Grand Gestures Layers of gorgeous details infuse a Fort Worth residence designed for family and entertaining. W R I T T E N BY C H R I S T I N E D E O R I O | P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y S T E P H E N K A R L I S C H S T Y L I N G BY M E L A N I E M C K I N L E Y
Architecture: Skip Blake, Blake Architects Interior Design: Tori Rubinson, Tori Rubinson Interiors Home Builder: Douglas Brooks, Brooks Custom Homes
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he walls of interior designer Tori Rubinson’s Fort Worth residence may be elaborately trimmed or lacquered to a high sheen, but it is, first and foremost, a throw-the-pillowson-the-floor kind of place. “It is beautiful yet approachable,” she says. “When we entertain, we want guests to feel comfortable—not as though their kids can’t run through the house.” For Rubinson and her husband, Adam, entertaining doesn’t just mean intimate dinners with a few friends. It means charity and church events for more than 80 guests. So when they set about designing their new home in the Colonial Hills neighborhood, the couple asked architect Skip Blake for generously sized rooms following a traditional, Southern Colonial floor plan, with formal spaces at the front and family-friendly rooms wrapping around a pool at the back. “We told him, ‘We don’t want to focus on square footage; we want to focus on how we’ll really use different spaces,’ ” Rubinson recalls. More specifically, she continues, “Adam wanted a dining table wide enough to have a lavish spread and still have room for place settings.” An adjacent prep kitchen is also equipped to accommodate caterers on party nights—or the family’s children on cozy cookiebaking afternoons. And the long living room opens to the pool terrace via three sets of French doors, facilitating easy indoor-outdoor entertaining. Though each room’s footprint is grand, “we didn’t do two-story ceilings,” Blake notes. “There’s none of that cavernous feeling that was so prevalent in decades past.” Emphasizing the intimacy, Rubinson adorned the ceilings with elaborate moldings—with assistance from designer Andrew Howard, whose services were a surprise anniversary gift from Adam. The approach yielded dramatic results, including seven-layer coffers in the living room and a complementary design for the lower kitchen ceiling. For the breakfast room, Rubinson enlisted Accents of France’s Philippe Le Manach to help design treillage panels covering the walls and a portion of the ceiling. “It’s a detail that’s been part of the architecture of France for centuries,” Rubinson explains, “but I wanted to do something different and placed an ivory grass cloth behind the trellis for textural interest.”
The trellis is painted Rubinson’s signature color, Farrow & Ball’s Light Blue No.22, which falls on the pale end of a spectrum of blues used throughout, from the main bedroom’s periwinkle walls to the game room’s navy-on-aqua beamed ceilings. “I’m drawn to coastal colors and think they’re very calming,” Rubinson explains. “Life is chaotic, so having serene hues is important to me.” But there’s a place for drama, too. From their seats at a custom mahogany table, for example, dinner guests enjoy a tantalizing glimpse of the butler’s pantry’s deep-blue lacquered cabinets. “It took about three months to complete,” Rubinson says of the finish. “It was sand and paint, sand and paint, until it was as reflective as glass.” Antiques sourced from Round Top to Paris add to the glamour. The breakfast room’s chandelier is a find from a French village. The dining room’s Venetian mirror hangs above a marble-topped, Louis XVI-style sideboard displaying Rubinson’s grandmother’s china. Viewed from across a room, new upholstered furnishings exude a similar air of refined elegance. Up close, however, each piece invites relaxation, from the dining room’s scalloped, velvet-covered seats to the living room’s mohair sofa. “The main goals were to keep the home feeling fresh and new while incorporating beautiful antiques that I loved,” Rubinson notes. Meanwhile, textiles often serve as the starting point for her compositions, like the floral pillow fabric sparking the living room’s palette of blues, corals and chartreuse greens, or the main bedroom’s feminine hydrangea print, its hues extending to the grasscloth walls and the adjacent bathroom’s marblemosaic floors. “I love when a home transitions well from room to room,” Rubinson says. “There are a lot of colors and textures, but they all work together seamlessly.” At the project’s outset, the Rubinsons decided to incorporate an old marble mantel from the property’s original residence. Originally built for a room with 8-foot ceilings, the ornate piece required both an extended base—fabricated with help from builder Douglas Brooks—and confident decorating to merge its ornate character with the living room’s slipcovered furnishings and abaca rug. And this, it seems, is where Rubinson shines. “I love a mix of modern and traditional elements,” she says. “The beauty of this house is in that marriage of old and new.” Farrow & Ball’s Teresa’s Green walls and Stiffkey Blue beams set the game room’s palette, which interior designer Tori Rubinson emphasized with Carleton V Ltd.’s Bodrum fabric for the Chaddock Poppy chairs and Oxus in Blues for the valence; Crypton fabric covers the Hickory Chair sofa. The rug is Sarah Bartholomew for King’s House Oriental Rugs. The Seychelles Coco chandeliers are Palecek.
