SOFA SO GOOD In the sitting room of Jill Brown’s home just outside Houston, the housewares dealer brought a Victorian couch into the 21st century with a few tweaks.
Photo: Jack ThompsonWHEN Jill Brown began designing her family home in Bellville, just outside Houston, the housewares dealer’s vision was shaped more by the humble vernacular architecture of her native Ohio than the ritzy limestone ranches of her adopted Texas. “The idea was to build a classic American farmhouse,” Ms. Brown explained.
She and her architect and collaborator, the late Reagan Miller, drew largely on antique materials, an approach that lends the new build a convincingly storied air. But in Ms. Brown’s hands traditional never translates to staid. “Don’t get me wrong, I love a white farmhouse,” she said with a laugh. “But I love color more.”
The home’s rich interior palette consists of coral reds, inky blues, ocher yellows and herbal greens—colors that nod to early American design while simultaneously reading as daring and current. Other traditional elements, like the plain wrought-iron curtain rods in the master bedroom and Shaker-style joinery in the kitchen, subtly carry a “modern primitive” aesthetic—which Ms. Brown traces to her mother’s passion for American crafts—throughout the house. “That style is so easy to make look fresh” she said. “I think the best pieces are the ones that make it hard to tell whether they were made in 1810 or yesterday.”
Kitchen Mixer
Peacock blue and mustard yellow in the galley kitchen evoke both Colonial Williamsburg and art of the Dutch masters. But in bold combination, they are adventurous and contemporary. As to the dramatic Shaker-style cabinetry, necessity was the mother of monumentality. “I have way too much tableware, so I needed tons of storage—that’s why the cabinets go to the ceiling,” explained Ms. Brown. Modern fixtures illuminate the workspace, but at the far end of the room, a beloved baroque Flemish chandelier crowns a dining nook. “Some people don’t like them because they think they are old-fashioned, but I think they are beyond trends.”
Crazy Corner
Ms. Brown calls this unique pair of light fixtures in an area of the sitting room—a traditional Delft table lamp purchased during her years abroad in Belgium and a contemporary mosaic floor lamp assembled from broken flow blue dishware and mirrors—a “hilarious” play on scale. “I love how they relate, and the mix of highbrow and low,” she said. She puts that dynamic to work again with the oversize Art Deco-era alphabet chart (one of many Ms. Brown collected from old European schoolhouses) on the wall. “On one hand you have these sleek lines in the lettering, and on the other you can see the remains of the original pencil marks from the schoolroom,” she said. “It creates this wonderful contrast of glamour and utility.”
Barefoot in the Park
While the solid-green painted floors in the master bedroom seem avant-garde, their inspiration couldn’t be more traditional: the floor of the entrance hall to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s neoclassical masterpiece. “Greens are pretty easy to live with because there are so many in nature,” said Ms. Brown. “And it was a way to bring the outdoors in, almost like you were walking on grass.” A mix of her mother’s antique textiles and cushions adorn the bed. Above, the window trim is finished in jadeite turquoise, and the ceiling is painted a pale shade of celadon meant to look like a reflection of the lacquered floor below. “Though they look different,” Ms. Brown said, “there’s a relationship that builds between all the different planes of color and tones.”
Tone-Setting Tile
A crate of antique encaustic tiles Ms. Brown salvaged from a circa-1860 home in Belgium inspired the master bathroom’s warm, sensual palette of brick red and toasty wheat. They also add a jolt of grandeur to the room’s otherwise understated furnishings and fittings. “My default setting is always simple,“ said Ms. Brown. “The tiles are ornate in their pattern, but there’s also something plain about that kind of repetition.” Next to the marble-topped vanity and graceful chair, straight, contemporary edges frame an expressionist nude, one of many in the room. “None of them are precious, but I love the colors, and they give me so much pleasure.”
Sitting Pretty
In the living room, canny modifications to a voluptuous Victorian camelback sofa temper its baroque quality. Ms. Brown removed a bit of carved trim from the top and built up the feet to create a sleeker, higher perch. “I liked the challenge of figuring out how to take something so traditional and modernize it,” she said. Beneath the area rug, a polished concrete floor adds edginess, and placing the cast-iron fixtures overhead in an unexpected geometric grid updates the 19th-century lights, which are sourced from Ms. Brown’s shop, Brown House & Wares, opening in Houston in September.
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