A Home Mixes Old World Elegance With Modern Edge
Sky pendants by Room & Board hover above a kitchen island crowned with a marble countertop and lined with bar chairs reupholstered with a Brunschwig & Fils fabric. Tharp Cabinet Company crafted the cabinetry. Kravet’s round Grand Pedestal table and Baylor side chairs anchor the adjacent breakfast area, where Illuminations by Dennis Wright is displayed.
We’d meet for hours and hours going over things, and making sure there was a reason for everything,” says Colorado designer Nadia Watts of her working relationship with her client.
Vital to the process was considering the traditional, English manor exterior by architect Steven Cole — steep-pitched roofs, indigenous stone and stucco walls — while satisfying her client’s more contemporary tastes.
Working her way up from hard surfaces, like travertine floors, to more soothing fabrics for furnishing and flowing draperies in the 26-foot-high great room, Watts created living spaces highly suitable for entertaining numerous guests or simply lounging with the family.
To incorporate her client’s love of art, Watts installed a colorful painting by Denver artist Dennis Wright in the great room, while another adorns a wall behind the buffet in a casual breakfast area off the kitchen. A print by Sam Francis offsets the dining room’s dark wood table and celadon Lee Jofa chairs, while an intriguing photograph by Elena Dorfman adds a sense of color and dimension to a demure study.
Three years in, a large percentage of the 7,700-square-foot home gets used all the time, a fact that is fully appreciated by Watts. “It’s so interesting to see how well it’s used now,” she says. “It makes me excited that they love it.”