For graphic designer Julie Betters, travel informs and inspires both her work and the interior of the large South Boston loft she shares with her fiance. Throughout, there are treasures large and small that they’ve collected on their many far-flung adventures. The map of the world in their office delineates the places they’ve been with pins in different colors—blue and yellow for places each has visited alone, red for the places they’ve been together—and they’re starting to run out of room.
The loft, however, offers plenty of space, and despite the open floor plan, it still gives the impression of “having rooms,” as Betters puts it, because it’s divided into a raised seating area, a dining room (that seats 10), a kitchen they expanded to accommodate Betters’ penchant for cooking and another seating area leading out to the deck. “And we still have a little dance floor, in the form of this hallway area,” Betters points out.
However, one of her favorite design elements is tucked away in the guest bathroom, where the wallpaper sports a very graphic print of trees. “I’m probably the only person in the U.S. with this wallpaper, because it’s made by a firm in the U.K. and they refuse to ship it overseas,” Betters says. “I had to have a friend in England buy it and then get it to me.”
She hauled other treasures home herself. Along one wall flanking a dramatic seating area that consists of two large sofas and a pair of camel bone inlay tables, custom-built shelving displays Makonde carvings from East Africa and masks from Zambia, Mali and Indonesia, as well as more abstract contemporary works. A collection of Buddhas presides over it all, and exotic touches, like the antique wall bracket from an Indian temple on the stairway, are deployed throughout.
In one of the seating areas, pillows are made from the textiles Betters has been collecting for 25 years, while the accent wall features what she calls “The Installation,” an assortment of paintings and art objects surrounding a contemporary starburst mirror that Betters arranged using computer software and a life-size stencil. “For me, everything has to have a visual appeal,” she says. “But in art school, I had a Japanese instructor who stressed balance and rhythm, which I think comes into play in everything I do.” Beyond graphic and interior design, her talents extend to the extravagant floral arrangements that are a constant, as well as whimsical things like her jewelry box: a Craftsman tool case that she had fitted with a custom marble top. “When I’m leaving on a trip, I just lock it up and go.”
Home Is Where the Art Is
Take a look at how design pros decorate their own urban abodes.
By Jonathan Soroff | Photos by Matt Delphenich | April 21, 2017
Decorating from the Ground Up
As the owner of Artemis Design Co., Milton native Milicent Armstrong fashions shoes, handbags, duffels and accessories from Turkish carpets. But rugs also play a starring role in the South End duplex she shares with her fiance: Her living room features a footstool upholstered with a Turkish rug, and the floor coverings are in near-constant rotation. “The rug situation is pretty fluid in here, which makes for a major decor change every few months or weeks,” says Armstrong, who also deploys sheepskins throughout the space for added texture and warmth.
Armstrong’s work takes her to Morocco at least once a year, to Turkey two or three times, and her apartment is punctuated with other souvenirs from her travels, like the shaggy raffia light fixture in the kitchen and matching lamp on her sideboard. But there’s also a strong nautical influence reflecting her love for the ocean (one shared by her fiance, an avid surfer). The mantel of her living room fireplace is covered in beach finds: a carefully curated combination of coral, shells and almost perfectly spherical rocks, many from her lifelong summer haunt in midcoast Maine.
Not surprisingly, as someone who repurposes rugs for a living, Armstrong is also keen on furniture with a past. The living room is dominated by a sofa and chairs by midcentury Brazilian master Percival Lafer, high-end pieces she discovered at an affordable price online. But other chairs are discards saved from the curb and given a second life. “I’m kind of a chair freak,” she says. “I love finding them on the street and fixing them up.” The condo is also full of “rescued plants,” which she pulls from the street and nurses back to health with her considerable green thumb. However, the most striking plants might be the ones found on the hallway wallpaper by Bob Collins and Sons. “I fell in love with it but couldn’t really afford it, so I bartered it with them for shoes.”
Though Armstrong loves antiques, her aesthetic is a decidedly unstuffy one, so the giant antique map of Paris in her bedroom and an old nautical flag are offset by whimsical touches like a sailboat kite hanging in a corner of the living room and the Ikea light fixture in the hallway. When all is said and done, though, the whole home is simply a backdrop for another rescue: Gerry, her poodle-dachshund-terrier mutt. There’s even a portrait a friend painted of him hanging on the living room wall. “We live here,” she says, “but it’s really just all about Gerry.”
