Photography by Alise O'Brien
Meeting someone for the first time, you instinctively take note of the firmness of their handshake, the sincerity of their smile, the directness of their eye contact. When you step through the front door of a house, the foyer serves the same function.
“The entryway of a home is pretty important,” says Laura Murray, owner of Hip & Gable Interiors (314-308-3096, hipandgableinteriors.com). “It’s the first thing you see. It’s your first impression. And as they say, you can never make a second first impression.”
Murray was tasked with making over the foyer of a midcentury house in Ladue, a space she describes as at one time being “very plain and kind of dark”—not at all in sync with the mistress of the house. “She has a ton of style and a ton of spunk,” Murray says. “She always wears neat colors and has a Kate Spade kind of look.”
Working off of those fashion cues, Murray and her then–business partner, Retta Leritz, got started by taking a bright green Kate Spade box to a paint store to match the color. They lacquered a square on the wall in that shade, then hung a large frame around it, padded and upholstered in a stenciled zebra-print hair-on-hide fabric. A brass bamboo–edged mirror was added in the center of the frame. The Century stool that now sits below the frame was upholstered in a Donghia fabric, and its bamboo construction complements the mirror. A pale blue Jonathan Adler lamp adds illumination, and what was formerly a wastebasket—found at an antique mall and repainted in that Kate Spade green—stands sentry as an umbrella stand.
The walls immediately inside the front door are done in tortoiseshell. The designers placed a chocolate-colored Bungalow 5 console near the entryway, the perfect place to drop mail and keys. “We wanted a brown, so it speaks to the tortoiseshell, and they reflect back and forth to each other,” Murray says.
Originally, the designers fell in love with a wallpaper in a high-gloss tortoiseshell pattern—before discovering it was out of print. So they summoned local artist Peter Engelsmann (314-922-3176, peterengelsmann.com) to paint the pattern instead. He began by giving the wall a coat of mustard yellow. Then he mixed glazing liquid with artist’s acrylics in hues of umber and sienna. “I painted it on the wall, trying to do that scaly tortoiseshell pattern,” he says. “I used rags and sponges to give it that organic look.” He topped it off with several clear coats of high-gloss polyurethane. “It was a very labor-intensive process,” he says. “I was there for five or six days, and each day, I would do a layer and then let it dry. I think it turned out pretty cool.”
“People look at tortoiseshell as being kind of ’80s, but everything is coming back in new, fun ways,” Murray says.
The entry definitely leaves a lasting impression on visitors. “We wanted the foyer to reflect the clients’ personalities,” she says. “They have young kids. We wanted to bring some color in and some fun in, but still have it sophisticated and cutting-edge.”
