From the vermillion living room to the elegant foyer, this 1960s New York home had played-to-the-hilt, marvelously uninhibited color.
The walls were hung in an apricot silk wall-covering flocked in hot vermilion-orange — a color choice inspired by the much softer orange in the rare Fitzhugh porcelain the homeowners collected. (A pagoda-topped Chinese cabinet in the sitting room held a lovely clutch of these treasures.)
A Tabriz rug in the sitting room and two Hamadans in the gallery spread a Persian pattern underfoot in a woven deluge of color.
Against this background, the Victorian furniture, equally extravagant in style, more than holds its own: Louis XV and Victorian armchairs in the sitting room, Venetian side chairs in the gallery, blackamoors in both rooms.
One of the old ceiling lanterns was French, another ancient Chinese. Over the Chinese table in the gallery hangs a mirror framed in Cathedral silver wrought over black velvet and made centuries ago in Spain — a long way from New York’s Third Avenue where it was rediscovered.
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Like its companions, it is a beautiful curiosity that came home at last to a happy hunting ground.
One wall of the sitting room was mirrored — not from the baseboard, but from the floor itself — to the ceiling. This trick permitted an unbroken flow of reflection: a neat device to double, visually, the size of the room.
In the gallery, the hot flame of the vermilion wallcovering was offset by a white ceiling, dark polished wood flooring, and woodwork painted a quiet glen, half bronze, half olive.