Room of the Day: Black, White and Red All Over
Custom fabric, heirlooms, bold color and a beloved collection of books cozy up this farmhouse library
Originally this couple came to architect and interior designer Ramsay Gourd wanting to turn a room in their farmhouse into a bright library full of red toile. “I pulled about 50 toile fabrics for them, and I said, ‘These are all great, but if you use any of them, the library will wind up looking like your grandmother’s bedroom in Dorset,’” he says. He offered to design a fabric for them, and as they searched through his existing designs, they fell in love with one in particular. “The only issue was that it had a safari theme. They wanted to know if I could make it more Vermont-y,” he says. Vermont-y it was, and this extraordinary room sprouted up around the personalized fabric and the couple’s special collection of books.
He used the fabric for the couple’s existing sofas, two chairs, the window seat cushions and the window treatments. The next step was color-matching a custom lacquer, based on the fabric color, for all of the new built-ins he designed. The custom paper on the ceiling is also a design by Ramsay, and it wound up being a fun addition later.
During the design process, both homeowners feared papering the ceiling, thinking it would be too much. “I said, ‘Look, we can paint it for now, and you can always paper it later,’” he says. “They both regretted not doing it when we were done, so one surprised the other by having it installed secretly as a Christmas present.”
Paint: custom lacquer, Fine Paints of Europe; fabric and wallpaper: Ramsay Gourd Home
During the design process, both homeowners feared papering the ceiling, thinking it would be too much. “I said, ‘Look, we can paint it for now, and you can always paper it later,’” he says. “They both regretted not doing it when we were done, so one surprised the other by having it installed secretly as a Christmas present.”
Paint: custom lacquer, Fine Paints of Europe; fabric and wallpaper: Ramsay Gourd Home
As this room was not a library before, the built-ins are new, and they display the couple’s meaningful books, family portraits and artwork they have collected over the years. “I try to create a portrait of who my clients are, and understanding how they live is a very important part of the process,” Ramsay says.
A key component of this process was making an inventory of significant pieces the couple wanted to use before he got started, which included the antique portraits from both sides of their families, the British Colonial coffee table, the end table, the chinoiserie lamp and all of the artwork. Ramsay created a new base for the lamp to give it the height it needed for reading and for the room.
He designed the built-ins to show off the portraits and provide enough room for the library sconces. The depth of the shelves created room for cozy window seats. The framed American flag in the first photo has prominent placement so that you look straight at it as you enter the room.
Sconces: Circa Lighting
A key component of this process was making an inventory of significant pieces the couple wanted to use before he got started, which included the antique portraits from both sides of their families, the British Colonial coffee table, the end table, the chinoiserie lamp and all of the artwork. Ramsay created a new base for the lamp to give it the height it needed for reading and for the room.
He designed the built-ins to show off the portraits and provide enough room for the library sconces. The depth of the shelves created room for cozy window seats. The framed American flag in the first photo has prominent placement so that you look straight at it as you enter the room.
Sconces: Circa Lighting
The last item on the agenda was filling the shelves with books. “They asked me to organize them, but I told them no way, because the way they organize their books is meaningful to them,” he says. In fact, these two make sure that every single book they allow in the library has special meaning to them.
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See more Rooms of the Day
Library at a Glance
What happens here: A couple, who are both in publishing, read, chat and relax in this cozy library in their second home.
Location: Southern Vermont
Size: 200 square feet (18.5 square meters)
Designer: Ramsay Gourd Home
To adapt the fabric to the Vermont-y order, Ramsay swapped out the African animals and trees for maple trees and farm animals seen in the bucolic setting of an early 19th-century farmhouse. The designer first creates the textile designs as watercolors on boards, then digitizes them. The fabric reads as a larger abstracted striated pattern from a distance, and the figures that make up the pastoral scene become clear with a closer look. “This fabric is kind of a cross between ikat and toile,” he says.
While he has since added this fabric to his line, Ramsay added a special touch to this batch just for these homeowners: He tucked their monogram into the pattern, so subtly you cannot make it out in these photos. There is also another secret: There are maple syrup buckets on the full-foliaged trees. “That would never happen,” Ramsay says with a chuckle. “So we call it a flatlander’s tree.” (A flatlander is how Vermonters refer to non-Vermonters.)