantucket summer home antiques nautical marine art baskets blue and white Delft porcelain collections historic architecture
Flowered fabrics and floral paintwork bloom inside a Nantucket retreat cultivated by Markham Roberts
Jethro Coffin House built in 1686 is Nantucket’s oldest house on Nantucket. It had National Historic designation before lightning struck chimney in 1978. 1686 Oldest House and Mary Gardner …
Interior designer Katie Martinez drew on her childhood holidays at the beach to put a sophisticated spin on this laid-back New England property
Washashore Home reinvents an outdated Cape, turning it into a charming cottage with quintessential Cape style
When it comes to naming green paint colors, it makes sense if the name of the color has the word "green" or at least something that is the color green.
Its design combines a former doctor's office built in 1850 with a stunning new building.
A bespoke golden runner with a tiger illustration drawn by a member of the design team welcomes guests in the entry. The pendant is jade Morano glass with gold fringe. Tagged: Staircase, Wood Tread, and Wood Railing. Photo 10 of 14 in Life House Nantucket by Jessica Dailey.
The coastal chic look isn't (always) about anchors and boat motifs.
The 2017 Nantucket by Design kicked off in style!
The 2017 Nantucket by Design kicked off in style!
Jane Ellsworth interior design Nantucket summer home antiques nautical marine art baskets blue and white Delft porcelain collections historic architecture
One of America's most beloved summer colonies, the island of Nantucket is the very example of what coastal New England is all about—cobbled streets lined with clapboard cottages, lawns aglow with blooming hydrangeas, tiny seaports brimming with sailboats, and sandy dunes bordering picture-perfect beaches. Below, seven gorgeous hotels to base yourself before exploring it all.
(via Pinterest)
Though every grey-shingled, white-trimmed house on this legendary New England island looks like every other grey-shingled, white-trimmed house, the natives know the labyrinthine way to the Oldest House. (Oldest' being a proper noun here, not an adjective). And when you finally track it down on its solitary hilltop, its air of chaste isolation - in this town teeming with trophy houses, Hamptons émigrés and admirably restrained twee - will take your breath away. With just a few gnarly lilacs scraggling up the stony drive, a bare yard all around, a rank swamp behind and in front, the weedy echo of a long-gone lily pond, the stark and solemn Oldest House is asceticism made flesh. Or anyway, wood and brick. Houses in this 17th-century 'lean-to' style always faced south. That way, their two-storey facades could warm themselves in the sun while their sloping backs could simply hunker down against northwesterly winds. This is architecture plain as a Quaker hat, as is the Oldest House itself - expect for that slightly pretentious chimney, a brick tour de force embellished with an odd, inverted U in relief. Some think it celebrates the c1686 uniting in wedlock of two warring families - the Gardners and the Coffins - builders of this grandish residence (Coffin lumber on Gardner land). Some think it's a lucky horseshoe, inverted for the dumping of malevolent household spirits, and call the place 'Horseshoe House'. Whatever its symbolism, that chimney turns characteristically functional below the roofline, providing a single fireplace on the first floor, plus three more on the floor below, where it warms two moderately large rooms - the west parlour and the east hall - and the summer kitchen. The west parlour was the, um, best parlour, while the east hall was the dining room/den/library/'family room', and, with the coming of the winter, kitchen. Upstairs, despite laws of physics regarding the movement of heat, two spartan sleeping chambers are as frigid today as they surely were then. As dark, too. And surely inhospitable to shivering children bedding down in hard little cots on the north-facing side. Why would anyone choose to build a house on an island with no farm land and no forests, offering the barest of subsistence living? Well, if one were a Massachusetts Quaker in 1659, and if Quakeresses were being hanged for their beliefs on Boston Common (they didn't call them Puritans for nothing), a little free land on a scrubby, sandy island out in the Antlantic might look pretty appealing. So the earliest Coffins prospered in their Oldest House-to-be, passing it on, eventually, to the seafaring Paddacks, a clan whose paterfamilias must have been fairly terrifying or at least implacably unforgiving. The story goes that his small daughter Love idly dug a little trench (with a clamshell, mind you) in the capacious lily pond across from the Oldest House. Somehow, though it seems inconceivable, her digging emptied the pond, blew out the dam and ruined the mill, and father Paddack was evidently so furious that fearful, guilt-torn Love revealed the truth only on her deathbed. That bed is not in the house today. Its current furnishing, carefully maintained by the Nantucket Historical Association, comprise a scholarly best-guess as to what was really there - 'It was the Quaker way to use things, and use them up.' Not an original stick remains, consequently. And 17th-century American furniture being virtually unbuyable today, the Old House has been sparsely furnished with fairly humble 18th-century pieces from the NHA collection. But 'sparse' is an understatement here. These rooms are not just bare-bones, they hardly include a stitch of warming upholstery, curtains or clothing, despite an impressive display of spinning and weaving machinery: a large and looming loom in what was once the hall nd a spinning wheel in the parlour/kitchen. One hopes, for the Paddacks' sakes, that they lived here with a touch more luxury than we see now, for the family lived there for 132 years. B The entrance hall. Just seen to the left is the almost unnavigably steep staircase The Oldest House fell on hard times after that - a curiously mixed blessing; for while it quietly crumbled, it also remained virtually untouched. Only an 1881 family reunion awakened descendant Tristram Coffin to the necessity of saving his family's piece of American history. By 1923, when the house became the property of the NHA, a carefully rethought (though equally inauthentic) bit of architectural licence resulted in the replacement of its double-hung windows with the quaint latticework we see there today. Seemingly, the OH ghosts don't care what kind of windows the house has, for they don't haunt its interior. The east hall, with a photo reproduction of the Nantucket Historical Association's portrait of the Oldest Occupant - Mary Gardner Coffin The east hall was used as a 'family room'. The design of the 18th-century American table and chairs reveals their English derivation. Stoneware jugs and a wooden trencher stand on the pantry shelves The pantry also holds wood and metal mortars and pestles and a churn and an axe The austere second sleeping chamber contains a cradle, a rope 'youth' bed and an early trundle bed, covered with a wool quilt. The sleeping chamber. The child's rope bed is covered with a blanket embroidered with roses in the corners. How sadly grim that lone abode Where once the yeoman reaped and sowed! It seems to warn, who ventures near, To shun those walls, moss-grown and drear; Where ivy climbed and roses grew When time was young and life was new. (from Caroline Parker Hills's poem The Oldest House, 1895) Well, the historic landscape expert might quibble about those Victorian roses and ivy. And 'grim' is a trifle harsh. But 'lone' closer to the genius loci, perhaps. And 'lovely' largely sums it up. THE WORLD OF INTERIOR - 2000 Text: Carol Prisant, Photography: Eric Boman "The history of Nantucket's Oldest House is one of religious persecution, frightening fathers and doleful ghosts. But 'lovely' is the only word do describe it", says Carol Prisant. Yes, I agree! Just lovely! * * * Coming soon.... ...my trip to Germany in March
