Alise O’Brien
When designer Jimmy Jamieson asked Jan Lange whether she'd rather be Rome or the Hamptons, her answer was unequivocal.
"I said I want to be Rome! Because I love those Roman colors. The Hamptons, you know, it's blue and white, and yellow, very strong and beachy..."
High European seems like a counterintuitive choice when you first meet Mrs. Lange, who is vivacious, blond, and refreshingly informal. Especially when you learn how fond she is of California—she has a contemporary house near Carmel-by-the-Sea—which makes "beachy" seem a given. But growing up in Kentucky with a father in the furniture business gave her an early love of beautiful furniture, and she has spent her adult life collecting fine European antiques. These fit perfectly in her grand house in Brentmoor Park ("It was built in 1912. There was a ballroom with hardwood floors; the bathroom was tiled in pottery tiles and had a sink that was mounted on glass legs...") and her Clayton town house. When she decided to scale down even further—to an apartment—she hired Mr. Jamieson, who created a space that paid homage to those grand homes, but wasn't high-maintenance or fussy.
"I wanted a different look," she says. "It looks nothing like how my other houses looked, and I was ready for that. Yet I still wanted it to be traditional. But I do have some touches of contemporary, like the sofa, and the chairs look contemporary. This is kind of a surprise to some people. They walk in and say, 'Oh my goodness.' But I give Jimmy all the credit."
"No," Mr. Jamieson counters. "She's one hip lady."
This playful back-and-forth hints at how long these two have known each other. Mr. Jamieson has been friends with her son for a long time; as he puts it, "It's not as though she looked my name up in the phone book and called me, hired me, and threw all caution to the wind." In fact, Mr. Jamieson was familiar with her other homes, including the one in California; he knew her taste.
"So I knew what she would be comfortable with," he says. "And yet I wanted to create something for her that was fresh, and something that was useful. When she bought the apartment, it was totally raw. There were no walls. There was some framing done, but we removed it. We created the entire floor plan and the interior architecture. The spaces for the kitchen and the bathroom and those kinds of areas were designated, but we had the flexibility to make them specific for her needs and her lifestyle."
Then she and Mr. Jamieson agreed on "Rome": an earthy mix of terra cotta, sepia, black, gold, camel, white, and the tiniest touches of blue that recalled old-world Europe.
"We had just a couple of meetings," Mr. Jamieson recalls. "I went to California, and we went to their design district. I brought some materials with me and gave her an idea of what I was thinking. She liked what she saw and said, 'OK, let's go with that.'" In October 2007, construction began. Mrs. Lange departed for her California house and returned in May 2008 to a finished apartment.
"I felt that it was important to start at the front door and capture the idea of this grand, more formal space as you enter the apartment—it was an echo of the Brentmoor house and the Clayton town house," Mr. Jamieson says.
He hung two dramatic, hand-painted panels there, all awash in fleurs and handsome-faced angels, from a collection of four that had hung in Mrs. Lange's Brentmoor house (she sold two, for space).
"They are early 19th-century, either French or Italian—and definitely before 1812," Mr. Jamieson notes.
"I don't know what the story is," Mrs. Lange adds, "but we were in the Loire Valley at a castle, and they had shutters that were decorated like this."
The hallway table is 18th-century Italian; the lion's-foot benches are new, but made in a historically Pompeian style. The Roman bust, which Mrs. Lange picked up years ago and then put in storage, took one to the nose somewhere along the way. She hired Irek Szelag of Szelag Art Conservation to repair him: "It was just perfect. I couldn't believe it. He also put the Quan Yin, the one in the dining room, back together—and she was in pieces."
When creating the hallways and their separations, Mr. Jamieson used a series of arches, which were dictated by existing columns; when there was a column on one side, but not another, Mr. Jamieson created a false column, and used the hollow area as storage space that's nearly invisible. The door opens not with handles, but with a gentle push that clicks it open. When closed, it blends into the wall.
Despite all that storage space, Mrs. Lange did have to make some choices about what to keep in the new apartment. She decided on a handful of paintings and some of her finest antiques, including a French Louis XIV chest and a collection of black Russian lacquered boxes ("My husband bought them for me at Jules Pass. It was an insta-collection!"). And of course, her grandfather clock, the first piece of furniture her father built after he retired.
