Architectural Digest

Architectural Digest
DECEMBER 2012
FEATURED PRODUCTS:
with the decor for decades, making the
place as much a laboratory as a home. “It’s
still not done,” she insists. As soon as her
husband is out of earshot, she confesses,
“It’s an obsession, really—I’m constantly
tweaking, adding, and refining.”
A library was built to provide an
intimate alternative to the grand doubleheight living room, while the garage
became, for a time, a cottage shared by the
couple’s four now-grown children. (Today
it is Ginger Lily’s office.) The Mortons
appended a dining room, too, because
“the house didn’t have one,” Nancy
explains. “The family just set up tables on
the loggia,” a south-facing space she
enclosed with a wall of French doors to
create a casual living area. The loggia
also serves as the entrance hall, furnished
with century-spanning tables, sofas, and
chairs, many of the latter clad in sprightly
blue-and-white fabrics. In the center
of the adjacent courtyard, the aquamarine
glitter of a plunge pool has replaced
a mundane patch of grass. “I wanted to
bring a water element into the picture,”
the decorator points out, “even though
we’re only half a block from the beach.”
Especially striking are the numerous
ornamental details added to the rooms by
Bob Christian, a decorative painter in
Savannah, Georgia, who is a go-to guy for
many of Ginger Lily’s design jobs. “We
talk about what to do, and then Bob just
does what he wants, but it always works,”
Nancy says, adding that Christian’s
artful effects are far more sensible than
wallpaper in the humid Florida climate.
To balance the high-flying proportions
of the stone-paved loggia, Christian
created the illusion of heightened
Left: Glassed in to become a combination
entrance hall and living area, the cypressbeamed loggia is paved with travertine
by Country Floors. The walls feature
trompe l’oeil decoration by Christian and
an array of Staffordshire plates and
platters. The faux-bamboo lantern fixture,
two-tier occasional table, and buttontufted armchair are from John Rosselli,
and a Lee Jofa ikat stripe covers a pair of
F. Burrall Hoffman Jr. Though littlehen Nancy and
scroll-back chairs by O. Henry House.
W
remembered today, the École des BeauxBill Morton were
Arts graduate left his mark on a handful of
married, it never
R C H D I G E S T. C O M 1 5 3
astounding domestic showplaces of the
occurredAto
them
early 20th century, notably Miami’s
that the nuptial
Vizcaya (now a museum) and Palm
setting, his mother’s Boca Grande,
Beach’s Villa Artemis (much altered). The
Florida, house, would become their home
Morton home, by comparison, is relatively
three years later. However, the vibrant
modest, its simple British colonial–style
couple—she is an interior designer, he is
lines, white-painted stucco exterior,
a former commodities trader who
works for Sotheby’s International Realty— and pale-blue shutters in keeping with its
subtropical location: a posh, low-key
recently marked their 25th anniversary
resort community on Gasparilla Island,
as occupants of a residence that has been
off the coast of southern Florida.
in the family since it was built, in 1940.
Bill’s uncle Louis Agassiz Shaw, a
And thanks to Nancy’s inspired
Harvard professor who coinvented the
ministrations, the place is considerably
iron lung, commissioned the one-story
more stylish than it once was.
dwelling to escape Boston’s frigid winters.
The four-bedroom villa—featuring
(Rumor has it the house eventually
a U-shaped layout with a courtyard at its
hosted so many cocktail parties that
center—was designed by society architect
2022 Pamela Sofa
neighbors nicknamed it Skid Row.)
As a bride saying her vows before the
living room fireplace on her wedding
day, in 1984, Nancy recollects admiring
the beamed ceiling and pecky-cypress
paneling, though she wasn’t especially
keen on the terrazzo floor. A few years
later, after she and Bill inherited
the property and decided to move in, the
improvements began apace.
“It was a great house, but it needed
an update,” recalls Nancy, who is the
president of Ginger Lily, a Boca Grande
interior design firm. “The point was to
make everything lighter, brighter, fresher,
cheerier, and, yes, younger.” Which
meant, among other things, removing the
master bedroom’s shag carpeting.
In truth the interiors have been an
open-ended project. Nancy has tinkered
Above, from left: In the living room, a Portuguese chest-on-stand is positioned beneath an antique English painting
of dogs; the Aubusson is by Stark. Nancy relaxes in the loggia with her Jack Russell terrier, Rupert. Opposite: The living
room’s pecky-cypress paneling was lightened by decorative painter Bob Christian, whose work can also be seen
on the tile fireplace surround. The landscape paintings are 19th-century English, the roll-arm sofas are by O. Henry House,
and the Louis XV–style armchairs by Edward Ferrell + Lewis Mittman, in the foreground, are upholstered in
a Brunschwig & Fils floral; Chinese rice barrels serve as occasional tables.
A R C H D I G E S T. C O M
151
7203 Gina Sofa
197 Chair