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Above: Adjacent to the dining room—which features Gracie’s hand-painted Caroline Street wallpaper customized with hummingbirds and coral-colored flowers—the high-gloss butler’s pantry cabinetry was achieved with a Fine Paints of Europe hue matched to Farrow & Ball’s Inchyra Blue. The honed Carrara and Bardiglio marble floors are from Bottega Design Gallery. Opposite: The length of the dining room’s custom William IV-style pedestal table from Mill House Antiques & Gardens accommodates two Fortuny Garbo nine-arm Murano-glass chandeliers overhead. Chaddock’s Carol chairs don contrasting fabrics: Schumacher’s Gainsborough Velvet in fawn on the fronts and Veere Grenney Associates’ Townline Road in pink on the backs.
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“There are a lot of colors and textures, textures, but they all work together seamlessly.” seamlessly.” –TO R I R U B I N S O N
Patterson Flynn’s Arabesque Maze rug grounds the living room featuring millwork designed with help from designer Andrew Howard. Sofas by Highland House and Hickory Chair join a pair of armchairs by Century around a McKinzie coffee table from The CEH. Julie Neill’s Draper chandelier and Paul Schneider Ceramics lamps light the space, while a Currey & Company mirror reflects draperies in Quadrille’s Volpi pattern.
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Above: The craft room’s brick wall cladding complements cabinetry fabricated by Dozier Cabinet Works, which is painted Farrow & Ball’s Stiffkey Blue and accented with Bail pulls from the Classic Brass Hutter collection. The hardwood tile flooring is Mirth Studio’s Parterre pattern. Opposite: An existing farm table provides ample space for creativity in the craft room under a pair of Painted No.1 pendants from Hudson Valley Lighting. The Mallory dining chairs from Made Goods feature wipeable vinyl cushions.
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Above, left: Anna French’s Cairo wallcovering brings a touch of the tropics to the powder bathroom along with Currey & Company’s Cecilia mirror and a custom treillage vanity by Accents of France painted Farrow & Ball’s Yeabridge Green. The Ocean wall light is by Soane Britain. Above, right: For the bunk room, Dixon Kinnan Creative painted abstract embellishments onto images of Rubinson’s children captured by photographer Kassie Moore. A chair upholstered in Vervain’s Cascia fabric and topped with a John Robshaw pillow is flanked by a Jamie Young Co. floor lamp and Z Gallerie stool. Molding painted Farrow & Ball’s Lichen mixes with wall and ceiling coverings (Cole & Son’s Acacia and Schumacher’s Stargaze in bronze, respectively) to set a cozy tone in the bunk room. A Hudson Valley Lighting Curves No.1 wall sconce mounts to each bunk’s wood-paneled interior. The antique bamboo game table and chairs are from Park + Eighth.
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Lee Jofa’s floral Chelverton Ii fabric on the main bedroom’s Dome headboard from Lee and Belgian roll-arm chair by Schumacher inspired the palette of blues and greens—from Phillip Jeffries’ Soho Hemp wallcovering in Posh Periwinkle to lamps from Laura Lee Clark. The custom chandelier, in Murano glass and gold and silver leaf, is from Louise Gaskill Company.
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