Month: December 2021

Onyx Art Deco bookends, a collection of vintage zoology plates, Brighton Pavilion side tables. Thanks to three new vendors on our local home décor scene, we have more options than ever when it comes to redesign.

Street wares

Like a lot of folks, Maria Gall started rethinking her career during the pandemic. With kids at home and an untapped passion for interior design and antiques, she launched Savannah Street (named for the street her dad grew up on), and specializes in a traditional aesthetic. Specifically, she says, “You’ll see a lot of Chinoiserie, mid-century American, and European-influenced designs. Hand-carved detailing, timeless silhouettes, and textured materials are just a few of the characteristics I look for when selecting pieces.”

Find Savannah Street on Chairish (chairish.com/shop/savannahstreet) and by appointment in the Ivy Square Shopping Center. Follow
@savannah_st_antiques for more info.

Genuine articles

Even as a kid growing up in Southern California, Andrés Hernandez was a perpetual collector. “I’d  come home from family camping trips with stones and other bits of nature filling my pockets,” he says. Over time, the collections evolved and, as he puts it, one interest led to another. Influenced by his father’s upholstery business, he fell in love with homewares and design. 

After moving to Virginia, he suddenly had access to a lot more—antique malls, estate sales, architectural salvage lots—and began collecting new treasures.

“My aesthetic is influenced by wabi-sabi, utilitarian, brutalist, and primitive styles,” Hernandez says. “Most of my items are sourced from all throughout central Virginia, and each piece is genuine vintage or earlier.”

Follow Worne on Instagram @_worne and in person at Heyday Antiques & Vintage.

New views

After helping her mom list a collection of vintage owls on Etsy, Otherwise Shoppe owner Marangelie Caballero noticed that the practice felt almost therapeutic. She began to fill the shop with her own finds—classical sculptures, brutalist and mid-century pieces, and artisan-made objects.

“Otherwise Shoppe is about saving forgotten pieces and giving them a chance at a new life,” Caballero says. “It’s about showing the value of objects that already exist. In the settings in which I find them—cluttered shops and musty antique stores—they are often overlooked. By presenting them in a lovely way, I hope to inspire people to view antiques differently.”

Find Otherwise Shoppe on Etsy at otherwiseshoppe.etsy.com and on Instagram @otherwiseshoppe.

There’s nothing like a pandemic shut-down and virtual school to show you that your kitchen just isn’t working. 

For one family who moved into the Rugby Road area in late 2018, the “new normal” showed that their eat-in kitchen, while large, didn’t have a good working space for their grade-school daughter’s remote learning, and didn’t function well for the husband-and-wife cooking team. Besides that, the room didn’t have nearly enough storage—or outlets.

So the owners asked Bushman Dreyfus Architects to give them “a space that promoted connection,” says lead designer Kirk Webb. Integrating all the kitchen’s functions in a cohesive way—and keeping the space in context with the rest of the house, which had been substantially renovated by the previous owners—meant “the scope of the project felt much larger than a single room,” Webb says.

Another part of the challenge: Because the 1910 house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, any changes that would affect its exterior (like pushing out a wall, or adding/moving windows) were a non-starter. Luckily, relocating the cooking area (gas stove and two below-counter ovens) to the exterior wall, under a line of windows overlooking the terrace, revealed a faux-stone backsplash which, once removed, made the kitchen a foot wider.

Webb’s design also significantly lengthened the center island. The longer counter not only provided more working space for the two cooks, but also created a seating area where the family now has breakfast every day. 

Once the kitchen’s design was finalized in August 2020, the owners posed the next challenge, for contractor Alexander Nicholson, Inc. and cabinetmaker Worthington Architectural Millwork in Gordonsville: Have the kitchen ready by Thanksgiving. With hard work and some luck, the deadline was met—“just in time,” says the owner with a laugh.

The new kitchen is well-organized, with enough comfortable space for cooking, working, and gathering. The island, counters, and backsplashes are a white lightly veined marble, which—with the white walls and east and south exposures—fill the space with light. In one of the touches that makes everyone dream of someday having a custom-built kitchen, the east-facing windows all have switch-controlled retractable shades to make sure there’s no early morning glare. (The south-facing window over the porcelain undermount sink is already shaded—by the decades-old paperbark maple outside.)

