Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/54815
"If you don't make sure that all these parts and pieces carry on a dialogue with each other, it is just a room full of furniture," Kelsey adds. The kitchen takes the lead in the home's har- mony. Its personality speaks of French country houses and of generations of family gatherings. Wilson created the warm and functional room around a hearth-like stove surround, its rubbed- back—intentionally worn-looking—gentle green echoed in antique shutters at the tall, arched win- dows. Brick walls provide a soft red backdrop while they allude to the building's past. "Originally, it housed cars and horses, and there was an area for washing both vehicles and animals," Wilson explains. The carriage house dates to the glory days when this was the summer home to a patrician family whose connections reached deep into the ranks of American wealth and power. Beatrice Ayer, whose father owned the American Woolen Company, spent all her sum- mers here. In 1910, she married her childhood sweetheart, General George Patton, at Beverly Farms' St. John's Episcopal Church, a few miles down the road. Horses, carriages, and touring au- tomobiles contributed to the leisurely pursuits of Boston Brahmins along their Gold Coast, as its summer denizens referred to the North Shore. "The walls originally were brick but were greatly degraded by the time we came along," Wilson recalls. "Brick walls speak both of the house's past and of the rustic spirit of French farmhouses. We used brick slices measuring five-eighths of an inch thick; they require mortar but don't have the weight of whole bricks." The kitchen's collected sensibility, which in- cludes black curio cabinets and yellow-gold gran- ite counters, features a backsplash composed of ceramic tiles with a custom toile pattern. "The tiles use two tones, exactly planned and measured, that depict lambs, dogs—a pastoral French bucolic scene," Wilson says. "We worked hard to assure that the pot filler doesn't cut into the middle of a tile, or that some- one's head doesn't get cut off," Kelsey adds. Wilson says, "This kitchen was perhaps our biggest challenge. In the end, the results make the owners very happy." When Kelsey and Wilson took this project on, they pushed the owners into new territory. "At one point, we agreed that no timid solu- tions were allowed here," Wilson says. "Their courage brings its own rewards." opposite page, the kitchen speaks french. this page, from top, a pelmet gathers bed hangings into a crown; the master bath offers hints of versailles. 133