Tour Bunny Williams’s Bedroom Addition in Her Connecticut Home
If designer Bunny Williams has any spare time, you will find a good possibility a single may well locate her engrossed in a jigsaw puzzle. As a longtime buddy, I can individually vouch that she hardly ever will get bored by the problem of a intricate hand-cut wood puzzle. It’s a pursuit that normally takes a eager eye, persistence, and a willingness to collaborate—the exact same capabilities Williams employs professionally, regardless of whether functioning for clients or herself.
On the personal front her newest venture, finished last August, is a new bed room addition for her residence in Falls Village, Connecticut, exactly where she lives with her spouse, John Rosselli. “Since I want to are living listed here for good, the conclusion to make a downstairs bed room seemed quite sensible,” Williams clarifies. Building the one-area addition in trying to keep with the 19th-century Federal residence was two years in the creating.
The only attainable internet site was to the suitable of the major facet entrance to the property, previously property to a compact laundry room, a flower arranging room, and a potting get rid of that would have to be moved. Knowledge the worth of sight lines, Williams understood the new roof really should be pitched in the reverse course of the roof of the present residence. She was also adamant that the addition not disturb a path that one-way links the parterre guiding the barn to a official sunken yard on the much aspect of the residence or encroach on 3 majestic 10-foot-significant yew topiaries, planted near to the residence far more than 35 many years in the past.
Performing inside of these constraints Williams envisaged a house that measures 20-by-26 ft, with a ceiling peak of 18 toes “since John and I particularly love peak in a room.” With room taken up by an adjoining dressing area and bathroom, the bedroom gets a spectacular cube, its classical proportions generating reference to 17th-century English architect Inigo Jones. 4 oversize windows find the money for generous garden views whilst an imposing fire, framed by an intricately carved 19th-century period of time mantel she discovered on Instagram (and very similar to those people in the present property), provides a sturdy focal stage. And mainly because the proportions of the space are strictly formal, Williams desired the whimsical illusion of a marble floor. “Swedish, stylized, and imprecise” were her instructions to Bob Christian, a decorative painter from Savannah, Ga, who has worked with her on a lot of fake floors more than the several years.
The colour palette is a pale neutral gray, deliberately picked out because Williams knew that in addition to paintings, the walls would be household to numerous items of her husband’s beloved blue and white porcelain. A at ease sitting spot occupies a single-third of the place even though the remaining house is dominated by a magnificent mahogany 4-poster bed, the gift of Furlow Gatewood, a beloved friend and for lots of several years Rosselli’s husband or wife in their joint antique enterprise. Williams thinks he must have guessed how a lot she experienced always admired the mattress, as a single working day he just announced, “I imagine it’s time you choose it.” Considering that the bed’s toile cover was in tatters, a ornamental Cowtan & Tout material replaces it, with a vintage patchwork quilt she observed at Brimfield Antique Flea Market place covering the bed. The home is exquisite and exuberant.“It is,” as Williams likes to position out to guests,“the excellent bedsit.” Not shockingly it is also the fantastic venue for a jigsaw puzzle.
Bunny Williams’s Connecticut Yard and Bedroom Addition
“Working for myself is from time to time hard,” Williams admits. “John is the other part of the equation, and he is another person with extraordinary taste. When we really do not usually concur, this will make for an incredible interchange and collaboration.” In the backyard garden this sort of valuable collaboration comes from a near partnership with head gardener Robert Reimer. Due to the fact his arrival 4 years back, he has been enhancing the current backyard garden, bringing it to a new degree of professionalism. This has been significantly recognizable in the greenhouse, which presents a amazing calendar year-round screen of tropical plant collections, like scented geraniums, unusual succulents, and many types of begonias and pelargoniums. The potting shed has been successfully repositioned subsequent to the greenhouse and the kitchen backyard garden, now less than the specialist care of grasp gardener Tricia van Oers.
Williams, who techniques a yard with the exact sensibility as she would an inside place, pays as a lot notice to the linkages and transitions as to the garden rooms they link. 1 illustration is an undulating yew hedge that borders a large expanse of garden. I was with Williams and a number of pals in Belgium some several years back, seeking at gardens designed by Jacques Wirtz. Encouraged by his use of hedging, she quickly planted the beginnings of a prolonged double-sided hedge with swooping wavelike contours. At very first, her buddies (me bundled) ended up not certain what she was up to. But she understood what she was carrying out, and now, completely developed, it is definitely one particular of the garden’s most spectacular options. Yet another changeover is effected by an archway leading from the official sunken backyard garden to a burgeoning birdhouse village, set in a shaded glade of indigenous trees and planted with oat grass. “What I like is the stress involving these two,” suggests Williams. And it’s tiny ponder: As with the rooms of a property, what specially engages her consideration is fitting together the contrasting regions of the back garden as neatly as the parts of a jigsaw puzzle.
Showcased in the March/April 2023 problem of VERANDA. Inside, architectural, and landscape style by Bunny Williams Images by Annie Schlechter Produced by Dayle Wooden Published by Jane Garmey