By Jonathan Soroff | Photos by Matt Delphenich
A Wandering Eye
For graphic designer Julie Betters, travel informs and inspires both her work and the interior of the large South Boston loft she shares with her fiance. Throughout, there are treasures large and small that they’ve collected on their many far-flung adventures. The map of the world in their office delineates the places they’ve been with pins in different colors—blue and yellow for places each has visited alone, red for the places they’ve been together—and they’re starting to run out of room.
The loft, however, offers plenty of space, and despite the open floor plan, it still gives the impression of “having rooms,” as Betters puts it, because it’s divided into a raised seating area, a dining room (that seats 10), a kitchen they expanded to accommodate Betters’ penchant for cooking and another seating area leading out to the deck. “And we still have a little dance floor, in the form of this hallway area,” Betters points out.
However, one of her favorite design elements is tucked away in the guest bathroom, where the wallpaper sports a very graphic print of trees. “I’m probably the only person in the U.S. with this wallpaper, because it’s made by a firm in the U.K. and they refuse to ship it overseas,” Betters says. “I had to have a friend in England buy it and then get it to me.”
She hauled other treasures home herself. Along one wall flanking a dramatic seating area that consists of two large sofas and a pair of camel bone inlay tables, custom-built shelving displays Makonde carvings from East Africa and masks from Zambia, Mali and Indonesia, as well as more abstract contemporary works. A collection of Buddhas presides over it all, and exotic touches, like the antique wall bracket from an Indian temple on the stairway, are deployed throughout.
In one of the seating areas, pillows are made from the textiles Betters has been collecting for 25 years, while the accent wall features what she calls “The Installation,” an assortment of paintings and art objects surrounding a contemporary starburst mirror that Betters arranged using computer software and a life-size stencil. “For me, everything has to have a visual appeal,” she says. “But in art school, I had a Japanese instructor who stressed balance and rhythm, which I think comes into play in everything I do.” Beyond graphic and interior design, her talents extend to the extravagant floral arrangements that are a constant, as well as whimsical things like her jewelry box: a Craftsman tool case that she had fitted with a custom marble top. “When I’m leaving on a trip, I just lock it up and go.”
By Jonathan Soroff | Photos by Matt Delphenich
Thinking Small
“Right now, people are trying to live in a more thoughtful way,” says Craig Nealy, sitting in the 550-square-foot Back Bay studio he has called home for the past year and a half. It’s an unexpected retreat for an architect who’s designed five-star hotels and retail spaces for luxury brands like Louis Vuitton. “For me, it’s partially a carbon footprint thing; mine is shrinking. And I’ve learned that you can make do with less space and less stuff.”
For 30 years, the Boston-born architect lived in an apartment in New York City and maintained a house near his family in Vermont. “When you live in New York, you have to get away as often as possible, and I was paying for my place in the city, as well as to heat a house I was only in two days a week.” He was attracted to Boston, where he now works as a senior principal at Stantec, because of what he sees as a renaissance in its technology, academic and medical communities. “The mindset here produces ideas,” he explains. “And I can walk to the symphony or restaurants or museums.”
Nealy moved into the building owned by Fisher College thinking that it was only temporary. “But I’ve found I really don’t need more space,” he says. “I just roll out my futon at night to sleep, and then in the morning, I leave. It’s very reductive, and for now, I’m really liking that.”
What his apartment lacks in volume it more than makes up for in elegance. The walls are white-on-white, their only embellishment the Baroque plasterwork and two windows overlooking Beacon Street. He designed much of the furniture, including the pair of armchairs and the glass desk flanked by three beautifully upholstered slipper chairs. Bric-a-brac has been pared down to several paintings propped against the walls, a large mirror over the fireplace, a Chinese screen that belonged to his mother, some family heirlooms and a few finds he’s collected along the way, like a statue he picked up in Shanghai and a L’Esprit de France bust from the 1940s.
Three of Nealy’s previous homes have been featured in design publications, and the fact that this one will be too gives him an impish grin. “It’s small, but it’s really all I need. And it still has a sense of glamour and romance. When you have less stuff, you feel the space, and you inhabit the volume. It’s very cinematic.”
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