--- THE INTERIOR On a trip five years ago to Cole & son in England, maker of fine hand-blocked wallpapers, Jayne had picked up some 1930s sample sheets for his files. At our first design meeting in February, he thought back to those papers as soon as we saw Jim Strickland's double-helix staircase plan for the entry hall. In short order, he pulled out a bold strip that would stand up to the chest-thumping architecture with a great deal of style. After tuning up the color slightly, he deemed it perfect-and it went on to become the leitmotif for the entire house. "Papers with geometric patterns were traditionally used in th south, and this one has a scale that balances the delicate stair and the robust doorway," explains Jayne, whose infectious joy in decorating made us feel a bit like college students in the grip of a bow-tied professor, after all. "It's and early-19th-centruy style English pattern, but one reproduced by hand in the 1930s, with the looser modern sensibility in the drawing - so it was a spirited copy influenced by the fashions of the time." Not unlike the house, he might have added.
--- From that point on, Jayne and his design team were constantly holding swatches up to the wallpaper sample, which they dubbed their Rosetta stone. Not that everything had to match it, especially a fabric that would be five rooms away. But there had to be a relationship. Says Jayne: "Ideally you should be able to take a chair from the living room, put it in the bedroom and still have it look good. That means the house is harmonious essay. You don't want to repeat a pattern, or do too much with one color - you steal thunder from your own work in another room. But it all has to relate."
--- This way of thinking about decoration, as a unified whole flowing out of a single inspirational element, not only makes great sense, it's also liberating, since the major design themes are established right from the start. In the showhouse, the front hall paper gave us a foundation that could be built upon in three areas: its color palette, a watery blue-gray, melon and verdigris green; its handmade quality; and its references to the early 19th century and the 1930s. We ended up using them all. 		--- Custom work also plays an essential role throughout the house, and intentionally so. Town & Country has always considered houses most reflective of their residents to be the most interesting; a T&C showhouse, we reasoned, should convey its uniqueness, even though the residents are purely fictional. For Thomas Jayne, custom work serves a second purpose: in this era of click-and-ship commerce, the techniques of the past are intrinsic to achieving his historically layered effects.
--- In the master bedroom, designer Lucretia Moroni collaborated with the decorator on hand-painted silk walls that are a prefect case in point. The idea, according to Jayne, came from the South's historic appreciation for decorated walls and also from an old photo he'd saved of a lady's dressing room, its walls painted with drifts of billowy, Bloomsbury-ish flowers on silk. Moroni showed him a kimono she'd just found at a flea market, and form it the two extrapolated a watery, slightly Asiatic motif of chrysanthemums. Writ large on four walls, the effect is a little old-world Savannah, a little Bloomsbury-and a little the King and I.
--- In the combined living and dining room, the custom touch was a set of apple-green curtains, fabricated by Lakewood Interiors in Dallas and embroidered with a floral crewelwork border by Penn & Fletcher in New York city. The strong presence of the curtains helped overcome the awkwardness inherent in the room: it was a hybrid, a formal space with dentil moldings and French doors, but with a dual purpose, which made a formal dining room impossible. The challenge was to honor its traditional aspects while maintaining its modern function. We'd begun with a powerful 19th-century Turksih carpet from the camphor-scented warehouse of Doris Leslie Blau, Ltd., in New York. But once the rest of the room came together, simple sisal matting seemed a fresher choice. For the living room area, Steve Jonas of Jonas Upholstery in New York made a timeless suite of raspberry-colored armchairs and a gently curving blue sofa; in the dining area, a simple table in the style of a French modernist Jean Prouvé was built by Greg Gurfein, a New York
furnituremaker, and surrounded by eight casual contemporary chairs from McGuire Furniture.
--- As we began thinking about the second-floor bedrooms, Jayne developed more subtle themes drawn from the iconic striped entry-hall paper. In the guest room, for instance, the décor dips back again into the slightly louche mood of the 1930s, with roll-armed chairs covered in quilted silk in the style of Syrie Maugham and a canopy bed that practically begs for a turbaned Edith Sitwell to emerge from its depths. "A bed with hangings is such a big part of the southern tradition," Jayne riffs. "I wanted to do an elaborate bed that would put a spin on that whole tradition, and so the silhouette is a hybrid of Georgian style, like the house, and the Renaissance, which I love. But the inexpensive Schumacher cotton we chose [$69 per yard] has a loose 1930s quality to it, and I was inspired by that artistic license. There's never been a bed like this in a southern house." Or anywhere, for that matter: the fittings were custom-made by Gina Biano, a Manhattan-based specialist in costume conservation better known for her sill in reinventing antique wedding dresses - and the feathers are from Jayne's 1999 Mardi Gras costume (see what we mean by loopy?).
--- All this custom work, ordered by necessity early on in the project, obviously didn't come cheap (the wallpaper was $16,500, the embroidered curtains $25,000). But our decorator had a plan. On this project, as in the work he does. For many private clients, Jayne selected a few high-ticket items and effects that would get big play, then used them to set the tone for the entire house. It's a variation on a classic decorating trick: mixing modern and reproduction pieces with one or two great antiques. "The key is to not be stagy about it," Jayne observes. In the studio, for instance, wood and rattan pieces from Summit and the Ralph Lauren Home Collection make great sense on a painted floor, effecting the mood of an enclosed porch. The two antiques in the room are a well-traveled trunk and an 1820s era painted sofa, a piece from Jayne's inventory that he bought out because it looked "passed down, reupholstered a few times, and painted over."
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