The new custom cabinetry along the walls and under the counter is a soft, blue-gray that warms up all that white. The kitchen’s interior wall is an uninterrupted expanse of cabinets and closets for the refrigerator, a full-size freezer, appliances, and the family’s dishes and glassware. Above that, the upper cabinets have doors with brass diagonal-mesh screen insets, matching the brass fixtures on the drawers and doors. 

On the kitchen’s north end, the space that held a settee and table now has a corner banquette upholstered in a teal-and-slate-striped faux leather; an oval table provides plenty of space for family meals, school work, or (as the pandemic eases) a gathering of school buddies. On one end of the banquette is a cabinet with shelves for cookbooks or school supplies. On the opposite end, where there was empty wall space, is a small wet bar beside the stairway down to the TV room-cum-kitchenette where the family had meals during the kitchen renovation. (“Microwaving and lots of take-out,” says the owner. “Making school lunches was a real challenge.”) 

Getting a custom kitchen right requires a good deal of pre-planning, thinking through exactly what items are needed where. The drawers in the island hold “everything needed to cook a meal,” says the owner, “and then the cabinets along the wall hold everything needed to serve it.” 

But going custom also means getting those little details that suit just your family. There’s now a storage closet right next to the door to the terrace, for whatever’s needed outside: umbrellas, bug spray, sunscreen, etc.

And, in a touch of genius, there’s a little pop-open compartment that holds a kitchen step-ladder. How else does a woman who’s 5’2″ make use of all those beautiful upper cabinets?

You would think a black box the size of a large living room, set amid the rolling hills of Albemarle County would stick out like…well, a huge black box. But Ivy Levien’s studio, perched on a rise with a view towards the Blue Ridge, rides on the land like it’s always been there.

A year ago, the only building on the Leviens’ land at Bundoran Farm was a condemned log cabin, which they had restored after buying the site 10 years ago. During the pandemic, Ivy and her husband Jeffrey (who are also partners in real estate development—600 West Main is one of their projects) were happy to have an alternative to their Manhattan home. But after a few months, the one-bedroom cabin felt a little small; Ivy, who is also a professional multi-media artist (as Ivy Naté), says, “Even during COVID, I needed to work—it’s my living.” So the couple got Bushman Dreyfus Architects started on designing a new house—and a free-standing studio. 

Ivy already had a mental image: a simple black structure set into the farm landscape. Lead designer Aga Saulle looked to Scandinavian barns and horse run-in sheds for inspiration, and created a simple gable-roofed building that fit both the site and Ivy’s concept. To achieve a clean, minimalist outline, the roof and exterior walls use the same cladding system: panels of vertical wooden slats laid over a black, UV-stable waterproofing membrane. 

For contractor Mike Ball of Element Construction, that paneling was the job’s biggest challenge. The two-inch by two-inch slats are Cambia-treated poplar (“We’ve used it before, and knew it wouldn’t warp,” Ball says). The vertical slats were laid across horizontal supports and secured from behind, so the screws wouldn’t show on the finished panels. Ball’s subcontractors, Kring Carpentry of Staunton, took pains to assemble the panels precisely and ensure the walls slats aligned perfectly with the roof panels. 

To achieve the color Ivy wanted (“almost black”), the panels were stained rather than painted. The resulting matte finish helps the building recede into the natural background, and complements the dark-gray metal roofing on the nearby cabin. Landscape architect Anne Pray, who designed a meditative garden terrace for the log cabin, helped integrate the building into its setting. 

The studio’s interior is one big white working space. Large windows on three sides pull in the surrounding pastures and hills. Along the south wall is an open-ended walk-in closet (storage for Ivy’s art supplies and the found objects she works with) and the entry door, but no windows; south light would be too intense for a studio space, Saulle notes.

The building’s precision and purity of line make it feel sculptural—appropriate to Ivy’s work as a three-dimensional artist—and create a calming atmosphere, like the zen garden at its exterior. Ivy says working in this new place has given her a different perspective. “My studio in New Jersey is in an industrial, urban environment. Here, when I come into the studio, I clean, clear the space, get quiet, and listen. That’s the beauty of having a dedicated space.” 

Ball, who drives by the finished studio every time he comes out to work on site preparation for the Leviens’ new house, says, “I still love to see it.”