(It went into a niche in the powder room, a place well-loved by guests for its smoky, distressed mirrors, which throw a supernaturally forgiving reflection.)
"The whole idea was to create a contrast between things that are rough and earthy against these very, very fine things," Mr. Jamieson says. "She didn't want something that was over-the-top formal, so I just felt it was important to introduce elements with a little bit of a primitive feel, which brings it down."
Throughout the house, painted Venetian plaster gives the space just a hint of rough, provincial texture. In the dining room, an 18th-century painted Italian sideboard contrasts with Mrs. Lange's Thomire et Cie bronzes ("He was the famous French bronzier in the 18th century—the company went on for 100 years," says Mr. Jamieson), a contemporary chandelier, and John Saladino's XXX breakfast table, rounded bench, and Villa chairs. But the focus of the room is Milton Avery's modernist still life "Fishbowl With Fruit," which is painted in a darker, bolder incarnation of the Roman color palette and adds both a primitive and a modern feel to the room. Mrs. Lange bought it in California and had it hanging over her bed when she lived there.
"But I think it likes it here," she laughs.
Her favorite piece of art, though, is in the adjacent sitting room: a rare figurative portrait of a woman by American abstract painter Byron Browne.
"She reminds me of...who was that woman who used to date Aristotle Onassis?" she asks Mr. Jamieson.
"Maria Callas?"
"Yeah! Maria Callas. She's very Greek-looking."
On either side of "Maria" are two 18th-century Louis XVI chairs ("They just fit me. I should have been a little French woman in the 18th century," Mrs. Lange laughs) and between the chairs is the chest, which she describes as "her finest piece." She also loves the lush, antique Angora rugs and the soft, muted Fortuny curtains in deep gold and red. Though they have an exceedingly rich look, Mrs. Lange appreciates how easy the curtains are to care for: "They're not screaming, 'Here I am!' And they're not puddled at the foot of the floor," she says. "I've had puddling. Every time you vacuum, you have to rearrange them. So I'm puddled out."
The living room, like the dining room, juxtaposes the old, the new, and the hybrid: a Saladino couch, Rose Tarlow Georgian library chairs, a contemporary side table painted black-and-gold in the Pompeian style, and some extraordinary black lamps.
"They are 17th-century French candle prickets," Mr. Jamieson explains. "I cut the prickets off, made the finials, and had them wired. We had the shades made."
The fine finishing touches to the room include 19th-century candelabras on the piano, a pair of Trajan's columns and 18th-century bouyats ("We just had them wired") on the table, and a pair of 17th-century Italian torchieres in the hall.
"Someone said to me, 'You ought to have those redone,'" Mrs. Lange says with some amusement. "And I said, 'I like them like that! I don't want it to look like I just ran out and picked them up somewhere.'"
In the bedroom and master bath, the feel is "light, bright, and happy." In the bath, that meant cool, white Italian Carrara marble (the same was used in the kitchen), simple lines, silver hardware, and Mrs. Lange's 19th-century Japanese prints. In the bedroom, a painting by contemporary Impressionist Frederick McDuff, nearly two-thirds blue sky, hangs over the bed; the bedclothes, like the Fortuny curtains, are of handmade fabric. The Rose Tarlow laminated raffia headboard mirrors the dramatic sitting room Mr. Jamieson created across from the bedroom, which contains a rather large and dramatic Rose Tarlow daybed, also covered in laminated raffia.
In the bedroom, restraint ruled for restfulness' sake. Aside from the bed, the only truly large pieces in the room are a pair of 19th-century painted Italian bookcases. But of course, they're balanced by small, lovely things. There's a delicate cross-stitch, made by a friend ("A friend is a gift you give yourself," it reads); a pair of antique French lamps, which Mr. Jamieson had resilvered; and a pair of Italian terra-cotta angels, which Mrs. Lange has had "forever," but can't remember where she picked up. All she knows is that Mr. Jamieson found the perfect spot for them on top of the bookcases.
"I used to only use them at Christmastime," she laughs, "but they found a nice home there."
