Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1412885
In the library, walls, windows, and upholstered sofa and chair are covered in red Persian chintz by Colefax and Fowler, the same fabric used by Billy Baldwin to envelop Diana Vreeland's "Garden in Hell" Park Avenue living room. Opposite page top left: In the entryway, walls are paneled in antiqued mirror, which Minton had custom-made in Italy. The ceiling is silver leaf. The antique chest belonged to the homeowner's mother. Top right: Walls and vanity of the powder bath are covered in vintage Fortuny fabric that belonged to the homeowner. Antique Venetian glass mirror. Bottom: Walls and ceiling are lacquered red. Shelves hold objects picked up during the homeowner's travels. The ornately carved chair is an antique from Asia. handsome old marble fireplace from her former house was repurposed for the living room, and Minton designed a massive wood arch with antiqued mirror from Italy to go around it, to play off the room's graceful arched windows. Minton is old school when it comes to creating furniture plans, so one of the first things his team did was to carefully measure and photograph all the client's furniture, art, and objects. Then, just as his former design partner David Corley taught him 50 years earlier, Minton sketched each room's furniture arrangement precisely by hand at quarter-inch scale. Sketching by hand is almost a lost art, now replaced by CAD, but Minton's drawings have never let him down. "If it works on paper, it always works in the room," he says. The client has collected antiques for decades and discovered much of her furniture, art, and rugs from noteworthy local dealers and on travels to Paris and England with her late husband, stopping at flea markets and antiques shops along the way. She also has some prized heirlooms passed down from her parents. Minton enhanced her treasure trove with striking backdrops, setting the tone with a dramatic entryway of black-lacquered walls, mirrored panels custom-made in Italy, and a ceiling covered in silver leaf. "I wasn't a bit concerned about having a black-lacquer entryway," she says. "I love it, and everyone who sees it loves it." Amid her French and Italian antiques in the entry are cherished pieces such as a large trunk that belonged to her mother and a charming antique tricycle that she and her husband spotted in a shop in Bath, England, which he purchased in secret and surprised her with at Christmas. Minton covered the dining room walls in de Gournay's sumptuous Coco Coromandel hand-painted wallpaper, which is based on the iconic lacquered screens in Coco Chanel's apartment on rue Cambon in Paris. "De Gournay had just introduced it when we started work on the apartment, and I was crazy about it," Minton says. "My client wasn't sure at first that she wanted to use wallpaper, but I was determined." Not only did she end up loving it, but the dark background color of the wallpaper perfectly sets off her 19th- century French black-leather dining chairs. Simple, sheer white curtains let in daylight, and a textural sisal rug underneath her polished 18th- century English Georgian dining table keeps things casual. She and her husband found the mid-20th- century Lucite buffet at a flea market in Paris; it holds a pair of signed antique Baccarat candlesticks from New Orleans, which her father gave 72