twigs & MOSS Owner Resito Pecson’s Historic Home

CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMAGES OF RESITO PECSON’S HOME. WATCH A VIDEO OF PECSON’S TIPS FOR ARRANGING FLOWERS BELOW.

If you know twigs & MOSS, you could be forgiven for assuming its owner, Resito Pecson, lives nearby in one of those sleek Clayton condos, all air and light and edges. The name of his shop alludes to the irregularity and softness of nature, but his botanical arrangements are simple and modern: shocks of wheat in a patinaed urn, spheres made of branches, a simple starburst of pine cones in a V-shaped gold vessel. That’s why people with contemporary houses love his work—it blends into minimalist environments without looking weird or fussy and warms up the room at the same time. His personal taste, however, runs a little less modern.

“Older houses—with a story—are my favorite,” he says.

Though he’s always lived in older houses, he likes to bring something new to anything he does, to keep things fresh. “Having the store allows me to do that,” he says, “and try things out.” For this house and garden, the inspiration was the houses of Charleston, S.C., which also feature upper and lower balconies. His favorite room, he says, is the solarium off the dining room. It has eight sets of French doors, six of which open out to the original stone terrace and formal gardens, which “naturally become an extension of the solarium,” he says. His miniature schnauzers, Ellie and Jordie, appreciate the view of the outdoors (especially when there is a squirrel running by). “They don’t have to get up on their hind paws to look outside,” he says. “They can just lie in their little beds and see everything.”

At Christmas, this is where the tree goes up, but by December, the room’s already full of greenery. “A lot of the potted plants, like the big ficus trees in front, are moved in here, so it is like a little green room during the colder months,” he says. And it’s far from being a solarium in the classic sense; though there are ferns, there is no wicker, no light-colored furniture.

“All of this furniture was in a library that was all dark mahogany walls,” he says. “The first year in here, the holidays came about, and I needed a place to house a Christmas tree. So it all ended up here, and just ended up perfectly, by accident—even the placement. The red adds a lot of warmth and comfort, especially during the winter, but surprisingly, even during the warm months.”

Eight years ago, this house underwent a total gut rehab, scheduled to last for six months. It took two years. Though the trend of the past several years has been to tear down walls in older homes in order to “accommodate 21st-century lifestyles” (whatever that means), he wanted to keep the original floor plan intact. “I like the way rooms flow in older houses, primarily because…they have rooms,” he says. “I like opening a door to walk into a room. I prefer not to be in the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen all at the same time.”

Architect Paul Fendler and carpenter Rich Acton worked together to save what they could save and replace what they couldn’t. The biggest changes came in the kitchen, where two small rooms were opened up to make a breakfast area and “country kitchen,” with butcher-block counters and cabinetry handmade by Mr. Acton. “To me,” he says of the counters, “it just feels better resting plates and glasses on wood.”

The wood floors in the foyer, however, had to go and were replaced with marble, while the chevron-patterned ones in the dining and living rooms were restored. The oversized arched doorways were rebuilt; Mr. Acton made the mahogany double doors. He also duplicated the overdoor panels in the living room to match the ones in the dining room and bring more continuity to the space.  

Designer Ron Sauget of Sauget Design, who also chose the honey-brown color palette in the kitchen, arranged the antique furniture for the living and dining rooms “to be both proper and—more importantly—practical. The furniture is used every day. Anyone who drops by is more than welcome to sit where they please.”

The biggest design challenge in this room was covering the floor, because it was so long. The custom-made rug took two years to finish and required extra pieces to be loomed in so it would fit the dimensions of the room.

“The drawing for the rug was made; they sent big sheets of paper that we had to tape together to see if the pattern was right,” he says. “But after I did that, I realized it was too short. So we had to add this runner, with the wreaths and laurel on each side, to make it fit. But it turned out beautifully.”

One of his favorite things about this old house is the stories it holds and one former resident is particularly interesting. Elizabeth Kendall, author of Autobiography of a Wardrobe, grew up here. Ms. Kendall stopped in St. Louis and gave a talk in the home’s living room, where she recalled how she would walk home from school at Mary Institute (now part of MICDS), then go upstairs to her bedroom “to daydream, and to write.”

He turned her old bedroom into a study, serendipitously enough. “It was just a happy accident that the little girl who had this bedroom became a writer,” he laughs. Books are stacked neatly on the round table in the middle of the room; an oversize book cabinet, built by Mr. Acton, hides books’ spines from sight with white curtains. The black light fixture, which has swan heads peeking out, is spangled with stars and evokes ancient celestial maps. And a French door leads out to the upper veranda, with a view of the gardens and the terrace below. It may look nothing like a little girl’s bedroom anymore, but Mr. Pecson has kept one thing perfectly intact: It’s still the perfect room for daydreaming.  

Resito Pecson of twigs & MOSS Flower Tutorial – St. Louis AT HOME July/August 2011 from St. Louis Magazine on Vimeo.

Learn to arrange flowers with floral designer Resito Pecosn, owner of twigs & MOSS in Clayton and one of the houses featured in this issue.