Sacred Space at Home
I’ve always loved the expression “building a home together.” Twelve years into our relationship, and six years into marriage, I’m glad to discover that the creation and evolution of home never ends. To us, our circa 1880 Victorian in Newtown is a living, breathing thing. It speaks in windy whispers, wooden ribs expanding and contracting with the seasons. No door hangs exactly straight, and pine floors slant willfully. When my husband toured the house, he knew instantly that he wanted to make it his home. Amusingly, the real estate listing read, “This one’s a cream puff.” It is so much more, and we are its lucky stewards.
This past year, we decided to ignore the practicalities of resale (the notion of which depresses us, anyway, since we never want to leave) and make the house more our own. First things first. We converted the first floor shared study into the “Library Guest Room.” Two days’ work disassembling and reassembling the four poster bed we’d inherited from my beloved grandmother, Yia Yia, and we were done. And feeling pretty darn proud of ourselves- major impact, relatively little time and effort. On to phase two. I commandeered the upstairs guestroom for my office/dressing room/sewing room, while Matt claimed the garden guest room as his study. In his inimitably generous way, he offered to redecorate my space first. And when I say redecorate, I mean he was half of the design team and did all of the work and craftsmanship himself.
We didn’t know exactly how we wanted to outfit this room, but I felt compelled to make it a sacred space for peace and reflection. With the launch of Bijou, 2024 was both the happiest year of my career, and the riskiest and most arduous. Beyond my personal sphere, the state and trajectory of our larger world had me feeling hollowed out and hopeless. I hankered for a sanctum of sorts. And we needed a focal point to invite and set that mood.
My love affair with the paintings of John Singer Sargent dates back to my post college days in Boston. I lived in a walk-up studio near the Fenway, a public rose garden on my doorstep and the city’s museums a hop, skip, and a jump away. Once a week, I’d pay a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and explore her former home and vast art collection. I’d make a beeline for the courtyard to drink in whatever exquisitely designed seasonal floral arrangements and plantings were on display. Then I’d lose all sense of time and meander from room to room. There was always something new to discover. But without fail, I’d end my visit in the Spanish Cloister to commune with Sargent’s 1882 painting “El Jaleo.” As a former dancer, I was entranced by the palpable sense of movement set off by chiaroscuro and the ecstasy of musicians so utterly immersed in their art and the moment.
When it came time to decorate this room, I turned to another Sargent piece that has long appealed to me. He painted “Smoke of Ambergris” in Tangiers in 1880 (around the time that our house was built). To me, the work conveys an atmosphere of perfect, momentary solitude and the stillness that I crave in this mad world. A woman in rich cream garments stands as a pillar of strength and autonomy, a heavy drape held over her head to capture the essence of ambergris as it wafts from a decorative pewter vessel at her feet. Her staunch verticality mirrors that of the nearby massive stucco column, seeming to underscore her resilience. Whatever we are witnessing in this scene, it has an air of ritual and restoration about it. The subject will leave this space stronger than when she entered it. Which is exactly what I desired from this little room of mine. The painting resonated deeply with Matt, too, and we had our anchor point.
I struggled to land on the right wall color. My dilemma was that I wanted the small room to be light and airy in feeling, but I also sought comforting coziness (which I tend to associate with darker hues). In the end, we figured out a way to achieve both. The walls went mascarpone, and the ceiling went teal with a drop of about a foot onto the walls. We have a running joke about my Mediterranean leanings toward bold colors versus Matt’s penchant for earth tones. In this case, I was uncharacteristically wary of going too dark on the ceiling, but he wisely said I’d regret it if we went lighter. Reader, my sainted husband painted no less than four coats of teal on that bloody ceiling. But he was right. The depth of color and the drop make the corners of the room disappear, so it resembles an infinite night sky.
One of the loveliest things about doing up a room is that you realize you’ve been acquiring things over time that were destined to inhabit this new space. I love settling down in Yia Yia’s poppy patterned armchair for a good read. Or gazing upon the canvas print of “Smoke of Ambergris” gracing the mantle, flanked by Yia Yia’s tall black candlesticks. Then there’s my antique desk and a delicate chair, acquired separately, that gravitated to become a pair so I can look out over our beautiful valley as I pore over cookbooks and dream up new recipes. There are treasured gifts, too, such as the fabulous 1925 Singer sewing machine and table my mother gave me for my birthday- thank you, Mamma! The thoughtful gift a diffuser, Winter White, from my dear sister-in-law. And the magpie wing prints on either side of my desk were a Christmas present from Matt. Purchased locally at Lichen or Knot, they make me feel uplifted and full of creative energy. My room is now affectionately known as the “Chatelaine’s Boudoir.”
I’ve come to understand that “building a home together” is one of our mutual love languages. Wherever we are, this is something that we will always do for, and with, each other. I hope you, too, enjoy creating sacred space in your home. Be well, sweet friends! xoxo
