Photo: Alise O’Brien
Ardell Burchard’s cross-legged on the floor, wrapping packages in white and pale yellow—and beneath her white and crystal and silver and gold tree, they make it look as though yellow’s been a holiday color since Louis IX.
I look around—and start taking notes. The banister’s festooned with garland—I’ve done that! Except…her greenery is interwoven with naked seeded eucalyptus and soft, leafy branches, the varied textures surprising the expected pine boughs. And the boughs aren’t just beribboned, the usual cliché; instead, she’s closely wired in silver balls and, every so often, a luminous apple-green ball to catch your eye. (The orbs are shatterproof and indistinguishable from glass; she uses them whenever she’s doing staircases or outdoor decorations.)
On the entry table, she’s placed a simple charger, on which she’s arranged white pillar candles of varying heights—so far, so good—but she’s anchored their bases in a sea of silver and pearlized balls and made all the difference by interspersing a few shimmering mother-of-pearl shells. “I see pearls and shells as flowers of the ocean,” says Mrs. Burchard, a floral designer who owns Fresh Art, LLC. “And I love the fact that you can hear the ocean in them.”
Just beyond the table, an antique, hand-painted ivory chest holds a white tureen of paperwhites, the blossoms echoed in the smoky glass of a European antique mirror. She’s softened the hard edge where stem meets bowl by adding lively green moss. “It just adds another dimension and texture,” she explains—and the green of the moss makes silver flatware and white porcelain shine all the brighter.
“I love the sweet smell of paperwhites,” she adds, “and I think it’s nice to have something fragrant in the hallway when people walk in.”
The outside wreath is dramatic enough, its delicate, round boxwood leaves framed by swags and festooned with silver balls that find their match in the stairway garland. But every inside window also has its own boxwood wreath, double-faced but plain, a thick circle of glossy dark green adorned with a simple champagne-colored, double-faced satin bow. (“Keep the center knot loose; that’s the key,” she tells me.) Pulled back to frame these wreaths: pale-gold silk curtains, casually regal. “I decided to play up the architecture by focusing on the windows and curtains,” she says.
On the buffet in the dining room, glass bells cover glass vases filled with—oh no, not balls or holly—green pears. She’s added thin green velvet ribbon and placed a single pear on each dinner plate. (Oh, and the dishes? From Target. She’s never had a seasonal set before, but the gold tracery of branches and birds on these simple white plates won her heart—without breaking her budget.)
Mrs. Burchard often uses three square vases, placed along the length of the table, in lieu of a centerpiece, but this year she wanted to do something new. “I usually have these cachepots up on the mantel, filled with moss balls,” she says, “but I thought they’d dress up the table.” She filled the cachepots with White Swan roses, white hyacinths, and small white tulips. Now, seeing a bare inch, she slides a fresh rose in, murmuring, “Flowers are alive. They have this energy and this texture that is nothing like anything else. They just give back. It’s the energy of creation—they’re miracles.”
Lacy with white blooms, the two cachepots cried out for a centerpiece between them. And while most of us avoid tall centerpieces, muttering the old rule about seeing the person across the table, Mrs. Burchard solved the problem by pushing it to its extreme: She clustered the thinnest white 24-inch taper candles, letting them rise like beams of light.
For her Fraser fir tree, she folds heavy handmade ivory paper into cones, the ends pinked for interest, and hangs them with cream satin ribbon. Sometimes she’ll slide a single white rose into each, so her guests can make a Christmas wish and take a rose as they depart. Other cones are chased silver, and her 2008 garland is strung strings of silver beads. They loop above the white gothic arches of a tiny church ornament; the silver mercury-glass birds with real tail feathers; the silver mesh stars. They twine through gold mesh ribbon, wrapped horizontally to counterbalance all the narrow vertical ornaments, from frosted-glass icicles and teardrop pendants to sculpted gold spires. (The ivory angel atop the tree looked disproportionately big to Mrs. Burchard, so she changed the scale and softened the contrast by inserting a base of sparkly white branches beneath the angel.)
The best detail, though, stands just behind the tree in the corner: an antique rocking horse of light wood, hand-carved in England. She’s gently hung a wreath of white roses and ferns around its neck and given it reins of antique-gold cording.
On the mantel, she’s placed vases of the palest yellow, tall, wavy-stemmed French tulips, bending and bowing almost as if they’re wired. She laid seeded eucalyptus between them and draped wispy greenery down on either side. The tulips bookend a heavily gilded frame of what could easily be an ancestral portrait—in the lineage of Lily, the family’s King Charles Cavalier spaniel.
Everything, in fact, feels French, sunlit and joyful. “I never tire of yellow,” she says. “It’s color, but it’s neutral.” Not a cool neutral, though, like gray or beige; instead, it brings warmth to the house.
It also makes a cheery red-and-green holiday scheme untenable. But that’s OK with Mrs. Burchard, who’s always loved Christmas white. “I just think it’s elegant,” she says, glancing at the white candles in silver candlesticks grouped artfully on a table in front of the window. “I do believe you can overdo flowers, but I don’t believe you can overdo candles,” she says firmly. “They also have an energy that gives back, and when I have them all lit, it’s just beautiful.”
