Watch Hill Home

A reimagining of two minds: an acknowledgement of New England vernacular threaded with mid century classicism, each informing the other. Newly expressed beam work resurrects the home’s history without overwhelming its present; rounded ceiling coves create an enveloping cocoon while speaking to the home’s setting by the sea. The widow’s walk becomes a reading room with unimpeded sightlines of the Sound. There’s a philosophical minimalism, if not an explicit one: everything softened, reduced to its most essential. Stairwells wend gracefully into ceilings, plaster and lathe sculpted by local boat building artisans. Touches of lightness appear: an upholstered banquette folds in on itself, a studio signature. 

A modernist sensibility — pieces by Prouve, Jeanneret, and Mouille — admix with modern and contemporary art — Basquiat, Rauschenberg, Landon Metz, and, in the foyer, a joyous ceramic wall construction by Betty Woodman, its at once diffuse and cohesive form an analog for the project — and the studio — as a whole.