Architectural Digest - O. Henry House Ltd.

Architectural Digest DECEMBER 2012

FEATURED PRODUCTS:

with the decor for decades, making the place as much a laboratory as a home. “It’s still not done,” she insists. As soon as her husband is out of earshot, she confesses, “It’s an obsession, really—I’m constantly tweaking, adding, and refining.” A library was built to provide an intimate alternative to the grand doubleheight living room, while the garage became, for a time, a cottage shared by the couple’s four now-grown children. (Today it is Ginger Lily’s office.) The Mortons appended a dining room, too, because “the house didn’t have one,” Nancy explains. “The family just set up tables on the loggia,” a south-facing space she enclosed with a wall of French doors to create a casual living area. The loggia also serves as the entrance hall, furnished with century-spanning tables, sofas, and chairs, many of the latter clad in sprightly blue-and-white fabrics. In the center of the adjacent courtyard, the aquamarine glitter of a plunge pool has replaced a mundane patch of grass. “I wanted to bring a water element into the picture,” the decorator points out, “even though we’re only half a block from the beach.” Especially striking are the numerous ornamental details added to the rooms by Bob Christian, a decorative painter in Savannah, Georgia, who is a go-to guy for many of Ginger Lily’s design jobs. “We talk about what to do, and then Bob just does what he wants, but it always works,” Nancy says, adding that Christian’s artful effects are far more sensible than wallpaper in the humid Florida climate. To balance the high-flying proportions of the stone-paved loggia, Christian created the illusion of heightened Left: Glassed in to become a combination entrance hall and living area, the cypressbeamed loggia is paved with travertine by Country Floors. The walls feature trompe l’oeil decoration by Christian and an array of Staffordshire plates and platters. The faux-bamboo lantern fixture, two-tier occasional table, and buttontufted armchair are from John Rosselli, and a Lee Jofa ikat stripe covers a pair of F. Burrall Hoffman Jr. Though littlehen Nancy and scroll-back chairs by O. Henry House.

W

remembered today, the École des BeauxBill Morton were Arts graduate left his mark on a handful of married, it never R C H D I G E S T. C O M 1 5 3 astounding domestic showplaces of the occurredAto them early 20th century, notably Miami’s that the nuptial Vizcaya (now a museum) and Palm setting, his mother’s Boca Grande, Beach’s Villa Artemis (much altered). The Florida, house, would become their home Morton home, by comparison, is relatively three years later. However, the vibrant modest, its simple British colonial–style couple—she is an interior designer, he is lines, white-painted stucco exterior, a former commodities trader who works for Sotheby’s International Realty— and pale-blue shutters in keeping with its subtropical location: a posh, low-key recently marked their 25th anniversary resort community on Gasparilla Island, as occupants of a residence that has been off the coast of southern Florida. in the family since it was built, in 1940. Bill’s uncle Louis Agassiz Shaw, a And thanks to Nancy’s inspired Harvard professor who coinvented the ministrations, the place is considerably iron lung, commissioned the one-story more stylish than it once was. dwelling to escape Boston’s frigid winters. The four-bedroom villa—featuring (Rumor has it the house eventually a U-shaped layout with a courtyard at its hosted so many cocktail parties that center—was designed by society architect

2022 Pamela Sofa

neighbors nicknamed it Skid Row.) As a bride saying her vows before the living room fireplace on her wedding day, in 1984, Nancy recollects admiring the beamed ceiling and pecky-cypress paneling, though she wasn’t especially keen on the terrazzo floor. A few years later, after she and Bill inherited the property and decided to move in, the improvements began apace. “It was a great house, but it needed an update,” recalls Nancy, who is the president of Ginger Lily, a Boca Grande interior design firm. “The point was to make everything lighter, brighter, fresher, cheerier, and, yes, younger.” Which meant, among other things, removing the master bedroom’s shag carpeting. In truth the interiors have been an open-ended project. Nancy has tinkered

Above, from left: In the living room, a Portuguese chest-on-stand is positioned beneath an antique English painting of dogs; the Aubusson is by Stark. Nancy relaxes in the loggia with her Jack Russell terrier, Rupert. Opposite: The living room’s pecky-cypress paneling was lightened by decorative painter Bob Christian, whose work can also be seen on the tile fireplace surround. The landscape paintings are 19th-century English, the roll-arm sofas are by O. Henry House, and the Louis XV–style armchairs by Edward Ferrell + Lewis Mittman, in the foreground, are upholstered in a Brunschwig & Fils floral; Chinese rice barrels serve as occasional tables.

A R C H D I G E S T. C O M

151

7203 Gina Sofa

197 Chair