above: An Urban Electric Co. pendant hangs over Maison Gerard chairs, sofas by Egg collective and Withers Studio side tables in the living room. The family dog poses on a bench from Espasso.

Fine Tuned

An expert team orchestrates the perfect home for a music-loving family

INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH BOLOGNINO, ELIZABETH BOLOGNINO INTERIORS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY READ McKENDREE/JBSA // STYLING BY KATJA GREEFF

Bolognino’s thoughtfully selected lighting choices—a Lobmeyr chandelier in the foyer and a Josef Hoffmann pendant in the hallway—add purpose and personality to each space.

What’s the history with this house?
The house was built in 1928. It was previously owned by a very famous tennis player and coach, Ivan Lendl. Architecturally, it felt like a hodgepodge of styles.

The current owners called me after they purchased it. We got to work right in the middle of COVID, and it was a complete restoration project. Brooks & Falotico took the existing home and flawlessly added to it. They fixed it architecturally, so it made more sense and was more cohesive, and added an addition that just looks like it’s always been there. They did an amazing job.

How would describe the clients’ style?
They definitely subscribe to layered minimalism. They don’t like stuff for the sake of stuff. And they are art collectors. Everything that we purchased has a story to it and some sort of meaning. They are furniture collectors as well, and it was so fun, because they appreciate furniture like they do art, and they see furniture as being collectible art pieces. It was so freeing, and they listened to me. They didn’t push back a lot. I feel like I had free rein. I really appreciate their point of view, from an artistic perspective, and I think they appreciate mine. It was just a fun project to work on, because I don’t get that kind of freedom that often.

The star of the kitchen is its custom Officine Gullo range, which complements the Ijen Blue quartzite.

Tell us about some of these living spaces.
The wife is a professional violinist, and music is a really important part of this house. She has a practice room on the upper level, and there’s a performance room on the lower level. They have a lot of fellow musicians come into the home and play, and they host a lot of events. I think something that’s important with this house is that there’s a definitive line between public and private spaces. The home is really laid out for entertaining.

There’s a room that used to be an office, and it stepped down to a pool room. That is a wing of the house that returns and looks out onto the back terrace with all that glass. We turned it into a bar and a club room, so they’d have a place to have cocktails. There’s a beautiful fireplace in there, and we found this tête-à-tête and covered it with this beautiful Fortuny fabric. I specifically chose the lantern in that room—which is from Urban Electric Co.—because in the summertime, you have the windows and doors open, and it’s this indoor-outdoor space.

Guests can visit the Amuneal-crafted brass bar and enjoy drinks in front of the Chesneys’ fireplace. A Fortuny-covered tête-à-tête offers a chic seat.

Did you have a jumping-off point for the whole design, like a color palette or fabric?
When we originally approached the idea of the house, I think our team thought it was going to be a little bit more on the traditional side. But then we saw that their love for historic, unique furniture pieces would take us into a different direction.

I think the starting point really was the formal living room in that house. They have an extensive art collection, and we wanted it to have this muted, warm but almost cloud-like outlet. We ended up doing this beautiful, polished Venetian plaster in a color that was neither cold nor super yellow, as a backdrop for their art. Once we saw the plaster and the simple color of the limestone and the color of the walls—which is complemented by those fixtures that we hung down that hallway—it was so beautiful and such a statement of minimalism that we didn’t want to put any art up at all. It’s really the opposite of what I normally do.

Both powder rooms show off the design team’s mastery of combining carved stone and grasscloth wallpaper.

Tell us about this gorgeous kitchen.
We realize that the house is in a beach town, but they didn’t want it to feel beachy. The kitchen started when I presented the idea of doing an Officine Gullo range, which was a brand they didn’t know much about. But the clients are very much into clean cooking, and Officine Gullo allowed me to customize the burners with induction plates and some traditional gas plates. We picked a custom color and made this beautiful professional range, and they loved it.

For the stone, they really wanted quartzite, because they didn’t want to deal with the stains in the marble. We found this stone called Ijen Blue and I had never seen a quartzite that had that kind of painterly effect to it. I proposed that we run it up the wall and build the zinc hood so that it would not feel like another design element, but really form on the wall.

Tell us about the primary bath spaces.
There are two primary bathrooms in this house—a his and hers. Her primary bathroom has that blue slab. That part of the house gets amazing light, and we thought it would be the most beautiful place for a luxurious bathroom. I thought that it would be great to put the shower and the tub behind a glass wall. The wood that you see in there is called Hinoki wood, and it comes from Japan. It has this amazing smell to it. It was really hard to get it, but we got it.

I think his bathroom is my favorite bathroom that we’ve ever done, really.

RESOURCES:
Interior Design: Elizbabeth Bolognino Interiors, Westport; elizabethbolognino.com
Architect: Brooks & Falotico, New Canaan; brooksandfalotico.com
Builder: Yankee Custom Builders, Greenwich; yankeecustombuilders.com
Landscape Design: Kathryn Herman Design, New Canaan; kathrynhermandesign.com
Paint: Shoreline Painting & Drywall, Inc., Norwalk; shorelinepaintingct.com